Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/297

 of some uneasiness, but whether real or assumed I could hardly tell — "I hope there are no lurking members of the committee of vigilance within ear shot. Our overseers have a habit of playing the eavesdropper among the negro cabins, and how soon the same system may be extended to us masters is more than I can tell. But to answer your question," — and here he sunk his voice almost to a whisper, — "the first step towards the cure of any serious disorder is to understand the real nature of it, and especially to bring the patient himself to a true sense of his own condition. And that is a result which these abolition societies are already beginning to produce. Even those who have thought most about it have never hitherto been fully aware of the real nature and extent of the evil we had to deal with. We knew indeed that our American goddess of liberty lay asleep and dreaming, like Milton's Eve, with a foul toad at her ear; yet we thought that, after all, it was but a toad, which, however ugly and venomous, the growing light of day, as the sun was getting towards high noon, would drive to skulk into some hole or other. But these northern abolitionists having undertaken to poke the creature a little by way of hastening his progress, choosing for that purpose the famous national declaration of ours that all men are created free, with certain unalienable rights, — see how this, as we thought comparatively harmless thing, starts up a horrible and bloodthirsty monster, threatening to swallow down the poor trembling goddess of American liberty at a single gulp! I do not mean the liberty of black men or colored men, — for here in America they never had any, — but the liberty of us white men, us masters.

"The pretended danger of slave insurrection is made occasion for suppressing all liberty of thought, speech, or writing, derogatory to the institution of slavery. That danger does very well to frighten fools with, and it is by frightening fools that knaves generally get themselves intrusted with power. But the insurrection, as Mr Telfair very well remarked, which