wn use, and
pocketing the money, and that his father caught me stealing a sack
full of wheat. I admit the fact. I acknowledge the wheat.

And who had a better right to eat of the fruits of my own hard
earnings than myself? Many a long summer's day have I toiled with my
wife and other slaves, cultivating his father's fields, and gathering
in his harvest, under the scorching rays of the sun, without half
enough to eat, or clothes to wear, and at the same time his meat-house
was filled with bacon and bread stuff; his dairy with butter and
cheese; his barn with grain, husbanded by the unrequited toil of the
slaves. And yet if a slave presumed to take a little from the
abundance which he had made by his own sweat and toil, to supply the
demands of nature, to quiet the craving appetite which is sometimes
almost irresistible, it is called stealing by slaveholders.

But I did not regard it as stealing then, I do not regard it as such
now. I hold that a slave has a moral right to eat drink and wear all
that he needs, and that it would be a sin on his part to suffer and
starve in a country where there is a plenty to eat and wear within his
reach. I consider that I had a just right to what I took, because it
was the labor of my own hands. Should I take from a neighbor as a
freeman, in a free country, I should consider myself guilty of doing
wrong before God and man. But was I the slave of Wm. Gatewood to-day,
or any other slaveholder, working without wages, and suffering with
hunger or for clothing, I should not stop to inquire whether my master
would approve of my helping myself to what I needed to eat or wear.
For while the slave is regarded as property, how can he steal from his
master? It is contrary to the very nature of the relation existing
between master and slave, from the fact that there is no law to punish
a slave for theft, but lynch law; and the way they avoid that is to
hide well. For illustration, a slave from the State of Virginia, for
cruel treatment left the State between daylight and dark, being borne
off by one of his master's finest horses, and finally landed in
Canada, where the British laws recognise no such thing as property in
a human being. He was pursued by his owners, who expected to take
advantage of the British law by claiming him as a fugitive from
justice, and as such he was arrested and brought before the court of
Queen's Bench. They swore that he was, at a certain time, the slave of
Mr. A., and