m as part of the live stock, he resembled them also in
the exemption which he enjoyed from all cares concerning his own
maintenance and that of his family. The feudal slaves, indeed, were
subject to none of those vicissitudes which brought so many of the
proudest and most powerful barons to a disastrous end. They had nothing
to lose, and they had liberty to hope for; frequently as the reward of
their own faithful services, and not seldom from the piety or kindness of
their lords. This was a steady hope depending so little upon contingency
that it excited no disquietude or restlessness. They were therefore in
general satisfied with the lot to which they were born, as the
Greenlander is with his climate, the Bedouin with his deserts, and the
Hottentot and the Calmuck with their filthy and odious customs; and going
on in their regular and unvaried course of duty generation after
generation, they were content.

_Montesinos_.--"Fish, fish, are you in your duty?" said the young lady in
the Arabian tales, who came out of the kitchen wall clad in flowered
satin, and with a rod in her hand. The fish lifted up their heads and
replied, "Yes, yes; if you reckon, we reckon; if you pay your debts we
pay ours; if you fly we overcome, and are content." The fish who were
thus content, and in their duty, had been gutted, and were in the frying-
pan. I do not seek, however, to escape from the force of your argument
by catching at the words. On the other hand, I am sure it is not your
intention to represent slavery otherwise than as an evil, under any
modification.

_Sir Thomas More_.--That which is a great evil in itself become
relatively a good when it prevents or removes a greater evil; for
instance, loss of a limb when life is preserved by the sacrifice, or the
acute pain of a remedy by which a chronic disease is cured. Such was
slavery in its origin: a commutation for death, gladly accepted as mercy
under the arm of a conqueror in battle, or as the mitigation of a
judicial sentence. But it led immediately to nefarious abuses; and the
earliest records which tell us of its existence show us also that men
were kidnapped for sale. With the principles of Christianity, the
principles of religious philosophy--the only true policy, to which
mankind must come at last, by which alone all the remediable ills of
humanity are to be remedied, and for which you are taught to pray when
you entreat that your Father's kingdom may come--with