over the island.

In the evening, I had a visit from Mr. C---- and Mr. B----, who officiates
to-morrow at our small island church. The conversation I had with these
gentlemen was sad enough. They seem good and kind and amiable men, and I
have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slaveholders; but to
one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of
their discourse has a morally muffled sound, which one must hear to be
able to conceive. Mr. B---- told me that the people on this plantation not
going to church was the result of a positive order from Mr. K----, who had
peremptorily forbidden their doing so, and of course to have infringed
that order would have been to incur severe corporal chastisement. Bishop
B----, it seems, had advised that there should be periodical preaching on
the plantations, which, said Mr. B----, would have obviated any necessity
for the people of different estates congregating at any given point at
stated times, which might perhaps be objectionable, and at the same time
would meet the reproach which was now beginning to be directed towards the
southern planters as a class, of neglecting the eternal interest of their
dependents. But Mr. K---- had equally objected to this. He seems to have
held religious teaching a mighty dangerous thing--and how right he was! I
have met with conventional cowardice of various shades and shapes in
various societies that I have lived in; but anything like the pervading
timidity of tone which I find here on all subjects, but above all on that
of the condition of the slaves, I have never dreamed of. Truly slavery
begets slavery, and the perpetual state of suspicion and apprehension of
the slaveholders is a very handsome offset, to say the least of it,
against the fetters and the lash of the slaves. Poor people, one and all,
but especially poor oppressors of the oppressed! The attitude of these men
is really pitiable; they profess (perhaps some of them strive to do so
indeed) to consult the best interests of their slaves, and yet shrink back
terrified from the approach of the slightest intellectual or moral
improvement which might modify their degraded and miserable existence. I
do pity these deplorable servants of two masters more than any human
beings I have ever seen--more than their own slaves a thousand times!

To-day is Sunday, and I have been to the little church on the island. It
is the second time since I came down to the south that