atanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This is Slavery in itself, detached
from the ameliorations it may receive from individual slaveholders.
Now a bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues of any
individuals who are but partially corrupted by it, but by those who
work in the spirit and with the implements of its originators. Every
amelioration is a confession of the essential injustice of the thing
ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition; and the humane and
Christian slaveholders owe their safety, and the security of what they
are pleased to call their property, to the vices of the hard and stern
spirits whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock of the
Devil's corporation, they ought not to be severe on those who look out
that they punctually receive their dividends. The true slaveholder feels
that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of
conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he
may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant,
he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must
conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes
in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may
as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty
are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to
stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt
as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor.
And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the
application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of
those who preach,--who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who
are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next
world to all who dare to assert their manhood in this.

If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself
logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the
better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which
defines and protects it,--a legislation which, as expressing the average
sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive
against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation
evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack
of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these
laws, which cannot b