Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/362

 reckoned to belong precisely to that class, except, indeed, we get money enough to buy a plantation and retire."

"It is charged," said I, "upon those of your profession, that, not content with the fair chances of the game, you contrive to take undue advantages."

"Yes; and so do half of the gentlemen players, as far as they know how, and have the opportunity. There is always a tendency, in games of chance, to run a little into games of skill. Suppose we do plunder the planters — don't they live by plundering the negroes? What right have they to complain? Isn't sauce for the goose sauce for the gander? I tell you our whole system here is a system of plunder from beginning to end. 'Tis only the slaves, and some of the poor whites who own no slaves, who can be said to earn an honest living. The planters live on the plunder of the slaves, whom they force to labor for them. The slaves steal all they can from the planters, and a good many of the poor whites connive at and help them in it. A parcel of bloodsucking Yankee pedlers and New York agents overrun our country, and carry off their share of the spoils; and we who have cool heads and dexterous hands enough to overreach the whole set, planters, Yankees, and New Yorkers — we stand, for aught I see, upon just as sound a moral basis as the rest of them. Every thing belongs to the strong, the wise, and the cunning; that is the foundation stone of our southern system of society. The living upon the plunder of others is one of the organic sins of this community; and the doctrine, I believe, has been advanced by a celebrated northern divine, that for the organic sins of a community, nobody is individually responsible. Now, if this good-natured sort of doctrine, which, for my part, I don't find any fault with, is going to save_ the souls and the characters of Gouge and McGrab, or of the planters who patronize and support them, per we professional gentlemen also have the benefit of it?