Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/44

32 the plantations do, house it in cabins costing little." "The slaves live without beds or houses worth so calling, or family cares, or luxuries, or parade or show ; have no relaxations, or whims, or frolics, or dissipations ; instead of sun to sun, in their hours are worked from daylight till nine o'clock at night. Where the freeman or labourer would require a hundred dollars a year for food and clothing alone, the slave can be supported for twenty dollars a year, and often is." "Let us bestow upon them the worst, the most unhealthy and degrading sort of duties and labour." Said Mr Jefferson, "the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other."

The idea of slavery is to use a man as a thing, against his nature and in opposition to his interests. The consequences of such a principle it is impossible to escape; the results of this idea meet us at every step. Man is certainly not cruel by nature; even in the barbarous state. In our present civilization man is far from being brutal. There are many kind and considerate slave-holders whose aim is to make their slaves as comfortable and happy as it is possible while they are slaves; men who feel and know that slavery is wrong, and would gladly be rid of it; who are not consistent with the idea of slavery. Let us suppose, in this argument, there are ten thousand such who are heads of families in the United States, and ninety thousand of a different stamp, men who have at least the average of human selfishness.

Now under the mildest and most humane of masters, slavery commonly brings intensity of suffering. The slave feels that he is a man, a person, his own person, born with all a man's unalienable rights; born with the right to life, to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He sees himself cut off from these rights, and that too amid the wealth, the refinement, and culture of this country and this age. He feels his degradation, born a man to be treated as a thing, bought and sold, beaten as a beast. Here and there is one with a feeble nature, with affections disproportionately strong, attached to an owner who never claimed all the legal authority of master, and this man may not desire his freedom. Some hear of the actual suffer-