When We Consider The Different Position In Which Servants Are Placed
In The Old And New World, This Conduct, Ungrateful As It Then
Appeared To Me, Ought Not To Create The Least Surprise.
In Britain,
for instance, they are too often dependent upon the caprice of their
employers for bread.
Their wages are low; their moral condition
still lower. They are brought up in the most servile fear of the
higher classes, and they feel most keenly their hopeless
degradation, for no effort on their part can better their condition.
They know that if once they get a bad character, they must starve or
steal; and to this conviction we are indebted for a great deal of
their seeming fidelity and long and laborious service in our
families, which we owe less to any moral perception on their part of
the superior kindness or excellence of their employers, than to the
mere feeling of assurance, that as long as they do their work well,
and are cheerful and obedient, they will be punctually paid their
wages, and well housed and fed.
Happy is it for them and their masters when even this selfish bond
of union exists between them!
But in Canada the state of things in this respect is wholly
reversed. The serving class, comparatively speaking, is small, and
admits of little competition. Servants that understand the work of
the country are not easily procured, and such always can command the
highest wages. The possession of a good servant is such an addition
to comfort, that they are persons of no small consequence, for the
dread of starving no longer frightens them into servile obedience.
They can live without you, and they well know that you cannot do
without them. If you attempt to practise upon them that common vice
of English mistresses, to scold them for any slight omission or
offence, you rouse into active operation all their new-found spirit
of freedom and opposition. They turn upon you with a torrent of
abuse; they demand their wages, and declare their intention of
quitting you instantly. The more inconvenient the time for you, the
more bitter become their insulting remarks. They tell you, with a
high hand, that "they are as good as you; that they can get twenty
better places by the morrow, and that they don't care a snap for
your anger." And away they bounce, leaving you to finish a large
wash, or a heavy job of ironing, in the best way you can.
When we look upon such conduct as the reaction arising out of their
former state, we cannot so much blame them, and are obliged to own
that it is the natural result of a sudden emancipation from former
restraint. With all their insolent airs of independence, I must
confess that I prefer the Canadian to the European servant. If they
turn out good and faithful, it springs more from real respect and
affection, and you possess in your domestic a valuable assistant and
friend; but this will never be the case with a servant brought out
with you from the old country, for the reasons before assigned.
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