rmitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure
to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that
they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and
theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal:
they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of
my friend's family--educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant
of Philadelphia--when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of
five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person
than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each
enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant
class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their
trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how
enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same
rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without
passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they
wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at
President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her
companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable
to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she
resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It
is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in
which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our
slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least
some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form
of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human
being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings.
They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own
hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of
civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the
most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can,
without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the
wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to
no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such
outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they
perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon th