the peasant farmers, or where land is divided into such small portions that its owners are unable to make use of the best modern labour-saving implements, the condition of the labourer, as respects food, often is as bad as that of the slave often is—never worse than that sometimes is. But in general, even in France, I do not believe it is generally or frequently worse; I believe it is, in the large majority of cases, much better than that of the majority of slaves. And as respects higher things than the necessities of life—in their intellectual, moral, and social condition, with some exceptions on large farms and large estates in England, bad as is that of the mass of European labourers, the man is a brute or a devil who, with my information, would prefer that of the American slave. As to our own labourers, in the Free States, I have already said enough for my present purpose.
But it is time to speak of the extreme cases, of which so much use has been made, in the process of destroying the confidence of the people of the United States in the freedom of trade, as applied to labour.
In the year 1855, the severest winter ever known occurred at New York, in conjunction with unprecedentedly high prices of food and fuel, extraordinary business depression, unparalleled marine disasters, and the failure of establishments employing large numbers of men and women. At the same time, there continued to arrive, daily, from five hundred to one thousand of the poorer class of European peasantry. Many of these came, expecting to find the usual demand and the usual reward for labour, and were quite unprepared to support themselves for any length of time unless they could obtain work and wages. There was consequently great distress.
We all did what we thought we could, or ought, to relieve it; and with such success, that not one single case of actual
