Freeland

“ The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery, throve best under the gentle treatment of a kind master. Its grim visage could assume no smiles able to fascinate the partially enlightened slave into a forgetfulness of his bondage, or of the desirableness of liberty.
I was not through the first month of my second year with the kind and gentlemanly Mr. Freeland before I was earnestly considering and devising plans for gaining that freedom which, when I was but a mere child, I had ascertained to be the natural and inborn right of every member of the human family. ”

“ The next two years Frederick was let out to do field-work for Mr. Freeland, who fed his slaves well, and never worked them beyond their strength. Some of his slaves were intelligent, and desirous to learn to read. On Sundays they had meetings in the woods, and twenty or thirty young men were taught by Frederick. After a while they formed a plan of escaping in a canoe. But some unknown men excited suspicion against them, and they were seized and thrust into prison. ”

“ The expedition which was sent out to "Freeland," after years of agitation, prepared at great expense and watched with the eager curiosity of all Europe, appears to-day, however—as was hardly to be wondered at—to have failed.
"Freeland," as depicted by Hertzka in his social romance, is a community founded upon the principle of unlimited publicity combined with unlimited freedom. Everyone throughout "Freeland" must be able to know at any time what commodities are in greater or less demand, and what branches of work produce greater or less profit. ”

“ The borough is built on Broad Mountain, nearly 2000 ft. above sea-level, and the chief industry is the mining of coal at the numerous surrounding collieries. Freeland is the seat of the Mining and Mechanical Institute of the Anthracite Region, chartered in 1894, modelled after the German Steigerschulen, with elementary and secondary departments and a night school for workmen. The borough has foundries and machine shops of considerable importance, and manufactures silk, overalls, beer and hames. Freeland was first settled about 1842, was laid out in 1870, and was incorporated in 1876. ”

“ Upon the death of Captain Anthony in 1833, he was sent back to the plantation to serve Thomas Auld, who hired him out for a year to one Edward Covey, who had a wide reputation for disciplining slaves, but who did not break Frederick’s spirit. Although a new master, William Freeland, who owned a large plantation near St Michael’s, Md., treated him with much kindness, he attempted to escape in 1836, but his plans were suspected, and he was put in jail. ”

“ Credits: Producer, Marcel Hellman; director, Thornton Freeland; screen adaptation, Clemence Dane, Sergei Nolbandov; dialogue, Clemence Dane; film editor, Conrad von Molo; music score, Walter Goehr; music, Richard Addinsell. © Criterion Film Productions, Ltd.; 17Apr36; LP6275. THE AMATEUR HUSBAND. (Star Personality Comedy) Presented hy E. W. Hammons. 1935. 2 reels, sd. Credits: Producer, Al Christie; story, Charlie Williams, Marcy Klauber. © Educational Productions, Inc.; 16Aug35; LP5718. THE AMATEUR LIAR. (Paramount-Drew Comedy) V. B. K. Film Corp. ”

“ A. B. Grosart, D.D.; Steel Portrait, &c. Three Vols., crown 8vo, cl. bds., 18s.
HERTZKA.—FREELAND: A Social Anticipation. By Dr. Theodor Hertzka. Translated by Arthur Ransom. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
HESSE-WARTEGG.—TUNIS: The Land and the People. By Chevalier Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg. With 22 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d.
HINDLEY (CHARLES) , WORKS BY.
TAVERN ANECDOTES AND SAYINGS: Including the Origin of Signs, and Reminiscences connected with Taverns, Coffee Houses, Clubs, &c. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. ”

“ Had the great revolt of the Netherlands ended in the final liberation of the whole seventeen provinces, the middle state would have been formed in its full strength. ♦The War of Independence. 1568-1609.♦ As it was, the work of the War of Independence was imperfect. The northern provinces won their freedom in the form of a federal commonwealth. The southern provinces remained dependencies of Spain, to become the chosen fighting ground of European armies, the chosen plaything of European diplomacy. ”

“ In the old Thirteen lands of America we hear of the colonial period as meaning the time of imperfect freedom; when full freedom is won, the name of colony is cast away. And yet surely a colony of England was not meant to be a mere Roman colonia, a mere Athenian κληρουχία, a garrison to hold down a subject province; it was surely meant to be, like a Greek ἀποικία, a new home of English life and English speech. In that nobler sense of the word, a colony which is not independent has not risen to the full rank of a colony; it is hardly a home for the new folk of the mother-land ”

“ To the student of history, of art and architecture, of tapestry and lace-making, of the origin of the great woollen and linen industries, of guilds and the organisation of labour, of the commune or municipal republic in its earliest and finest development, and—before all else—of liberty in its age-long conflict with tyranny and oppression, Flanders is a land of endless interest and inspiration. Nowhere else in the world can there be found within so small a compass so many monuments of the past, so many of the milestones of human progress. ”

“ The lands which we are accustomed to group together under the name of the Netherlands or Low Countries lay chiefly within the bounds of the Empire; but the county of Flanders had always been a fief of France. ♦Fief of the Counts of Flanders within the Empire.♦ Part however of the dominions of its counts, the north-eastern corner of their dominions, the lands of Alost and Waas, were held of the Empire. ♦Zealand.♦ These lands, together with the neighbouring islands of Zealand, formed a ground of endless disputes between the Counts of Flanders and their northern neighbours the Counts of Holland. ”

“ And the fullest independence in local affairs cannot wholly put out of sight the fact that in all strictly national affairs the freest of colonies is as dependent as ever. The greatest and freest of colonies may at any moment find itself plunged into a war which may suit the interests or the fancies of the people of Great Britain, but which may in no way suit the interests or the fancies of the people of the colony. ”

“ They were a State, but it was of the Dis-united Provinces. Their Towns were without Order; Their Burgers without Obedience; Their Soldiers without Discipline; And all without Heart: Whereas, in all Sieges, The Hearts of Men defend the Walls, and not Walls the Men: And, indeed, it was the Name of England, joyning in the War against them, that broke their Hearts, and contributed more to the loss of so many Towns, and so much Country, than the Armies of Munster, or of France. ”

“ No people on earth were more passionately enamored with liberty, or more obstinate in the defense of freedom than the inhabitants of Friesland. This is known from their ancient history. They enjoyed their liberty and retained a greater degree of independence than their neighbors, through a long course of years, even from Drufus to Charlemagne, and from Charlemagne down to the present time. [See Universal History.] They have always been distinguished for their free, independent spirit ”

“ An English shire, an English borough, has no rights or powers but such as it has derived, in some shape or another, from the central power of the land, by act of Parliament or by royal charter. That central power has the same rights and powers in every corner of the kingdom. I speak of course only of the United Kingdom; as soon as we get beyond its limits, as soon as we enter the Scandinavian kingdom and the Norman duchy which lie so near to it but which form no part of it, so soon we still find ourselves in a state of things which has much in common with the Roman dominion. ”

“ The men who planted Greater Britain, if so we are to call it, like the men who planted Greater Portugal, Greater Spain, or Greater France, were subjects of kingdoms. There is but one exception. The colonies of the United Netherlands were26 colonies planted by a commonwealth, and of all European colonies they have departed most widely from the old Greek model. But though colonies of a commonwealth, though colonies of a commonwealth in which cities played the chief part, they could hardly be called colonies of cities. ”

“ For the history of the United Provinces is not at all a provincial history. It is the history of European liberty. Without the struggle of Holland and England against Spain, all Europe might have been Catholic and Spanish. It was Holland that saved England in the sixteenth century, and, by so doing, secured the triumph of the Reformation, and placed the independence of the various states of Europe upon a sure foundation. Of course, the materials collected by me at the Hague are of great importance. ”

“ The faint dawn of the arts and of good government in that age, had excited the minds of the populace, in different states of Europe, to wish for a better condition, and to murmur against those chains which the laws enacted by the haughty nobility and gentry, had so long imposed upon them. The commotions of the people in Flanders, the mutiny of the peasants in France, were the natural effects of this growing spirit of independence ”

“ And when the great war is over let no American tourist omit Flanders from his or her European itinerary. Its churches and town halls, its quaint crooked streets and sixteenth-century houses, have received a new and greater baptism of fire that has made them, one and all, shrines to which every lover of liberty should make a pilgrimage. ”

“ The elements, of which that important republic was to be compounded, were germinating for centuries. Love of freedom, readiness to strike and bleed at any moment in her cause, manly resistance to despotism, however overshadowing, were the leading characteristics of the race in all regions or periods, whether among Frisian swamps, Dutch dykes, the gentle hills and dales of England, or the pathless forests of America. Doubtless, the history of human liberty in Holland and Flanders, as every where else upon earth where there has been such a history, unrolls many scenes of turbulence and bloodshed ”

“ Be it Witenagemót, Great Council, or Parliament, there has always been some body54 of men claiming, with more or less of right, to speak in the name of the nation. And bear too in mind that, down to the Norman Conquest, the body which claimed to speak in the name of the nation was, in legal theory at least, the nation itself. This is a point on which I mean again to speak more fully; I would now simply suggest the thought, new perhaps to many, that there was a time when every freeman of England, no less than every freeman of Uri, could claim a direct voice in the councils of his country. ”

“ Freeman has well pointed out how natural it is that a colony should rush ahead of the mother country in some things and lag behind it in others; and that just as you have to go to French Canada if you want to see Old France, so, for many things, if you wish to see Old England you must go to New England. ”

“ They have been the calling up again, in an altered garb, of principles as old as the days when we get our first sight of our forefathers in their German forests. Changed as it is in all outward form and circumstance, the England in which we live, has, in its true life and spirit, far more in common with the England of the earliest times than it has with the England of days far nearer to our own. In many a wholesome act of modern legislation, we have gone back, wittingly or unwittingly, to the earliest principles of our race. ”

“ Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to Flanders. ”

“ The Fleming of one corner, the Basque of another, even the far more important Breton of a third corner, have all in this way become mere exceptions to the general type of the country. If we pass into our own islands, we shall find that the same process has been at work. If we look to Great Britain only, we shall find that, though the means have not been the same, yet the end has been gained hardly less thoroughly than in France. For all real political purposes, for every thing which concerns a nation in the face of other nations, Great Britain is as thoroughly united as France is. ”

“ In Flanders and Brabant the country districts were in the hands of a powerful nobility, the cities inhabited by an industrial and turbulent people, controlled by opulent burghers. In the north, the democratic element predominated, more especially in the Frisian provinces, and the inhabitants spent their life either in fishing and commerce on the sea, or in saving their country from its inroads. ”

“ The deputies to the general congress were chosen by popular suffrage in Easter-week. The clergy were not recognized as a political estate.
Thus, in those lands which a niggard nature had apparently condemned to perpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable human freedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worth contending for, was taking deepest and strongest root. Already in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Friesland was a republic, except in name; Holland, Flanders, Brabant, had acquired a large share of self- government. ”