Note 21 — I.

While these papers were preparing for the press, the record of another such sale, in August, 1859, disgraced the English nation. Opposite the brewery, at Dudley, in Staffordshire, not many miles from Kidderminster and Birmingham, a man named Pensotte sold his wife, with a halter round her neck, for sixpence. He had previously dragged her—a three weeks' bride—three quarters of a mile in this state. It is intimated in this case, that she was not faithful; but it is the first time I ever saw such a charge attached to such an account. Americans are anxious to understand this outrage. Is it possible that a government which forbids the sale of a negro cannot forbid the sale of a Saxon wife? What shadow of law sustains the custom? Is the woman supposed to be sold into wifehood or servitude? I have taken it for granted that the word "mare" shows that she is regarded as a beast of burden. It is impossible for the fairest and loftiest woman in England—nay, for Victoria herself—not to suffer, in some degree, from the public opinion which such transactions, ever so rarely occurring, tend to form.