Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/90

 one of his neighbors that a clover lay was the true cure for sterile fields; that the only way to have a plantation well managed, was to manage it one's self; or that to give servants enough to eat, was a sure method to prevent them from plundering the corn-fields and stealing sheep.

But though major Thornton could gain no imitators, he still persevered in farming according to his own notions. In no respect was he more an innovator than in the management of his slaves. A merciful man, he used to say, Is merciful to his beast; and not having been raised on a plantation, he could not bear the idea of treating his servants worse than his horses. "It may do very well for you, colonel," he said one day, to one of his neighbors, "to tie a fellow up and give him forty lashes with your own hand; you were born and bred to it, and I dare say you find it very easy. But as odd as you may think it, I had much rather be flogged myself than to flog one of my servants; and though sometimes I am obliged to do it, it is a great point with me to get along with as little whipping as possible. That's a principal reason why I keep no overseer, — for a cow-hide and a pair of irons, are the only two things those fellows have any notion of. They have no wish, and if they had, they have not the sense, to get along in any other way; — the devil take the whole generation of them. Every body, you know, has their oddities. For my part, I hate to hear the crack of a whip on my plantation, even though it be nothing more than a cart-whip."

The above speech of major Thornton's, contained a brief summary of his system. He was, what every other slaveholder is, and from the very necessity of his condition must be, — a tyrant. He felt no scruple in compelling his fellow men to labor, in order that he might appropriate the fruits of that labor to his own benefit, — and in this certainly, if in any thing, the very essence of tyranny consists. But though a tyrant, as every slave-holder is and must be, he was a reasonable and, as far as possible, a humane one, — which very few slave-holders either are or can be. He had no more thought of relinquishing what he and the laws, called his property in his slaves, than he had of leaving his land to be occupied by the first comer. He would have