the other divisions of the kingdom: and Scotch masters
and mistresses obtain a satisfaction from their domestics which no
degree of justice and kindness in English and Irish housekeepers can
secure. The dregs of an oppression of centuries cannot be purged away by
the action of individual tempers, be they of the best. The causes of
misunderstanding, as we have said, lie deep.

The principles which regulate the condition of domestic servants in
every country form thus a deep and wide subject for the traveller's
inquiries. In America, he will hear frequent complaints from the ladies
of the pride of their maid servants, and of the difficulty of settling
them, while he sees that some are the most intimate friends of the
families they serve; and that not a few collect books, and attend
courses of scientific lectures. The fact is that, in America, a conflict
is going on between opposite principles, and the consequences of the
struggle show themselves chiefly in the relation between master and
servant. The old European notions of the degradation of servitude
survive in the minds of their American descendants, and are nourished by
the presence of slavery on the same continent, and by the importation of
labourers from Europe which is perpetually going on. In conflict with
these notions are the democratic ideas of the honourableness of
voluntary service by contract. It is found difficult, at first, to
settle the bounds of the contract; and masters are liable to sin, from
long habit, on the side of imperiousness, and the servants on that of
captiousness and jealousy of their own rights. Such are the
inconveniences of a transition state;--a state, however, upon which it
should be remembered that other societies have yet to enter. In an Irish
country-house, the guest sometimes finds himself desired to keep his
wardrobe locked up.--In England, he perceives a restraint in the address
of each class to the class above it.--In France, a washerwoman speaks
with as much ease to a duchess as a duchess to a washerwoman.--In
Holland, the domestics have chambers as scrupulously neat as their
masters'.--In Ireland, they sleep in underground closets.--In New York,
they can command their own accommodation.--In Cuba they sleep, like
dogs, in the passages of the family dwellings. These are some of the
facts from which the observer is to draw his inferences, rather than
from the manners of some individuals of the class whom he may meet. In
his concl