ngs and external manners of the people are all I wish to
observe upon, and these are unquestionably most injurious. The
same man who beards his wealthier and more educated neighbour
with the bullying boast, "I'm as good as you," turns to his
slave, and knocks him down, if the furrow he has ploughed, or the
log he has felled, please not this stickler for equality. There
is a glaring falsehood on the very surface of such a man's
principles that is revolting. It is not among the higher classes
that the possession of slaves produces the worst effects. Among
the poorer class of landholders, who are often as profoundly
ignorant as the negroes they own, the effect of this plenary
power over males and females is most demoralising; and the kind
of coarse, not to say brutal, authority which is exercised,
furnishes the most disgusting moral spectacle I ever witnessed.
In all ranks, however, it appeared to me that the greatest and
best feelings of the human heart were paralyzed by the relative
positions of slave and owner. The characters, the hearts of
children, are irretrievably injured by it. In Virginia we
boarded for some time in a family consisting of a widow and her
four daughters, and I there witnessed a scene strongly indicative
of the effect I have mentioned. A young female slave, about
eight years of age, had found on the shelf of a cupboard a
biscuit, temptingly buttered, of which she had eaten a
considerable portion before she was observed. The butter had
been copiously sprinkled with arsenic for the destruction of
rats, and had been thus most incautiously placed by one of the
young ladies of the family. As soon as the circumstance was
known, the lady of the house came to consult me as to what had
best be done for the poor child; I immediately mixed a large cup
of mustard and water (the most rapid of all emetics) and got the
little girl to swallow it. The desired effect was instantly
produced, but the poor child, partly from nausea, and partly from
the terror of hearing her death proclaimed by half a dozen voices
round her, trembled so violently that I thought she would fall.
I sat down in the court where we were standing, and, as a matter
of course, took the little sufferer in my lap. I observed a
general titter among the white members of the family, while the
black stood aloof, and looked stupified. The youngest of the
family, a little girl about the age of the young slave, after
gazing at me for a few m