icacy of his health, to which his slight slender
figure and languid face bear witness, and which was one reason of his
appointment to the eminence of being 'my slave,' would, I should think,
prevent the poor fellow's ever being a very robust or useful working
animal.

On my return from the river I had a long and painful conversation with
Mr. ---- upon the subject of the flogging which had been inflicted on the
wretched Teresa. These discussions are terrible: they throw me into
perfect agonies of distress for the slaves, whose position is utterly
hopeless; for myself, whose intervention in their behalf sometimes seems
to me worse than useless; for Mr. ----, whose share in this horrible
system fills me by turns with indignation and pity. But, after all, what
can he do? how can he help it all? Moreover, born and bred in America,
how should he care or wish to help it? and of course he does not; and I
am in despair that he does not: et voila, it is a happy and hopeful
plight for us both. He maintained that there had been neither hardship
nor injustice in the case of Teresa's flogging; and that, moreover, she
had not been flogged at all for complaining to me, but simply because her
allotted task was not done at the appointed time. Of course this was the
result of her having come to appeal to me, instead of going to her
labour; and as she knew perfectly well the penalty she was incurring, he
maintained that there was neither hardship nor injustice in the case; the
whole thing was a regularly established law, with which all the slaves
were perfectly well acquainted; and this case was no exception whatever.
The circumstance of my being on the island could not of course be allowed
to overthrow the whole system of discipline established to secure the
labour and obedience of the slaves; and if they chose to try experiments
as to that fact, they and I must take the consequences. At the end of the
day, the driver of the gang to which Teresa belongs reported her work
not done, and Mr. O---- ordered him to give her the usual number of
stripes; which order the driver of course obeyed, without knowing how
Teresa had employed her time instead of hoeing. But Mr. O---- knew well
enough, for the wretched woman told me that she had herself told him she
should appeal to me about her weakness and suffering and inability to do
the work exacted from her.

He did not, however, think proper to exceed in her punishment the usual
number of stripes a