Mr. Mayhew, in his "London Labour and the London Poor," shows that a large number of the vagrants of London and other English cities, are young persons who have been servants, and have run away in consequence of ill-treatment. Rather than be constantly treated as slaves, the boys prefer to be vagabonds and the girls prostitutes. They then enjoy a wild kind of freedom, which, with all its filth and vice, has some share of pleasure, unknown to those who move at the beck of a master or mistress, and live in constant dread of the rod. In those countries where society is untainted with aristocracy, the servant when performing duties is respected as a human being—with a mind to think and a heart to feel—one to be reprimanded or discharged from service for neglect or positive wrong, but never beaten as a soulless beast. In England, the servant, to hold a place, must be a most abject, cringing, and submissive slave. In some countries, the taint of negro blood keeps a man always in the position of an inferior. In England, the man of "serf blood," though he be a Celt or Saxon, is ever treated as a hind by the man of "noble blood;" and the possession of this same "noble blood" justifies the most infamous scoundrel in treating his domestics, not only with contempt, but positive cruelty. Americans have been charged with having an undying horror of the negro taint. In England, the _common_ blood is just as steadily abhorred by the dominant class. The slavery of servants—their hopeless, abject, and demoralizing condition—is the result, direct and unmistakable, of the existence of the aristocracy. When the serfs are completely freed; when the country is no longer ruled by a few thousand persons; when a long line of ancestry and magnificent escutcheons cease to dignify imbeciles and blackguards; in short, when England takes a few steps upon that glorious path which the great American republic has hewn for the nations of the earth—there will be sure respect for man, as man; and the servants may have some hope of improving their condition. CHAPTER IX. MENTAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF THE WHITE SLAVES IN GREAT BRITAIN.