he testimony of Mr. WIRT, late
Attorney General of the United States, a Virginian and a slaveholder,
is as follows. In his life of Patrick Henry, p. 36, speaking of the
different classes of society in Virginia, he says,--"Last and lowest a
feculum, of beings called 'overseers'--_the most abject, degraded,
unprincipled race_, always cap in hand to the dons who employ them,
and furnishing materials for the exercise of their _pride, insolence,
and spirit of domination_."

Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, of Centreville, New-York, who has resided some
years at the south, says of overseers--

"It need hardly be added that overseers are in general ignorant,
_unprincipled and cruel_, and in such low repute that they are not
permitted to come to the tables of their employers; yet they have the
constant control of all the human cattle that belong to the master.

"These men are continually advancing from their low station to the
higher one of masters. These changes bring into the possession of
power a class of men of whose mental and moral qualities I have
already spoken."

Rev. HORACE MOULTON, Marlboro', Massachusetts, who lived in Georgia
several years, says of them,--

"The overseers are _generally loose in their morals_; it is the object
of masters to employ those whom they think will get the most work out
of their hands,--hence those who _whip and torment the slaves the
most_ are in many instances called the best overseers. The masters
think those whom the slaves fear the most are the best. Quite a
portion of the masters employ their own slaves as overseers, or rather
they are called drivers; these are more subject to the will of the
masters than the white overseers are; some of them are as lordly as an
Austrian prince, and sometimes more cruel even than the whites."

That the overseers are, as a body, sensual, brutal, and violent men is
_proverbial_. The tender mercies of such men _must be cruel_.

4. The _ownership_ of human beings necessarily presupposes an utter
disregard of their happiness. He who assumes it monopolizes their
_whole capital_, leaves them no stock on which to trade, and out of
which to _make_ happiness. Whatever is the master's gain is the
slave's loss, a loss wrested from him by the master, for the express
purpose of making it _his own gain_; this is the master's constant
employment--forcing the slave to toil--violently wringing from him
all he has and all he gets, and using it as his own;--like the vile
bi