Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/130

Rh hunger and cold; I have had to work in rain, and snow, and storm; but yet, missis, I have borne that suffering unrepiningly, because I was free, and would willingly suffer it again, merely to have my freedom and the right to control my own actions, for that has been my greatest treasure.”

In the combat of freedom against slavery this testimony is of no small value.

Nevertheless, it would not be difficult to produce testimony on the opposite side, of fugitive slaves who, in the Northern States, have been asked by old friends from the South what they thought about freedom, and they have answered, that they “were sick of it; that they wished massa would take them back again!” So I have been told, and I feel certain of the truth of it. That dispositions naturally lazy, and not accustomed to independence, should prefer “the fleshpots of Egypt” and the bondage of Egypt to freedom, with hard labour and scanty food, is quite intelligible; and that the servants of good masters in the South should, when they find themselves free among people who care nothing about them, or are not kindly disposed, and that in a severe climate, far from their former warm homes, warm hearts, and warm parlours, is very natural also. For my part, it only seems extraordinary that so few instances occur of fugitive slaves returning to their former connexions, and begging “massa” and “missis” to take them back again. But by no means is it allowable to judge on either side of this question between freedom and slavery by isolated facts and anecdotes; judgment must be based upon principle, must be based upon that truth which is immutable and of universal application.

When Bernsdorf, the great statesman of Denmark, emancipated the peasant serfs on his estate, these assembled to a man and besought of him, with tears, that