to whose
exemplary conduct and character there is but one concurrent testimony all
over the plantation. No; he had no special complaint to bring against the
lettered members of his subject community, but he spoke by anticipation.
Every step they take towards intelligence and enlightenment lessens the
probability of their acquiescing in their condition. Their condition is
not to be changed--ergo, they had better not learn to read; a very
succinct and satisfactory argument as far as it goes, no doubt, and one to
which I had not a word to reply, at any rate, to Mr. O----, as I did not
feel called upon to discuss the abstract justice or equity of the matter
with him; indeed he, to a certain degree, gave up that part of the
position, starting with 'I don't say whether it's right or wrong;' and in
all conversations that I have had with the southerners upon these
subjects, whether out of civility to what may be supposed to be an
Englishwoman's prejudices, or a forlorn respect to their own convictions,
the question of the fundamental wrong of slavery is generally admitted, or
at any rate certainly never denied. That part of the subject is summarily
dismissed, and all its other aspects vindicated, excused, and even lauded,
with untiring eloquence. Of course, of the abstract question I could judge
before I came here, but I confess I had not the remotest idea how
absolutely my observation of every detail of the system, as a practical
iniquity, would go to confirm my opinion of its abomination. Mr. O----
went on to condemn and utterly denounce all the preaching and teaching and
moral instruction upon religious subjects, which people in the south,
pressed upon by northern opinion, are endeavouring to give their slaves.
The kinder and the more cowardly masters are anxious to evade the charge
of keeping their negroes in brutish ignorance, and so they crumble what
they suppose and hope may prove a little harmless, religious
enlightenment, which, mixed up with much religious authority on the
subject of submission and fidelity to masters, they trust their slaves may
swallow without its doing them any harm--i.e., that they may be better
Christians and better slaves--and so, indeed, no doubt they are; but it is
a very dangerous experiment, and from Mr. O----'s point of view I quite
agree with him. The letting out of water, or the letting in of light, in
infinitesimal quantities, is not always easy. The half-wicked of the earth
are the leaks