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Show 72 Let it not be said that blows am seldom intlictecl. Be it so. We are glad to know it. But this is not the point. The complaint now urged is not of the amount of the pain inflicted, but of its influence on the character when made the great motive to human lab01·. I t is not the endurance, but the dread of the whip, it is the substitution of this for natu ral and honorable motives to action, which we abhor and condemn. It matters not whether few or many are whipped. A blow given to a single slave is a stripe on the souls of all who see or hear it. It makes all abject, ~ervile . It is not of the wound given to the flesh of which we now complain. Scar the back, and you have done nothing, compared with the wrong done to the soul. You have either stung that soul with infernal passions, with thit·st for re venge; or, what perhaps is more discout ·aging, you have broken and brutalized it. The human spirit has perished under your hands, as far as it can be destroyed by human force. I know it is sometimes said, in reply to these remarks, that all men, as well as slaves, act from necessity; that we have masters in hunger and thirst ; that no man loves labor for itself ; that the pains, which are inflicted on us by the laws of nature, the elements, and seasons, are so many lashes driving us to our daily task. Be it so. Still the two cases are essentially different. 73 The necessity laid on us by natural wants is most kindly in its purpose. It is meant to awaken all our faculties, to give a full play to body and mind, and thus to give us a new consciousness of the powers derived to us from God. ' Ve are, indeed, subjected to a stern nature; we are placed amidst warring elements, scorching heat, withering cold, storms, blights, sickness, death. And what is the design? To call forth our powers, to lay on us great duties, to make us nobler beings. \V e are placed in the midst of a warring nature, not to yield to it, not to be its slaves, but to conquer it, to make it the monument of our skill and strength, to arm ourselves with its elements, its heat, winds, vapors, and mineral treasures, to find, in its painful changes, occasions and incitements to invention, courage, endurance, mutual and endearing dependencies, aud religious trust. The development of human nature, in all its powers and affections, is the end of that hard necessity which is laid on us by nature. Is this one and the same thing with the whip laid on the slave? Still more ; it is the design of nature that by energy, skill, and self-denial we should so far anticipate our wants or accumulate supplies, as to be able to diminish the toil of the hands, and to mix with it more intellectual and liberal occupations. Nature does not lay on us an unchangeable task, but one which we may all lighten by |