Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/60

 It is this class of men against whom the legislators of Virginia have exercised all their ingenuity in the construction of penal statutes; and against whom, they have exerted all the severity which they have dared to use towards men, who might still claims the title and demand the rights of ‘free white citizens.' But these penal enactments, have failed, in a great measure, of their object. Though the trade with slaves is dangerous and disgraceful, and the traders, in consequence, are desperate and reckless, their number is still so great as to furnish the planters with an inexhaustible topic of declamation and complaint, — and to supply the slaves with numerous little comforts and luxuries which they might in vain have expected from the indulgence or humanity of their masters.

These traders are, no doubt, the receivers of plunder; and no small proportion of what they sell is paid for in that way. It is in vain, that tyranny fences itself about with the terrors of the law. It is in vain, that the slave-holder flatters himself with the hope of appropriating to his own sole use, the entire fruits of the forced labors of his fellow men. The slave cannot resist the compulsion, with which the law has armed the hand of his master. The lash is an ensign of authority and of torture, to which the stoutest heart, and the most stubborn will, is soon compelled to yield. But fraud is the natural counterpart to tyranny; and cunning is ever the defence of the weak against the oppressions of the strong. Can the unhappy slave, who has been compelled to plant in the day time for his master's benefit, be blamed if he strives in the night to gather some gleaning of the crop, for his own use?

Blame him you who can! Join, if you will, in the clamor of the master against the cursed knavery of his slaves! ‘That same master, who thinks it no wrong to rob those slaves of their labor, their sole possession, their only property! He to talk about theft! — he — the slave-holder — who has carried the art of pillage to a perfection of which robbers and pirates never dreamed! ‘They are content to snatch such casual spoils as chance may offer; but the slave-holder — whip in hand — extorts from his victims, a large, a regular, an annual plunder! Nay more; he sells