r," and shelter from the
weather--with the base provision that satisfies the brutes, is (say the
abolitionists) enough to render superfluous all other arguments for the
_instant_ abandonment of a system whose appropriate work is such
infinite wrong.

_Denying_ that "the slaves are contented and happy," the abolitionists
have argued, that, from the structure of his moral nature--the laws of
his mind--man cannot be happy in the fact, that he is _enslaved_. True,
he may be happy in slavery, but it is not slavery that makes him so--it
is virtue and faith, elevating him above the afflictions of his lot. The
slave has a will, leading him to seek those things which the Author of
his nature has made conducive to its happiness. In these things, the
will of the master comes in collision with his will. The slave desires
to receive the rewards of his own labor; the power of the master wrests
them from him. The slave desires to possess his wife, to whom God has
joined him, in affection, to have the superintendence, and enjoy the
services, of the children whom God has confided to him as a parent to
train them, by the habits of the filial relation, for the yet higher
relation that they may sustain to him as their heavenly Father. But here
he is met by the opposing will of the master, pressing _his_ claims with
irresistible power. The ties that heaven has sanctioned and blessed--of
husband and wife, of parent and child--are all sundered in a moment by
the master, at the prompting of avarice or luxury or lust; and there is
none that can stay his ruthless hand, or say unto him, "What doest
thou?" The slave thirsts for the pleasures of refined and elevated
intellect--the master denies to him the humblest literary acquisition.
The slave pants to know something of that still higher nature that he
feels burning within him--of his present state, his future destiny, of
the Being who made him, to whose judgment-seat he is going. The master's
interests cry, "No!" "Such knowledge is too wonderful for you; it is
high, you cannot attain unto it." To predicate _happiness_ of a class of
beings, placed in circumstances where their will is everlastingly
defeated by an irresistible power--the abolitionists say, is to prove
them destitute of the sympathies of _our_ nature--not _human_. It is to
declare with the Atheist, that man is independent of the goodness of his
Creator for his enjoyments--that human happiness calls not for any of
the appliances of h