and therefore involved in ignorance, vice, and depravity. In
anticipating some of the good, we also anticipate a portion of the evil
of civilization. But we have it in a mitigated form. The want and the
misery are unknown; the ignorance is less a misfortune, because the
being is not the guardian of himself, and partly on account of that
involuntary ignorance, the vice is less vice--less hurtful to man, and
less displeasing to God.

There is something in this word _slavery_ which seems to partake of the
qualities of the insane root, and distempers the minds of men. That
which would be true in relation to one predicament, they misapply to
another, to which it has no application at all. Some of the virtues of a
freeman would be the vices of slaves. To submit to a blow, would be
degrading to a freeman, because he is the protector of himself. It is
not degrading to a slave--neither is it to a priest or woman. And is it
a misfortune that it should be so? The freeman of other countries is
compelled to submit to indignities hardly more endurable than
blows--indignities to make the sensitive feelings shrink, and the proud
heart swell; and this very name of freeman gives them double rancor. If
when a man is born in Europe, it were certainly foreseen that he was
destined to a life of painful labor--to obscurity, contempt, and
privation--would it not be mercy that he should be reared in ignorance
and apathy, and trained to the endurance of the evils he must encounter?
It is not certainly foreseen as to any individual, but it is foreseen as
to the great mass of those born of the laboring poor; and it is for the
mass, not for the exception, that the institutions of society are to
provide. Is it not better that the character and intellect of the
individual should be suited to the station which he is to occupy? Would
you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by giving him a cultivated
understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere laborer has the
pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a freeman, he is unfitted
for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are
sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better
that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform
them? If there were infallible marks by which individuals of inferior
intellect, and inferior character, could be selected at their
birth--would not the interests of society be served, and would not some
sort of f