and passions do hourly get the better of
love of money, what protection does the slave find in his master's
_interest_, against the sweep of his passions and appetites? Besides,
a master can inflict upon his slave horrible cruelties without
perceptibly injuring his health, or taking time from his labor, or
lessening his value as property. Blows with a small stick give more
acute pain, than with a large one. A club bruises, and benumbs the
nerves, while a switch, neither breaking nor bruising the flesh,
instead of blunting the sense of feeling, wakes up and stings to
torture all the susceptibilities of pain. By this kind of infliction,
more actual cruelty can be perpetrated in the giving of pain at the
instant, than by the most horrible bruisings and lacerations; and
that, too, with little comparative hazard to the slave's health, or to
his value as property, and without loss of time from labor. Even
giving to the objection all the force claimed for it, what protection
is it to the slave? It _professes_ to shield the slave from such
treatment alone, as would either lay him aside from labor, or injure
his health, and thus lessen his value as a working animal, making him
a _damaged article_ in the market. Now, is nothing _bad treatment_ of
a human being except that which produces these effects? Does the fact
that a man's constitution is not actually shattered, and his life
shortened by his treatment, prove that he is treated well? Is no
treatment cruel except what sprains muscles, or cuts sinews, or bursts
blood vessels, or breaks bones, and thus lessens a man's value as a
working animal?

A slave may get blows and kicks every hour in the day, without having
his constitution broken, or without suffering sensibly in his health,
or flesh, or appetite, or power to labor. Therefore, beaten and kicked
as he is, he must be treated _well_, according to the objector, since
the master's _interest_ does not suffer thereby.

Finally, the objector virtually maintains that all possible privations
and inflictions suffered by slaves, that do not actually cripple their
power to labor, and make them 'damaged merchandize,' are to be set
down as 'good treatment,' and that nothing is _bad_ treatment except
what produces these effects.

Thus we see that even if the slave were effectually shielded from all
those inflictions, which, by lessening his value as property, would
injure the interests of his master, he would still nave no protectio