314 FREE COLOURED PEOPLE. 



Being situated on the immediate borders of the first 

 slave States Delaware and Maryland the free coloured 

 people, seen already in great numbers in New Jersey 

 and New York, become in Philadelphia a class as inte 

 resting to the foreigner as the more numerous Germans. 

 A few years ago the more humble and laborious out-of- 

 door employments, as well as those of household labour, 

 fell almost exclusively to their share. They were the 

 porters, the draymen, and carmen of the city. They 

 discharged and loaded the shipping, and performed other 

 menial offices on the quays and rivers. But riots 

 against the coloured people, which had begun in New 

 York, were succeeded by others in Philadelphia, as far 

 back as August 1834 ; and though a few friends did rise 

 up at that time in their defence, yet the fear of the white 

 mob restrained the hands even of men in office from 

 displaying that energy in their behalf which justice not 

 less than humanity demanded. The silent endur 

 ance of petty sufferings has been their lot almost ever 

 since. 



The Irish emigrants are their chief competitors for 

 the humble unskilled employments they were accustomed 

 to follow. By obtaining such labour, the Irish are 

 enabled to indulge in their gregarious habits, to linger 

 about large towns, to unite and act in masses, and so 

 to obtain for their party a sensible influence both of a 

 physical and political kind. But native-born craftsmen 

 also combined against the more skilful of the free coloured 

 people, and, at the period of the riots, attacked not only 

 them, but such as were accused of preferring to employ 

 them. Since that time the pressure against them has 

 been kept up, and continued immigration from Ireland 

 has caused this pressure continually to become 

 stronger. Redress for ill-usage they find difficult to 

 be obtained ; so that, by degrees, they have been com 

 pelled in a great measure to give up their old occu- 



