re: #197 iossarian

I only found out about the details of the Corn Laws quite recently (due to my peripatetic childhood). A good reference for people who believe that the protection of private property and the ability to profit from the same can only benefit the population at large.

The English really had some winners with respect to laws and Ireland. After the massive and genocidal clearances of Ireland (the population was cut by more than 50% in 10 years) in the 17th Century, many Irish woman and girls (including nuns seized from the convents) were sent as breeding stock to Barbados and the huge sugar plantations. The slave masters were already in the habit of raping African women, and the Irish women got the same treatment, although they were also deliberately and forcibly bred with African slaves because mixed race girls were in high demand in brothels. The English Parliament in 1681 passed a law…“forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” This was because the practice interferred with the profits of the slave traders.

Predictably, the race baitors have used this as an example of “ZOMG the Black peeples is raping teh white women”.

Actually, violence and rape was fairly universal against both black and white women. In all cases here, it was white English landlords who had black and white women as young as 12 years old used as sexual slave chattels. Utterly, horrifically sickening.