Foreign Viewpoints, Slavery Worldwide 
No Comments England's Half Naked Barbarians
The British colonial system populated North America and the West Indies with African slaves purchased from African kings and tribes; after American independence and the loss of that former colony’s profits, England professed slavery inhumane while emancipating its remaining slaves with compensations to the owners – quite possibly to undermine its French and American commercial competitors.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.org
England’s Half-Naked Barbarians
“To be sure, the condition of depopulated Ireland is still pitiful to behold. Says a writer on Ireland: “An Irishman has nothing national about him except his rags.” Or another: “Let an Englishman exchange his bread and beer, and beef and mutton, for no breakfast, for a lukewarm lumper at dinner and no supper. With such a diet, how much better is he than an Irishman? – a Celt, as he calls him. No, the truth is, that the misery of Ireland is not from the human nature that grows there – it is from England’s perverse legislation, past and present.” But England is philanthropic, and the Irish are not Negroes, nor are they Slaves!
Or let us turn our eyes away from Ireland across the ocean, toward that happy land of emancipation. Says a recent writer: A short term and cupidity strain the lash over the poor Coolie, and he dies; is secreted if he lives, and advantage taken of his ignorance for extended time when once merged with plantation-service, where investigation can be avoided.” But again, the Coolies are no Slaves; they are but hired servants, and England’s philanthropy is safe!
We are not through with the Testimony of England, who is always loudest in condemning our Slavery. How closely she watches those poor Hindoos! How effectually she keeps them down, whenever they express any dissatisfaction with the happiness she forces upon them! She has instituted among those “half-naked barbarians” an awful solidarite’, by which the province is responsible for the labor of all its men and women. But still, England is philanthropic!
She has carried rails and Bibles, free-schools and steamboats, telegraphs and libraries to India, all for the benefit of those half-naked barbarians. And should telegraphs and Bibles not have the requisite effect of happifying, opium will be administered to them, and to “all the world, and to the rest of mankind” Now this is decided progress! England is the civilizer and Christianizer of the world!”
(The American Question, An Incidental Reply to Mr. H.H. Helper’s Compendium on the Impending Crisis of the South, Elias Peissner, 1861, H.H. Lloyd & Company, pp. 63-65)