ting at a distance, and to slight reflection,
would, on a nearer view and impartial comparison with the customs and
conduct of the rest of mankind, strike you in a very different light.
Remember that on our estates we dispense with the whole machinery of
public police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and
execute the sentences, in thousands of cases, which in other countries
would go into the courts. Hence, most of the acts of our alleged
cruelty, which have any foundation in truth. Whether our patriarchal
mode of administering justice is less humane than the Assizes, can only
be determined by careful inquiry and comparison. But this is never done
by the abolitionists. All our punishments are the outrages of
"irresponsible power." If a man steals a pig in England, he is
transported--torn from wife, children, parents, and sent to the
antipodes, infamous, and an outcast forever, though probably he took
from the superabundance of his neighbor to save the lives of his
famishing little ones. If one of our well fed negroes, merely for the
sake of fresh meat, steals a pig, he gets perhaps forty stripes. If one
of your cottagers breaks into another's house, he is hung for burglary.
If a slave does the same here, a few lashes, or it may be, a few hours
in the stocks, settles the matter. Are our courts or yours the most
humane? If slavery were not in question, you would doubtless say ours is
mistaken lenity. Perhaps it often is; and slaves too lightly dealt with
sometimes grow daring. Occasionally, though rarely, and almost always in
consequence of excessive indulgence, an individual rebels. This is the
highest crime he can commit. It is treason. It strikes at the root of
our whole system. His life is justly forfeited, though it is never
intentionally taken, unless after trial in our public courts. Sometimes,
however, in capturing, or in self-defense, he is unfortunately killed. A
legal investigation always follows. But, terminate as it may, the
abolitionists raise a hue and cry, and another "shocking case" is held
up to the indignation of the world by tender-hearted male and female
philanthropists, who would have thought all right had the master's
throat been cut, and would have triumphed in it.

I cannot go into a detailed comparison between the penalties inflicted
on a slave in our patriarchal courts, and those of the Courts of
Sessions, to which freemen are sentenced in all civilized nations; but I
know well