Page:A Discourse on the True Nature of Freedom and Slavery.djvu/19

Rh affections of an animal, too, give their quality to its flesh. The major part of a small village has been sickened by eating the beef of a maddened and hamstrung ox, killed in a fever, and sent to the shambles surcharged with its poisonous effects. All know how much the flesh of wild animals differs from that of tame. How much the meat on the breast of a wild turkey differs from that of a tame turkey's breast! The venison of a deer raised in a park is almost mutton in comparison with the venison of a deer roaming and bounding free through the wild woods. Who has not observed the superior quality of hams made from mast-fed hogs fattened at last on corn, in comparison with those made from stye-raised hogs? And what produces the difference? Is it not, that the affection of the animal roaming free in the enjoyment of its delights gives better properties to its flesh than can be found in the lazy and grunting obesity of stye-raised meat? And shall not the whole soul of freedom give a peculiar property to the very flesh of a freeman, while the stooped spirit of forced bondage imparts an equally marked though different characteristic quality to the very flesh of the slave? So of the forms of the body, and the contour of the face. Freedom and slavery has each its peculiar type. And not more does the full blooded racer, in comparison with the mongrel dray horse, show the quality of his free spirit in his form and action, than does freedom show itself in the forms and habitual actions of the white and red man, while slavery stamps its signet in the black wax, or carves its peculiar form in the ebony, of the bondaged and drudging African. Hence we verily believe that the little negro's propensity to eat dirt is both the effect and the evidence of slavery's being a physical