They come forth: the mine delivers its gang and the pit its
bondsmen; the forge is silent and the engine is still. The
plain is covered with the swarming multitude: bands of
stalwart men, broad-chested and muscular, wet with toil, and
black as the children of the tropics; troops of youth--alas!
of both sexes,--though neither their raiment nor their
language indicates the difference; all are clad in male
attire; and oaths that men might shudder at, issue from lips
born to breathe words of sweetness. Yet these are to be--some
are--the mothers of England! But can we wonder at the hideous
coarseness of their language when we remember the savage
rudeness of their lives? Naked to the waist, an iron chain
fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs clad in
canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an English girl, for
twelve, sometimes for sixteen hours a-day, hauls and hurries
tubs of coals up subterranean roads, dark, precipitous, and
plashy: circumstances that seem to have escaped the notice of
the Society for the Abolition of Negro Slavery. Those worthy
gentlemen too appear to have been singularly unconscious of
the sufferings of the little Trappers, which was remarkable,
as many of them were in their own employ.
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