Note EF — LETTER XXXIII.

The domestics in the United States are almost everywhere much inferior to the operatives, personal service being here looked upon as degrading. In many of the States the domestics will not bear to be called servants, and take that of help; this is the case in New England. The domestic is there a hired agent whose task is light, and who in many houses takes his meals with the family. On these conditions, native servants may be had in New England who are attentive and intelligent; they stand upon their rights, and expect to be treated with respect by their employers, but they perform their duties with an honourable fidelity. In most of the non-slave-holding States, the servants are chiefly free blacks, who are generally lazy and depraved, or newly arrived emigrants from Ireland, who are ignorant and without skill, prone to be most provokingly familiar, and in the intoxication of their new condition, so different from the squalid misery they have left behind them, more disposed to take airs upon themselves, than the natives of the country.