o is informed, that if he
does not steal, he shall receive rice as an allowance; and if he does
steal, he shall not, a motive is held out which will counteract the
temptation to pilfer." 2nd. Slavery reeks with licentiousness. Another
son of the South says, that the slaveholder's kitchen is a brothel, and
a southern village a Sodom. The elaborate defence of slavery by
Chancellor Harper of South Carolina justifies the heaviest accusations,
that have been brought against it on the score of licentiousness. How
could you blame us for deeply abhorring slavery, even were we to view it
in no other light than that in which the Dews and Harpers and its other
advocates present it? 3rd. Slavery puts the master in the place of God,
and the master's law in the place of God's law! "The negro," says Thomas
S. Clay, "is seldom taught to feel, that he is punished for breaking
God's law! He only knows his master as law-giver and executioner, and
the sole object held up to his view is to make him a more obedient and
profitable slave. He oftener hears that he shall be punished if he
steals, than if he breaks the Sabbath or swears; and thus he sees the
very threatenings of God brought to bear on his master's interests. It
is very manifest to him, that his own good is very far from forming the
primary reason for his chastisement: his master's interests are to be
secured at all events;--God's claims are secondary, or enforced merely
for the purpose of advancing those of his owner. His own benefit is the
residuum after this double distillation of moral motive--a mere
accident." 4th. The laws of nearly all the slave-states forbid the
teaching of the slaves to read. The abundant declarations, that those
laws are without exception, a consequence of the present agitation of
the question of slavery are glaringly false. Many of these laws were
enacted long before this agitation; and some of them long before you and
I were born. Say the three hundred and fifty-three gentlemen of the
District of Abbeville and Edgefield in South Carolina, who, the last
year, broke up a system of oral religious instruction, which the
Methodist Conference of that State had established amongst their slaves:
"Intelligence and slavery have no affinity for each other." And when
those same gentlemen declare, that "verbal and lecturing instruction
will increase a desire with the black population to learn"--that "the
progress and diffusion of knowledge will be a consequence"--and