ut is that
system universal? Those who would answer that question truthfully need
not travel to the Southern States for documentary evidence. Is any human
being fit to be trusted with absolute power over one of his
fellow-creatures, however deeply his public reputation and his balance
at the banker's may be benefited by the most moderate kindness to them?
If every man were a Howard or a Wilberforce, and every woman a Fry or a
Nightingale, the truth would be ever the same, and they would be the
first to acknowledge it.--Man is unfit for irresponsible power.

Now the only bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be
arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that
knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to
its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most
wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is
indifferent to public opinion. No Southerner can be affronted, if I say
that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than his
fellow-man in the Northern States, in France, or in England; and yet how
constantly do we find citizens of those communities evincing
unrestrained passions in the most brutal acts, and that with the
knowledge that the law is hanging over their heads, and that their
victims can give evidence against them; whereas, in the Slave States,
provided the eye of a white man is excluded, there is scarce a limit to
the torture which a savage monster may inflict upon the helpless slave,
whose word cannot be received in evidence. It is as absurd to judge of
the condition of the slave by visiting an amiable planter and his lady,
as it would be to judge of the clothing, feeding, and comfort of our
labouring population by calling at the town-house of the Duke of
Well-to-do and carefully noting the worthy who fills an arm-chair like a
sentry-box, and is yclept the porter. Look at him, with his hair
powdered and fattened down to the head; behold him as the bell rings,
using his arms as levers to force his rotundity out of its case; then
observe the pedestals on which he endeavours to walk; one might imagine
he had been tapped for the dropsy half-a-dozen times, and that all the
water had run into the calves of his legs. Is that a type of the poorer
classes?

Where, then, are we to look for true data on which to form an opinion of
the treatment of the slave?--Simply by studying human nature and
weighing human