Twigg took a pull on his hookah pipe, smiling mysteriously.
"All those damned tracts an' such. Was it you, or the Abolitionists who ran 'em up? Hired Cruikshank t'do the art-work?" Lewrie pressed. "They can't afford all that, surely."
"Perhaps I merely wish to watch you wiggle," Twigg snickered, " 'twixt honesty and morality, and… whatever feels necessary at the time, and plea-sureable to you. Following your career can be very entertaining, ye know. Well… it seems a night for home truths, so I will, this once, mind, explain my motives to you.
"Slavery," Twigg harrumphed, almost rolling his eyes. "As long as there are Hindu ryots and Irish day-labourers, England has no need of slavery, Lewrie. It is a despicable, abhorrent practice, one which all civilised gentlemen must deplore. I, personally, despise slavery, but that is of no matter, any more than your own detestation of it preceded your liberation of those dozen Beauman slaves, or is a sudden… 'conversion by indictment.' "
He just has t'goad me, even when he's serious! Lewrie thought. "But, where does slavery principally thrive, Lewrie? Here, in England? In France or the Germanies, in Sweden? No. Europe and the civilised parts of the world have done away with it, the French abolished slavery even in their West Indies colonies… all that Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite nonsense taken to the ultimate extreme. For that giddiness, I might almost admire them. The rest of the world… ha! What heathen, pagan, backward cultures may do in their benighted lands, of no consequence to Britain or anyone else, bothers me not a fig!"
Lewrie cocked his head over that seeming hypocrisy, which only made Zachariah Twigg snigger in smug amusement.
"Slavery thrives in Spanish and Portuguese dominions, Lewrie," Twigg continued, after a satisfying puff at his hubble-bubble. "One a continual foe, one a doubtful neutral. Their colonial economies, and the wealth that flows to Spain and Portugal from them, could not survive without slave labour in mines and fields. Consider also the United States of America, whose constitution may claim that all men are created equal, but restricts full rights to European descendants. A quarter of the inhabitants cross the Atlantic were slaves before their Revolution, and their numbers yearly increase through the further importation of slaves, the fecundity of the Negro race, and the lascivious doings of their masters, who indulge in a sordid practice which, so I am told, is termed 'going through the cabins'; to wit, the rape and impregnation of comely Negresses as a matter-of-fact rightl
"Now just when, d'ye think, Lewrie," Twigg archly posed, "might the enchained and oppressed in the Americas take the uprising of Saint Domingue, or Haiti, or whatever they call it these days, to heart, and fight to free themselves? And… what happens to those nations which thrive and grow rich and more powerful on the backs of their slaves?"
"Chaos… civil war… slaughter and massacre!" Lewrie gasped. "Generations of it, bad as Saint Domingue for certain."
"And, how important, in the scheme of things, will Toussaint L'Ouverture's free and independent Haiti ever be, Lewrie?" Twigg asked in triumph. "Too embroiled inside of themselves to ever become a foe to Britain, or a substantial ally to other powers opposed to us, their economies so bankrupt that maintaining a navy to face ours would be impossible, effectively isolating them all in their own regions, unable to affect the expansion of the British Empire beyond the range of some yew heavy fortress guns, much less affect Europe.
"And…," Twigg concluded with great satisfaction, "ripe for the plucking should we ever wish such hapless, ungovernable snake pits."
"My God, that's… Christ!" Lewrie goggled in awe, thinking of the hundreds of thousands, no… the millions doomed to die in revolts.
"Should they require arms and powder, well…" Twigg waved off.
"I don't know whether t'congratulate you, or curse you," Lewrie finally said. "All the Americas up in flames, blood flowin' like rivers…"
"Take your Eudoxia Durschenko, she of the long, fine limbs, and firm breasts, Lewrie," Twigg continued.
"Huh… what? What does she have t'do with…?"
"Ever been to the Russias, Lewrie?" Twigg almost benignly asked. "I have. Serfdom is the Achilles' heel of the Tsars, as bad an 'institution' as slavery. Once outside the grand palaces and salons of their refined, French-speaking aristocracy, Russia is as backward and appalling as a trip back to the Dark Ages, all mud, mire, and shite. A serf is a landless tenant so dependent upon the good will of his land owner that he can be flogged to death with great bull-whips… knouts, they call them… for looking at them cross. Turf a serf and his family off the land for some offence, and they become lepers, pariahs, unwelcome anywhere, and usually starve to death. The Tsar wishes to fight a war, he has to raise troops, and sends word down to the country aristocracy… 'hey ho, each estate must conscript twenty-or-so young men for the army,' and off they go, for twenty years' service… marched very far away from home ground, and barracked among strangers… so, should they be called out to read the equivalent of the Riot Act, and fire on the locals, they have no compunctions whatsoever.
"Russian peasants are a brutal lot to begin with, so demanding brutal measures from them is an easy matter," Twigg informed him, with a shrug. "Their pretty, unmarried girls are prey for young aristocratic 'blades,' as well, and can be treated as brusquely as one may wish."
"You'd turn all Russia topsy-turvy, too? " Lewrie gawped, really in need of strong drink by then. This was appalling stuff, and more proof of Twigg's coldbloodedness. "Ye think on a grand scale, damme if ye don't, but…"
"A Russia whose serfs rise up, at long last, the veterans still young enough, the youths not yet conscripted along with them… and, supplied with arms from somewhere," Twigg said with an evil wee smile, "cannot field an army to save itself, much less interfere in the rest of Europe… as they dearly wish to do. You were in the West Indies, and missed our invasion of the Dutch Batavian Republic in '98. Horrid muddle, that, with the Russian Navy and Army as temporary, but prickly, allies. Sent forces from the Black Sea into the Aegean, the Adriatic, and eastern Mediterranean, and dearly wished to remain, in possession of anything they could lay their hands on, 'til the Tsar learned that he would not be given Malta, as the new Commander of the Knights of Saint John, and recalled all their forces. Impossible for us to invade, possessed of millions of military-age men, hence impossible for us to contain, should they put their minds to expanding their empire westward. A rebellion of the serfs could estop that for a long time. Ask your Mistress Eudoxia how her family, barely a cut above serfdom, suffered, should you ever run into her again."
"But what emerges from the ruins, Mister Twigg?" Lewrie asked. "Most likely, a weak and fractious land wracked by eternal wars 'tween various regions, and warlords," Twigg said with relish. "Could I snap my fingers and turn all France to dust and bones, I would do so, Lewrie. A nation which wishes to survive has no friends, only interests." "And the United States?" Lewrie wondered.