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Show 36 Slavery is an evil. The slave feels it to be so. But in what does he think the evil consists ! In its physical, not its moral depri,•ations. Of these, the majority know nothing, and no more feel the want of them than the brute animals with whom they labor. The freedom that they seek for is relaxation from toil, from restraint, from industry. The liberty they desire is the liberty of sensual indulgences - to eat, drink, dance, sing, and sleep, in idleness and ease. We see this in the free negroes who have once been slaves. It is the peculiarity of their character. They do indeed \rork, because freedom alone will not support them ; but they work no more than to keep soul and body together, or to get the means of gratifying their appetites for pleasure ; and through the whole slave country they are careless, thoughtless, improvident, idle, and most generally vicious, vile, indigent and miserable . It was for no high moral objects that the insurrection it St. Domingo was excited. It is for no moral improvement that the liberated slaves of that garden of the \Vest Indies have made it comparatively a desert. It is for no high and honorable objects that the English slaves enjoy their emancipation. The keeper of the J\Ienagarie who has taken from their native forests the lordly Lion and the reasoning Elephant, keeps them in subjection by his iron bars and chain of steel, and fearl essly with the whip in one hand puts the other into their mouths, or lays himself between their feet. Let him give them the prospect of liberty. L et him take them upon the common and tic them by a thread to the great tree and see then if l1e can practice his gambols with impunity. I hold in as high estimation as Dr. C. the grandeur of our common nature. I know as well as he does its aspiring and heaven-directed character. Slavery is not its natural condition. It can be kept there by nothing but oppressive, heavy immoveable physical force. Relax the cords and they will be broken. Loosen the bars and the imprisoned victim escapes. He escapes as a ferocious wild beast from the toils of the hunter. He flies as a half tamed savage on his enemy. 37 He springs with all the violence of excited passion, with all the madness of insatiate vengeance, with the fury of stern, malignant, deep seated and ferocious revenge upon all that now are deemed his foes. The security of the master and the slave can exist only by superiority of power. The change to be wrought in the heart of the slave to make him a tame and safe freemen is not less in amount and kind than is to be produced in the heart of the white man, to persuade him into the generosity of giving away his property and beggaring himself. The slave thinks he has been injured, long, deeply, wantonly injured, and the very restoration of his freedom as his right is an acknowledgment of the fact. And is it to be believed he will not seek his revenge ! Nothing but the want of power now restrains him. Has he remembrance of the stripes of his vassalage ! Does he recollect that his naked limbs have been examined in the market of human flesh ! Does he '' see the scar of the lash on the back of his wife! Docs he feel that his home has been desecrated, that the tenderest relations, imended by God equally for all, and intended to be the chief springs of happiness and virtue have been sponed with wantonly and cruelly /" And will not a deep and dP.adly revenge be the first, strongest and most constant sentiment of his heart. The slave has been too deeply injUI·ed to be a safe citizen. It may be said with truth that one wrong is no excuse for another. But we are addressing motives to the slave-holder to liberate his slaves, and he tells you what nobody doubts, that the moment he gives them the opportunity they will cut his throat. He may settle the moral e.ccount as he can with his conscience, but it is the extremity of folly to suppose that with such an apprehension he will ever make the experiment. There has been no insurrection among the slaves in which, however temporary their power, it has not been exerted with dreadful cruelty and acts horrible to humanity. To implant |