Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/99

Rh against self-interest is what nobody ought to expect of white men—much less of slaves. Of course every man, woman and child, would rather play for nothing than work for nothing.

"It is the mind, which gives sight to the eye, and hearing to the ear, and strength to the limbs; and the mind cannot be purchased. Where a man is allowed the possession of himself, the purchaser of his labor is benefited by the vigor of his mind through the service of his limbs: where man is made the possession of another, the possessor loses at once and forever all that is most valuable in that for which he has paid the price of crime. He becomes the owner of that which only differs from an idiot in being less easily drilled into habits, and more capable of effectual revenge.

"Cattle are fixed capital, and so are slaves: But slaves differ from cattle on the one hand, in yielding (from internal opposition) a less return for their maintenance; and from free laborers on the other hand, in not being acted upon by the inducements which stimulate production as an effort of mind as well as body. In all three cases the labor is purchased. In free laborers and cattle, all the faculties work together, and to advantage; in the slave they are opposed; and therefore he is, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, the least valuable of the three. The negroes can invent and improve—witness their ingenuity in their dwellings, and their skill in certain of their sports; but their masters will never possess their faculties, though they have purchased their limbs. Our true policy would be to divide the work of the slave between the ox and the hired laborer; we should get more out of the sinews of the one and the soul of the other, than the produce of double the number of slaves."

As a matter of humanity, let it be remembered that men having more reason than brutes, must be treated with much greater severity, in order to keep them in a state of abject submission.

It seems unnecessary to say that what is unjust and unmerciful, can never be expedient; yet men often write, talk, and act, as if they either forgot this truth, or