On the record
Under the villeinage system of England, the villeins were a low, idle, spiritless race; dead to responsibility; grovelling in their desires; resistant of labor; without enterprise; without foresight.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann draws parallels between historical systems of oppression and contemporary issues.
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More from Horace Mann
Her black children have sucked her so dry, that now, for a long time past, she has not milk enough for her offspring, either black or white.
This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
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