h, in you, all hope of bettering your condition, by vowing that
you shall die his slave, but though he can coolly torture your
feelings, he is too compassionate to lacerate your back--he can break
your heart, but he is very tender of your skin. He can strip you of
all protection and thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are
exposed to the _weather_, half clad and half sheltered, how yearn his
tender bowels! What! slaveholders talk of treating men well, and yet
not only rob them of all they get, and as fast as they get it, but rob
them of _themselves_, also; their very hands and feet, all their
muscles, and limbs, and senses, their bodies and minds, their time and
liberty and earnings, their free speech and rights of conscience,
their right to acquire knowledge, and property, and reputation;--and
yet they, who plunder them of all these, would fain make us believe
that their soft hearts ooze out so lovingly toward their slaves that
they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too
hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let their
dear stomachs get empty.

But there is no end to these absurdities. Are slaveholders dunces, or
do they take all the rest of the world to be, that they think to
bandage our eyes with such thin gauzes? Protesting their kind regard
for those whom they hourly plunder of all they have and all they get!
What! when they have seized their victims, and annihilated all their
_rights_, still claim to be the special guardians of their
_happiness_! Plunderers of their liberty, yet the careful suppliers of
their wants? Robbers of their earnings, yet watchful sentinels round
their interests, and kind providers for their comfort? Filching all
their time, yet granting generous donations for rest and sleep?
Stealing the use of their muscles, yet thoughtful of their ease?
Putting them under _drivers_, yet careful that they are not
hard-pushed? Too humane forsooth to stint the stomachs of their
slaves, yet force their _minds_ to starve, and brandish over them
pains and penalties, if they dare to reach forth for the smallest
crumb of knowledge, even a letter of the alphabet!

It is no marvel that slaveholders are always talking of their _kind
treatment_ of their slaves. The only marvel is, that men of sense can
be gulled by such professions. Despots always insist that they are
merciful. The greatest tyrants that ever dripped with blood have
assumed the titles of "most gra