ove it a system of monstrous cruelty,
the fact that FEAR is the only motive with which the slave is plied
during his whole existence, would be sufficient to brand it with
execration as the grand tormentor of man. The slave's _susceptibility
of pain_ is the sole fulcrum on which slavery works the lever that
moves him. In this it plants all its stings; here it sinks its hot
irons; cuts its deep gashes; flings its burning embers, and dashes its
boiling brine and liquid fire: into this it strikes its cold flesh
hooks, grappling irons, and instruments of nameless torture; and by it
drags him shrieking to the end of his pilgrimage. The fact that the
master inflicts pain upon the slave not merely as an _end_ to gratify
passion, but constantly as a _means_ of extorting labor, is enough of
itself to show that the system of slavery is unmixed cruelty.

3. That the slaves must suffer frequent and terrible inflictions,
follows inevitably from the _character of those who direct their
labor_. Whatever may be the character of the slaveholders themselves,
all agree that the overseers are, as a class, most abandoned, brutal,
and desperate men. This is so well known and believed that any
testimony to prove it seems needless. The testimony of Mr. WIRT, late
Attorney General of the United States, a Virginian and a slaveholder,
is as follows. In his life of Patrick Henry, p. 36, speaking of the
different classes of society in Virginia, he says,--"Last and lowest a
feculum, of beings called 'overseers'--_the most abject, degraded,
unprincipled race_, always cap in hand to the dons who employ them,
and furnishing materials for the exercise of their _pride, insolence,
and spirit of domination_."

Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, of Centreville, New-York, who has resided some
years at the south, says of overseers--

"It need hardly be added that overseers are in general ignorant,
_unprincipled and cruel_, and in such low repute that they are not
permitted to come to the tables of their employers; yet they have the
constant control of all the human cattle that belong to the master.

"These men are continually advancing from their low station to the
higher one of masters. These changes bring into the possession of
power a class of men of whose mental and moral qualities I have
already spoken."

Rev. HORACE MOULTON, Marlboro', Massachusetts, who lived in Georgia
several years, says of them,--

"The overseers are _generally loose in their morals_; it is