The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,95

for our labor? No, we don’t. What do we get to eat? Stale bread an’ thin gruel. Who makes the profit? Them that sells the rope an’ them that runs the workhouse.”

“He is right,” the other said, having recovered from his fit of coughing. “I been in bridewells before, more than once. I get brought in for diff’rent reasons—this time it was for beggin’. No regrets. But it is always the same story once you get here. They will set you to work. I been set on to makin’ candlewick for the chandlers, pickin’ feathers for the mattress makers, beatin’ old bricks to dust for the brickmakers. I can’t do heavy work no more, because of my chest—it was the brick dust done that. An’ never a penny for any of it.”

“No choice an’ no pay an’ benefitin’ only the manufacturers,” Sullivan said. “That is forced labor an’ I will denounce it to the proper authorities once I get free from here.”

“Don’t do that,” the red-haired man said. “Why not? Because you will end up in prison. On what charge? Bein’ a public nuisance. Punishment? A good whippin’ an’ a term of hard labor.”

“One hand washes the other,” the other man said. “Mootual benefit they calls it. The manufacturers give somethin’ out of their profits to them that run the workhouse.”

“I see well they have worked out a good system. I know somethin’ of the law, bein’ a traveled man, an’ I know that you cannot keep a man confined without lawful cause. How can empty pockets be a lawful cause? There is a paper you can get, with writin’ that says you have got the body in captivity, show reason or deliver it up. But how can you get hold of a paper like that when you are the body that has to be delivered up?”

“What is a vagrant?” the red-haired man demanded. “He is someone down on his luck. Who has the right to call his fellow man a vagrant? No one. Why do they do it? They do it so they can own that man an’ sell his labor.”

“It is the same when they cart you off from here,” the other said. “You are a charge on this parish where you are now. When you have done your time here, it is for them to remove you to your own parish an’ pay the cost. But a lot of us ain’t got no parish, or none that will own to us. No regrets. An’ nobody wants to spend money on us in any case. So they gives you a pass that takes you to the next parish an’ they carries you there on a cart. The constable that gets paid for the cartin’ farms it out to others what will do it for less. If he gets twopence a head for the people in the cart, the one that does the cartin’ might get a ha’penny or three farthings. An’ all you gets is a ride to the next parish, where they will be waitin’ to put you in the workhouse again. Everyone is makin’ money on you. Vagrants is very good for business.”

“When they asks you where is your place of settlement,” the man on the other side of Sullivan said, “what do you tell them? You tells them you want to return to Ireland an’ start your life anew. Why do you tell them that? Because you know that they will never send you back there, not in a hundred years. Why not? Because it costs too much. So what do they do? They takes you to the nearest county border an’ dumps you there.”

“The nearest county border is the border of Durham County, if I am not mistaken,” Sullivan said. “Holy Mother, you don’t mean to say that they will take me on a cart to Durham free of charge?”

25

It was a mark of Ashton’s resilience that not many hours after his fury of disappointment at the piracy verdict, and still suffering from it, he set himself to considering the next battle to fight. The cause of abolition, which had rescued him from a prevailing sense of futility and made him profoundly grateful to Divine Providence for such redemption, had at the same time brought him to a fuller knowledge of himself, his capacity for devotion, his readiness to spend everything he had, all his resources, health and strength included, in the fight against a traffic in human souls offensive to God and man