been more than one hundred murders, or an average of two a
month, while in no instance had the perpetrator been executed." Reading
lately of a husband at the North throwing oil of vitriol from a bottle,
filled for the purpose, over his wife's face and neck, and of a Northern
clergyman feeding his young wife, as she sat on his knee, with apple on
which he had sprinkled arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were
not about the same everywhere. The theoretical right of a master, in
certain cases, to put his slave to death, without judge or jury, is
controlled by the self-interest of the owner who, of course, does not
recklessly destroy his own property. The slave-codes are no just
exponent of the actual state of things in slavery. For example,--by law
a master may not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week.
This has a barbarous look. But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of
the land you certainly would not be reminded of the "peck of corn,"
except by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below which if
an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be
prosecuted. Hence the "peck of corn." By the will of an eminent citizen
at the North, establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the
pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market value, at the
time, of a bushel of wheat. This is a fair standard for the unit of
measure.

In arguing with one who should insist that the abuses in slavery are a
reason for breaking up the institution in this country, I should feel
justified in maintaining that there are as many instances of a happy
relation between, master and servant in the Southern country as there
are happy marriages in the same number of households anywhere. Let there
be four millions of an inferior, dependent race mixed up with a superior
race, anywhere on earth, and of course, while human nature is what it
is, there will be hardships, wrong-doings, oppressions, and barbarisms.
At the North, we get scraps of anguish in the newspapers relating to
hardships at the South; and many pore upon them till they make
themselves half-crazed. All the circumstances serving to qualify the
narrative are sometimes withheld, and the stories are told with dramatic
art. There is sorrow enough everywhere to furnish material for such kind
of writing, especially to those who make it their calling, or find it
for their interest, to publish it. But the goings-on of life, at the
South, w