sooner we get rid of negro novels and village
gossip, and neighborhood slander, and busy-bodies, and idlers, and
loafers, and liars, and the whole crew, who have nothing else to do,
but to meddle with people's business, the better. God speed the day
when we shall all find better employment. But to return to the evils
of slavery.

Slavery is not an evil to those involved in it, under all
circumstances. There are circumstances, under which it may be a
blessing to the slave--and a blessing it would have proved to the
entire slave population in this country, if both masters and servants
had complied with the requisitions of the Bible. None are so much to
blame for the evils and hardships of slavery as the abolition party.
No! none! Not the slaveholders themselves. They have incited the
slaves to deeds for which they have been cruelly punished. In
consequence of their unwarrantable interference, slaves that were,
previous to such interference, pious, contented and happy, have become
discontented, impertinent and perverse, and have been too often
cruelly punished for their dereliction of duty. Ah! well do I
recollect the time when the months of Southern clergyman were closed,
when rigid laws were enacted--when so many restrictions were thrown
around slaveholders. I then saw, and deplored the evil, and hoped, but
hoped in vain, that Northern men would desist from a procedure, so
fraught with mischief to masters and servants--so contrary to the laws
of God--so opposed to every principle of humanity, justice, truth and
righteousness. I must refer the reader to chapter three, and return to
the proposition under investigation, that slavery is not, an evil
under all circumstances.

The peculiar condition of an individual may be such, that he is fit
for nothing but a slave. He maybe physically, mentally, and morally
disqualified for any other condition or station in life. To such an
individual slavery is not necessarily an evil; but, on the contrary,
to him it may be a blessing and not a curse. He may be utterly
incapable of making provision for his own wants. Servitude may be the
only condition or station in life, in which he could be provided for,
and enjoy happiness. The disabilities of such an individual is a
misfortune; or, as it is generally termed, a curse, an evil; but the
evil consists in the incompetence of the individual, and not in that
condition or station in life, to which his incompetency subjects him.
It is, (to u