Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/301

 part, had rather been born the most miserable negro in North Carolina, than, having enjoyed, as I have, the advantages of education and the privileges of freedom, to find myself, from being the master, as I had imagined, of my own slaves, my own thoughts, and my own course of conversation and reading, all at once converted into a deputy slave driver, under a committee of vigilance, composed,as those committees generally are, of the greatest fools and the greatest scoundrels among us, and obliged to read, talk, and think under their inquisitorial jurisdiction."

"Pardon me," said I, "Mr Mason, if I take the liberty Of putting one question. How is it possible that, entertaining the opinions which, since I have enjoyed the pleasure of your hospitality, I have heard you so freely express — how is it possible that you can continue a slaveholder?" "As to that," answered Mr Mason, "you must have observed before how that the opinions and practices of men do not always run in parallel channels. A man's own opinion and his own choice have often very little to do with the position which he occupies. The people on this and the other plantation came to me by inheritance. You certainly would not have me, to escape from a position personally disagreeable, sell out my interest in slaves, pocket the money, move off to the north, and leave them to their fate."

"No, certainly," I replied; "if they are to remain slaves, I hardly think they would gain any thing by a change of masters."

"Their remaining slaves," said Mr Mason, "is not, at present, a thing within my control. In the first place, there exists still an undischarged mortgage, in which they are included. But that I hope to pay off within the next six months. Then the portions of these two young sisters of mine are a lien upon the estate, for the discharge of which I have yet made only a partial provision. Then, again, here in North Carolina, a master cannot set his slaves free at his own will and pleasure. He must first have the