ourishes that have been made about "cart whips," etc., when I
say flogging is not the most degrading punishment in the world. It may
be so to a white man in most countries, but how is it to the white boy?
That necessary coadjutor of the schoolmaster, the "birch," is never
thought to have rendered infamous the unfortunate victim of pedagogue
ire; nor did Solomon in his wisdom dream that he was counseling parents
to debase their offspring, when he exhorted them not to spoil the child
by sparing the rod. Pardon me for recurring to the now exploded ethics
of the Bible. Custom, which, you will perhaps agree, makes most things
in this world good or evil, has removed all infamy from the punishment
of the lash to the slave. Your blood boils at the recital of stripes
inflicted on a man; and you think you should be frenzied to see your own
child flogged. Yet see how completely this is ideal, arising from the
fashions of society. You doubtless submitted to the rod yourself, in
other years, when the smart was perhaps as severe as it would be now;
and you have never been guilty of the folly of revenging yourself on the
Preceptor, who, in the plenitude of his "irresponsible power," thought
proper to chastise your son. So it is with the negro, and the negro
father.

As to chains and irons, they are rarely used; never, I believe, except
in cases of running away. You will admit that if we pretend to own
slaves, they must not be permitted to abscond whenever they see fit; and
that if nothing else will prevent it, these means must be resorted to.
See the inhumanity necessarily arising from slavery, you will exclaim.
Are such restraints imposed on no other class of people, giving no more
offense? Look to your army and navy. If your seamen, impressed from
their peaceful occupations, and your soldiers, recruited at the
gin-shops--both of them as much kidnapped as the most unsuspecting
victim of the slave trade, and doomed to a far more wretched fate--if
these men manifest a propensity to desert, the heaviest manacles are
their mildest punishment. It is most commonly death, after summary
trial. But armies and navies, you say, are indispensable, and must be
kept up at every sacrifice. I answer, that they are no more
indispensable than slavery is to us--and to _you_; for you have enough
of it in your country, though the form and name differ from ours.

Depend upon it that many things, and in regard to our slaves, most
things which appear revol