Yet what was the real case? To till that model-farm, to make these fields the perfection you see them, families were starving--age, left to totter to the grave, uncared-for--manhood, pining in want and misery, and infancy, to dawn upon suffering, to last a life long. Duty-labour calls the poor man from the humble care of his own farm, to come, with his whole house, and toil upon the rich man's fields, the requital for which is some poor grace of a week's or a month's forbearance, ere he be called on for that rent these exactions are preventing him from earning. Duty-labour summons him from his own profitless ground, to behold the fruits his exertions are raising for another's enjoyment, and of which he must never taste! Duty-labour calls the days of fair sky and sunshine, and leaves him the gloomy hours of winter, when, with darkness without, and despair within, he may brood, as he digs, over the disproportioned fortunes of his tyrant and himself! Duty-labour is the type of a slavery, that hardens the heart, by extinguishing all hope, and uprooting every feeling of self-confidence and reliance, till, in abject and degraded misery, the wretched man grows reckless of his life, while his vengeance yearns for that of his task master.
Nor does the system end here;--the agent must be conciliated by presents of various kinds;--the humble pittance, wrung from misery, and hoarded up by industry, must be offered to him, as the means of obtaining some poor and petty favour, most frequently, one, the rightful due of the asker. A tyranny like this spreads its baneful influence far beyond the afflictions of mere poverty--it breaks down the spirit, it demoralizes the heart of a people; for where was black-mail ever extorted, that it did not engender cruelty on the one hand, and abject slavery on the other?
So far from regarding those placed above them in rank and station, as their natural friends and protectors, the peasantry felt the great man as their oppressor; they knew him not, as their comforter in sickness, their help in time of trouble--they only saw in him, the rigid exactor of his rent, the merciless task-master, who cared not for time or season, save those that brought round the period of repayment; and as, year by year, poverty and misery ate deeper into their natures, and hope died out, fearful thoughts of retribution flashed upon minds, on which no prospect of better days shone; and, in the gloomy desolation of their dark hours, they wished and prayed for any change, come in what shape, and surrounded by what danger it might, if only this bondage should cease.