indeed supposed to be his owner's interest, may be, will be, and is
occasionally sacrificed to the blind impulse of passion.

To return to our head driver, or, as he is familiarly called, head man,
Frank--he is second in authority only to the overseer, and exercises rule
alike over the drivers and the gangs, in the absence of the sovereign
white man from the estate, which happens whenever Mr. O---- visits the
other two plantations at Woodville and St. Simons. He is sole master and
governor of the island, appoints the work, pronounces punishments, gives
permission to the men to leave the island (without it they never may do
so), and exercises all functions of undisputed mastery over his fellow
slaves, for you will observe that all this while he is just as much a
slave as any of the rest. Trustworthy, upright, intelligent, he may be
flogged to-morrow if Mr. O---- or Mr. ---- so please it, and sold the next
day like a cart horse, at the will of the latter. Besides his various
other responsibilities, he has the key of all the stores, and gives out
the people's rations weekly; nor is it only the people's provisions that
are put under his charge--meat, which is only given out to them
occasionally, and provisions for the use of the family are also entrusted
to his care. Thus you see, among these _inferior_ creatures, their own
masters yet look to find, surviving all their best efforts to destroy
them--good sense, honesty, self-denial, and all the qualities, mental and
moral, that make one man worthy to be trusted by another. From the
imperceptible, but inevitable effect of the sympathies and influences of
human creatures towards and over each other, Frank's intelligence has
become uncommonly developed by intimate communion in the discharge of his
duty with the former overseer, a very intelligent man, who has only just
left the estate, after managing it for nineteen years; the effect of this
intercourse, and of the trust and responsibility laid upon the man, are
that he is clear-headed, well judging, active, intelligent, extremely well
mannered, and, being respected, he respects himself. He is as ignorant as
the rest of the slaves; but he is always clean and tidy in his person,
with a courteousness of demeanour far removed from servility, and exhibits
a strong instance of the intolerable and wicked injustice of the system
under which he lives, having advanced thus far towards improvement, in
spite of all the bars it puts to progr