er for those States, and for the country in general, if
slavery had never been introduced.

Miss Martineau, in her most admirable little book on Demerara, says:
"Labor is the product of mind as much as of body; and to secure that
product, we must sway the mind by the natural means--by motives.
Laboring against self-interest is what nobody ought to expect of white
men--much less of slaves. Of course every man, woman and child, would
rather play for nothing than work for nothing.

"It is the mind, which gives sight to the eye, and hearing to the ear,
and strength to the limbs; and the mind cannot be purchased. Where a
man is allowed the possession of himself, the purchaser of his labor is
benefitted by the vigor of his mind through the service of his limbs:
where man is made the possession of another, the possessor loses at once
and for ever all that is most valuable in that for which he has paid the
price of crime. He becomes the owner of that which only differs from an
idiot in being less easily drilled into habits, and more capable of
effectual revenge.

"Cattle are fixed capital, and so are slaves: But slaves differ from
cattle on the one hand, in yielding (from internal opposition) a less
return for their maintenance; and from free laborers on the other hand,
in not being acted upon by the inducements which stimulate production as
an effort of mind as well as of body. In all three cases the labor is
purchased. In free laborers and cattle, all the faculties work together,
and to advantage; in the slave they are opposed; and therefore he is,
so far as the amount of labor is concerned, the least valuable of the
three. The negroes _can_ invent and improve--witness their ingenuity in
their dwellings, and their skill in certain of their sports; but their
masters will never possess their faculties, though they have purchased
their limbs. Our true policy would be to divide the work of the slave
between the ox and the hired laborer; we should get more out of the
sinews of the one and the soul of the other, than the produce of double
the number of slaves."

As a matter of humanity, let it be remembered that men having more
_reason_ than brutes, must be treated with much greater severity, in
order to keep them in a state of abject submission.

It seems unnecessary to say that what is unjust and unmerciful, can
never be expedient; yet men often write, talk, and act, as if they
either forgot this truth, or doubted it. There