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Show 146 DESPOTISl\1 sire of social superiority. A planter will spend some hundreds upon an entertainment, and the next morning will refuse an extra pair of shoes to a lame old negro, who has labored for him all his life. Ask one of these lavish spendthrifts to do an act, not of benevolence merely, but of justice, by setting a slave at liberty, and he will laugh in your face. We hear of many acts of profusion at the south, few acts of generosity. It is not there, that institutions are endowed for purposes of public charity. No associations exist thor(':, or next to none, for charitable purposes. \'Vhen a subscription is to be raised for some object of public ~enevolence, the contribution o~ our southern planters IS extremely scanty. They lavish thousands on their own pleasures, and the companions of those pleasnrcs; they bestow little or nothing upon the sufferings of strangers. Indeed it would be absurd to expect it. They who are not moved by the scene of poverty, degradation and distress, which their own plantations every day present, how can they be affected by the comparatively little miseries of which they only hear, or which they but casually see1 The quantity of money that can be got is a limited sum; the quantity that can be spent is indefinite. Take the southern states throughout, and it is probable that seven slave-masters out of ten, live beyond their income. The labor, the fruits of which would have snfficed to make fifty families comfortable and happy, being engrossed, with the exception of the barest subsistence to the laborers, by a single family, does not suOice to make that single family happy or even comfortable. Improvidence subjects to all the miseries of actual poverty. Men in the possession of large estates are tormented all their lives by sheriffs and duns, and at their death, leave large families brought up in all the luxury 6f wealth, and the helplessness of habitual indolence, penniless and unprovided for, a prey to the bitterest miseries of want. UI. IDLENEss, says the copy book, is the mother of all the vices. If any one doubt the truth of this TN AI\TERICA. 147 ancient and homely maxim, to be convinced of it he need only spend a year or two in the &outh. H~ will find a great many idle people there. Almost a_ll the owners of slaves have hardly any occupatiOn except to amuse themselves. Born and bred to this occupation they become incapable of any other. One would suppose that having so much leisure time they might turn their attention to the study of agri~ culture, an art upon which so wholly depends not their private income only, but the public wealth of the communities to which they belong. But no,-they have no taste for such pursuits, aud they leave the management of their plantations, entirely to their over~ seers. This neglect however ought not to be wholly . ascribed to their disinclination for regular and useful pursuits. lf they go much upon their plantations, so many cruel sights come under their view, they are so harrassed by petitions and complaints, they find themselves so oppressed by the cares of authority, that they hasten to relieve themselves from the bLuden, and to shift it to the shoulders of some case-hardened manager. All despotisms are alike. What happens to an oriental sultan, happens to an occidental slave-master. The :veight of empire presses too heavily upon their clfemmate and feeble necks. Both alike spend in idle luxury all that can be spun god from the forced labor of their subjects, but both alike transfer the task of spunging to a vizier, or an ovcr~eer. 'l'hus freed from all the cares of business, it might be imagined that the wealthy slave-masters of the south. would bc~tow their time and thoughts upon the pnrsmt of knowledge, the cnltivation of literature, and the agreeable arts. \Ve might suppose that they would push .scientific investigations to their ntmost limits, astomsh the world with new discoveries in morals and in physics, or delight it with all tlte graces of poetry, the beauties and sublimities of painting, sculpture, music and architecture. In these expectations we arc totally disappointed. llooks arc a rare commodity at the south; literature |