The sufferings of the rural labourers—the peasantry of Great Britain and Ireland—are to be attributed to the fact that they have no property in the land, and cannot acquire any. The law of primogeniture, on which the existence of the British aristocracy depends, has, as we have already shown, placed the land and those who labour on it—the soil and the serfs—at the disposal of a few landed proprietors. The labourers are not attached to the soil, and bought and sold with it, as in Russia. The English aristocrat is too cunning to adopt such a regulation, because it would involve the necessity of supporting his slaves. They are _called_ freemen, in order to enable their masters to detach them from the soil, and drive them forth to starve, when it suits their convenience, without incurring any legal penalty for their cruelty, such as the slaveholders of other countries would suffer. The Russian, the Spanish, the North American slaveholder must support his slaves in sickness and helpless old age, or suffer the penalties of the law for his neglect. The British slaveholder alone may drive his slaves forth to starve in the highway by hundreds and thousands; and no law of Great Britain affords the means of punishing him for his murderous cruelty. His Irish slaves may be saved from starvation by American bounty, but he cannot be punished until he shall meet his Judge at the day of final account. CHAPTER II. SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH MINES. In proceeding to speak more particularly of the various forms of British slavery, we will begin with labour in the mines—the horrors of which became known to the world through reports made to Parliament in the summer of 1840. Pressed by the fear of general execration, Parliament appointed a commission of inquiry, which, after a thorough examination of all the mines in the United Kingdom, made a voluminous report. So shocking were the accounts of labour in the mines given by this commission, that the delicate nerves of several perfumed lords were grievously pained, and they denounced the commissioners as being guilty of exaggeration. Nevertheless, the evidence adduced by the officers was unimpeachable, and their statements were generally received as plain truth. [Illustration: COAL GETTER AT WORK.]