eye of a
master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition,
on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs
of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter
to keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human beings can,
as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other,
I wish he might try it. I'd buy the dog, and work him, with a clear
conscience!"

"I always have supposed," said Miss Ophelia, "that you, all of you,
approved of these things, and thought them _right_--according to
Scripture."

"Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as
determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of
defence;--no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable
ground, _the right of the strongest_; and he says, and I think quite
sensibly, that the American planter is 'only doing, in another form,
what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower
classes;' that is, I take it, _appropriating_ them, body and bone, soul
and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both,--and I think,
at least, _consistently_. He says that there can be no high civilization
without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must,
he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an
animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for
a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing
soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an
aristocrat;--so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat."

"How in the world can the two things be compared?" said Miss Ophelia.
"The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family,
whipped."

"He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.
The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,--the capitalist
can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which
is the worst,--to have one's children sold, or see them starve to death
at home."

"But it's no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn't worse
than some other bad thing."

"I didn't give it for one,--nay, I'll say, besides, that ours is the
more bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a
man up, like a horse,--looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and
trying his paces and then paying down for him,--having s