the
morals of both blacks and whites by customs like these!

Considering we live in the nineteenth century, it is indeed a strange
state of society where the father sells his child, and the brother puts
his sister up at auction! Yet these things are often practised in our
republic.

Doctor Walsh, in his account of Brazil, tells an anecdote of one of
these fathers, who love their offspring at market price. "For many
years," says he, "this man kept his son in slavery, and maintained the
right to dispose of him, as he would of his mule. Being ill, however,
and near to die, he made his will, left his child his freedom, and
apprised him of it. Some time after he recovered, and having a dispute
with the young man, he threatened to sell him with the rest of his
stock. The son, determined to prevent this, assassinated his father in
a wood, got possession of the will, demanded his freedom, and obtained
it. This circumstance was perfectly well known in the neighborhood,
but no process was instituted against him. He was not chargeable, as
I could hear, with any other delinquency than the horrible one of
murdering his father to obtain his freedom." This forms a fine picture
of the effects of slavery upon human relations![F]

[Footnote F: A short time ago a reverend and very benevolent
gentleman suggested as the subject of a book, _The Beauty of Human
Relations_.--What a bitter jest it would be, to send him this volume,
with the information that I had complied with his request!]

I have more than once heard people, who had just returned from the
South, speak of seeing a number of mulattoes in attendance where they
visited, whose resemblance to the head of the family was too striking
not to be immediately observed. What sort of feeling must be excited in
the minds of those slaves by being constantly exposed to the tyranny or
caprice of their own brothers and sisters, and by the knowledge that
these near relations, will on a division of the estate, have power to
sell them off with the cattle?

But the vices of white men eventually provide a scourge for themselves.
They increase the negro race, but the negro can never increase theirs;
and this is one great reason why the proportion of colored population is
always so large in slaveholding countries. As the ratio increases more
and more every year, the colored people must eventually be the stronger
party; and when this result happens, slavery must either be abolished,
or government