Leading article: Let my people go
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference."In the small, mean dressing room at the Carrington Training Ground, Ronaldo sat chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight heavier than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his sky. Moon and star, all had passed by him. Madrid home, and indulgent owners; with all its refinements and splendours – all gone! and in place thereof, what remains?
It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that the footballer, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined family, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a place, not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal – just as a chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery.
The great difference is that the table and chair cannot feel, and the footballer can; for even a legal enactment that he shall be 'taken, reputed, adjudged in law, to be a chattel personal', cannot blot out his soul, with its own private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires."
With acknowledgments to Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments