The white slaves of England by Cobden, John C Publication date 1854 Preface "The following pages exhibit a system of wrong and outrage equally abhorrent to justice, civilization and humanity. The frightful abuses which are here set forth, are, from their enormity, difficult of belief; yet they are supported by testimony the most impartial, clear and irrefutable. These abuses are time-honored, and have the sanction of a nation which prides itself upon the freedom of its Constitution; and which holds up its government to the nations of the earth as a model of regulated liberty. Vain, audacious, false assumption! Let the refutation be found in the details which this volume furnishes, of the want, misery and starvation—the slavish toil—the menial degradation of nineteen-twentieths of her people. Let her miners, her operatives, the tenants of her workhouses, her naval service, and the millions upon millions in the Emerald Isle and in farther India attest its fallacy. These are the legitimate results of the laws and institutions of Great Britain; and they reach and affect, in a greater or less degree, all her dependencies. Her church and state, and her laws of entail and primogeniture, are the principal sources of the evils under which her people groan; and until these are [Pg 6] changed there is no just ground of hope for an improvement in their condition."