Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/327

 signal vengeance had been taken, was only a piece of misjudged humanity. It was not to be supposed that a stranger, and an Englishman, could enter into all of their feelings. While adopting all proper means promptly to suppress and punish all interference with the domestic institutions of the south, for which nobody was more zealous than he, they ought to be careful how they overstripped the limits of reason and prudence. If I had been only a northerner, it would be safe enough to maltreat me to any extent, even to burn me alive, as they just had done the "nigger." Those pitiful Yankees might be whipped, kicked, and otherwise punished, to any extent, with reason or without, and there would not be the least danger of any rumpus about it, for fear it might diminish the trade with the south. But to meddle with an Englishman was quite another affair: England did not allow any of her people to be maltreated with impunity. It was apparent from my letters that I was a person who had money and friends, and those concerned in any irregular violence inflicted upon me might find themselves called upon to answer for it. To be sure, the United States could whip' the British again, as they had done in the last war. But still, in the present excited state of the slave population, a war with England was not exactly desirable. Such, as he afterwards informed me, was the general tenor of the argument by which my planter friend had saved me from the clutches of the vigilance committee. Had he or they suspected my true history, how different the result might have been!

While this discussion had been going on, I had been conveyed to the tavern, still in a senseless condition, where the negro women, with their usual good nature, had exerted themselves, as I have mentioned already, for my recovery. My planter friend soon made his appearance. He saw that I was not yet in a condition to resume my journey; and as the village, and especially the tavern and its neighborhood,