s and other accidents,
their riders (mostly slaves) are often thrown and maimed or killed.
Yet these amusements are attended by thousands in every part of the
slave states. The wealth and fashion, the gentlemen and _ladies_ of
the 'highest circles' at the south, throng the race course.

That those who can fasten steel spurs upon the legs of dunghill fowls,
and goad the poor birds to worry and tear each other to death--and
those who can crowd by thousands to _witness_ such barbarity--that
those who can throng the race-course and with keen relish witness the
hot pantings of the life-struggle, the lacerations and fitful spasms
of the muscles, swelling through the crimsoned foam, as the tortured
steeds rush in blood-welterings to the goal--that such, should look
upon the sufferings of their slaves with, indifference is certainly
small wonder.

Perhaps we shall be told that there are thronged race-courses at the
North. True, there are a few, and they are thronged chiefly by
_Southerners_, and 'Northern men with _Southern_ principles,' and
supported mainly by the patronage of slaveholders who summer at the
North. Cock-fighting and horse-racing are "_Southern_ institutions."
The idleness, contempt of labor, dissipation, sensuality, brutality,
cruelty, and meanness, engendered by the habit of making men and women
work without pay, and flogging them if they demur at it, constitutes a
congenial soil out of which cock-fighting and horse-racing are the
spontaneous growth.

Again,--The kind treatment of the slaves is often argued from the
liberal education and enlarged views of slaveholders. The facts and
reasonings of the preceding pages have shown, that 'liberal
education,' despotic habits and ungoverned passions work together with
slight friction. And every day's observation shows that the former is
often a stimulant to the latter.

But the notion so common at the north that the majority of the
slaveholders are persons of education, is entirely erroneous. A _very
few_ slaveholders in each of the slave states have been men of _ripe_
education, to whom our national literature is much indebted. A larger
number may be called _well_ educated--these reside mostly in the
cities and large villages, but a majority of the slaveholders are
ignorant men, thousands of them notoriously so, _mere boors_ unable to
write their names or to read the alphabet.

No one of the slave states has probably so much general education as
Virginia. It