Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/14

10 instrument which may pretty safely be left in the hands of such a man as this. And that cane is the only emblem of authority for miles round,—corresponding in fact with the Roman fasces. To be sure, there is a policeman in the district, but he is very little heard of, and upon the occasion of the robbery of a few spoons, which occurred some years ago, that important officer, putting his hand pitiably on his breast, and telling me what he had gone through in the matter, exclaimed that he had not felt well ever since. So rare an event was such a robbery amongst us. Now, if we were in France we should have a little army of fifty or a hundred men quartered upon us; and if we were in a slave district in America, what whippings, what imprisonments, how many overseers, would not be necessary to get the work done which we do in our quiet, noiseless, stolid way; loving law and order and our country all the while. Do you think that, if our poor were like your slaves, they would love law and order as they do?

Then, too, we have our workhouses for the very poor, the aged, and the infirm; and their right to support does not depend upon the caprice of any single man. It cannot enter into the mind of any person to speculate whether it would be worth his while to use those under him well or ill.