Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/170

 is impossible to build any edifice of good upon so evil a foundation. The whole system is totally and radically wrong. The benevolence, the good nature, the humanity of a slave-holder, avail as little as the benevolence of the bandit, who generously clothes the stripped and naked traveller in a garment plundered from his own portmanteau. What grosser absurdity than the attempt to be humanely cruel, and generously unjust! The very first act. in the slave's behalf, without which, all else is useless and worse than useless, is — to make him free!





before observed that Sunday is the slave's holiday. Where intermarriages are allowed between the slaves of different plantations, this is generally the only occasion on which the scattered branches of the same family are indulged with an opportunity of visiting each other. Many planters, who pride themselves upon the excellence of their discipline, forbid these intermarriages altogether; and if they happen to have a superabundance of men-servants, they prefer that one woman should have a half-a-dozen husbands rather than suffer their slaves to be corrupted, by gadding about among other people's plantations.

Other managers, just as good disciplinarians, and a little more shrewd than their neighbors, forbid the men only to marry away from home. They are very willing to let their women get husbands where they can. They reason in this way. When a husband goes to see his wife, who lives upon another plantation, he will not be apt to go empty-handed. He will carry something with him, probably something eatable, plundered from his master's fields, that may serve to make him welcome, and render his coming a sort of festival. Now every thing that is brought upon a plantation in this way, is so much clear gain; and so far as It goes, it amounts to feeding one's people at the expense of one's neighbors! 