ple had failed to sway; that they whom
no feelings of compassion for their fellow-creatures could move to do
their duty, might be touched by a feeling of their own advantage, when
interest coincided with duty. The Slave-mart is now closed, it was said;
surely the stock on hand will be saved by all means, and not wasted when
it can no longer be replaced. The argument was purposely rested on the
low ground of regarding human beings as cattle, or even as inanimate
chattels, and it was conceived that human life would be regarded of as
much value as the wear and tear of beasts, of furniture, or of tools.
Hence it was expected that a better system of treatment would follow,
from the law which closed the African market, and warned every planter
that his stock must be spared by better treatment, and kept up by
breeding, since it no longer could be, as it hitherto had been,
maintained by new supplies.

Two considerations were, in these arguments, kept out of view, both of a
practical nature, and both known to Mr. Stephen,--the cultivation of the
Islands by agents having wholly different interests from their masters,
and the gambling spirit of trading and culture which long habit had
implanted in the West Indian nature. The comforts of the slave depended
infinitely more upon the agent on the spot, than the owner generally
resident in the mother country; and though the interest of the latter
might lead to the saving of negro life, and care for negro comforts, the
agent had no such motives to influence his conduct; besides, it was with
the eyes of this agent that the planter must see, and he gave no
credence to any accounts but his. Now the consequence of cruelty is to
make men at war with its objects. No one but a most irritable person
feels angry with his beast, and even the anger of such a person is of a
moment's duration. But towards an inanimate chattel even the most
irritable of sane men can feel nothing like rage. Why? Because in the
one case there is little, in the other no conflict or resistance at all.
It is otherwise with a slave; he is human, and can disobey--can even
resist. This feeling always rankles in his oppressor's bosom, and makes
the tyrannical superior hate, and the more oppress his slave. The agent
on the spot feels thus, and thus acts; nor can the voice of the owner at
a distance be heard, even if interest, clearly proved, were to prompt
another course. But the chief cause of the evil is the spirit of
specul