and his wife and children to be sold. There is a
general interest felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in
the same neighborhood. This is for the interest of the owners; it
promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the servants. Cases of hardship
are the exceptions to the general rule in disposing of servants.
Admitting all that can properly be said of such cases, and of the
various other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What is to
be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of the bondmen, to
cultivate a kind and generous disposition toward them, and to prepare
them, as far and as fast as the good of all concerned will warrant, for
any other condition which Providence may in time point out? My belief
is, that if you take four millions of laboring people anywhere under the
sun, and put down in separate columns the good and the evil in their
conditions, the balance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of
their wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern slaves than
elsewhere. But, still, this leaves them slaves. My reply to myself, when
I say this, is, They were so in their own land; or, they were in a
condition of fearful degradation and misery. Their God is their judge;
we have not increased their degradation; woe to us if we add needless
sorrows to their lot. But as for thrusting them up to an ideal state of
elevation, before their time and ours has come, I am not disposed to aid
in it. Moreover, Southern Christians are doing all that we would do if
in their place; I will not affect to be more humane or just than they;
this is our great error.

"Here," said I, "is another view of the subject":

"In the sale of slaves (in America) nothing but labor is
transferred. It passes from master to master, as it passes, in
countries of hired labor, from employer to employer. The mode in
which the transfer is made differs in the two systems of labor. The
slave-laborer is never compelled to hunt for work and starve till he
finds it. Is this an evil to the laborer? Would it be thought an
evil, by the hired man in Europe, that his employer should be
obliged, by-law, to find him another employer before dismissing him
from service?

"But, it is said, the slave is too much exposed to the master's
abuse of power; he is liable to wrongs without a remedy; and, so
far, his condition is below that of the hired laborer.

"If this be true at