granted? No. Was the privilege of gaining
a personal interest in the soil extended to them? No. Were the
immunities and rights of citizenship secured to them? No. Was the poor
favor allowed them of selecting their own business, or of choosing their
employer? Not even this? Thus far, then, we see nothing of the milder
measures of the apprenticeship. It has indeed opened the prison doors
and knocked off the prisoners' chains--but it still keeps them grinding
there, as before, and refuses to let them come forth, except
occasionally, and then only to be thrust back again. Is it not thus
directly calculated to encourage indolence and insubordination?

3. In the next place, this system introduces a third party, to whom the
apprentice is encouraged to look for justice, redress, and counsel. Thus
he is led to regard his master as his enemy, and all confidence in him
is for ever destroyed. But this is not the end of the difficulty. The
apprentice carries up complaints against his master. If they gain a
favorable hearing he triumphs over him--if they are disregarded, he
concludes that the magistrate also is his enemy, and he goes away with a
rankling grudge against his master. Thus he is gradually led to assert
his own cause, and he learns to contend with his master, to reply
insolently, to dispute, quarrel, and--it is well that we cannot add, to
_fight_. At least one thing is the result--a permanent state of
alienation, contempt of authority, and hatred. _All these are the fruits
of the apprenticeship system_. They are caused by transferring the power
of the master, while the _relation_ continues the same. Nor is this
contempt for the master, this alienation and hatred, all the mischief.
The unjust decisions of the magistrate, of which the apprentices have
such abundant reasons to complain, excite their abhorrence of him, and
thus their confidence in the protection of law is weakened or destroyed.
Here, then, is contempt for the master, abhorrence of the magistrate,
and mistrust of the law--the apprentice regarding all three as leagued
together to rob him of his rights. What a combination of circumstances
to drive the apprentices to desperation and madness! What a marvel that
the outraged negroes have been restrained from bloody rebellions!

Another insurrectionary feature peculiar to the apprenticeship is its
making the apprentices _free a portion of the time_. One fourth of the
time is given them every week--just enough to af