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Show 22 NOTES ON Aunt Chloe evidently understands Quashy's capabilities. She sees clearly his inferiority to his white brother, and she spe:1ks out what she sees. 'Vitncss her observation on "Mas'r George," (vol. ii. p. 41): "How easy white folks a!' us does things!" And again, (vol. ii. p. 58): "I wouldn't hear to Missis givin' lessons nor nothin'. ~tfas'r's quite right in dat ar; 'twouldn't do, no ways. I hope npnc our family ever be brought to dat ar, while I's got hands." Witness also the way she addresses her own sable offspring, (vol. i. p. 42): "Here you Mose and Pete! get out de way, you niggcrs !"-a mode of address, not, by any means, peculiar to her; for we have it again, with a.n additional epithet, in Andy's address to black Sam, (vol. i. p. 71): "'So she would,' said Andy; 'but can't ye sec through a ladder, yc black nigger?'" And any one who is familiar with the negroes at the South, knows that their standing compellation of disparagement is, "you nigger !" and, when they would be particularly disparaging, "you black nigger;'' showing thereby their own sense of their inferiority to the whites, and of their adaptcdncss to the work that is put upon them. And in this I have no doubt that they are in the right of it. Ccrta,in it is that ~here is a good deal of "hard," and "dirty," and Hdisngreeable" work to be done, and that somebody must do it· and certain it is, too, that there is a good de~l of work tl~at is neither hard, nor dirty, nor disagreeable, and that sornebbdy must do it. Now it so happens that the work that is hard, and dirty, and disagreeable, requires little skill and less brains; and it so happens, too, (unfortunately for Quashy,) that.the :vork which is neither hard, nor dirty, nor disa.greeable, rcqmres a. modiCum of both. Now, thim, comes the question: Shall Quashy be set: or rather, set himsclf1 to do the work which requires brams, and for which he has no brains, and Quashy's master have UNCLE '.rOM'S CADI.N. 23 to throw away ltis brains upon the work that has no need of brains, and which Quashy could do just as well as he, and, it may be, a little better? But ' perhaps it may be said, If Quashy has no brains, then go to work and giYC him brains. Well, this is just what we aro.loing, and have been doing for the last two liuntlred years, and with encouraging indications, too, of eventual success. Quashy is already, as I said above, (Note 2,) undeniably several generations in advance of his black brother in Africa, but he is, no less undeniably, several generations behfn.d his white brother in Europe and America; and, therefore, he must not think to put himself on a level with l1im, but must e'en content himself with being in process of melioration, however slow the process be. Even should it take four hundred years in all, as did the disciplin~ ing of the Israelites in Egypt, it will be time well spent. 1\Icanwhile, so long as so many of Quasby's white brethren in America, and so many more in Europe, have to do work, to the full, as hard, and as dirty, and as disagreeable, as Quashy himself, I do not sec that Quashy's case calls for any peculiar sympathy, so far as the ltm·dness, and tho clh·tiness, and tl10 disagreeableness of his work is concerned; and therefore, all about the said hardness, and dirtiness, uml disagreeableness, in the paragraph aforesaid, may go for so much rhetoric, thrown in for effect upon the undis~ crimiuating, who, unhappily, in those cases where the sympathies are enlisted, form the majority even of educated people. So much for the hardness, and the dirtiness, and the disugrceableness, of Quashy's work; ~t least, for the pre~ sent; I sludl have more to say on it, by and by, when we come to the subject of the European labouring classes. But there is another assertion in the paragraph quoted at the commcnccmcut of thi& note, that requires notice: |