730 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



Bi'ons derived from such sources, the justest punish- 

 ment will be felt as the infliction ol' tyranny, and 

 the most liberal rewards, as a niggardly portion of 

 greater rights. For where will the rights of black 

 eans-culottes stop? 



Such a state ol" things is the most unfavorable 

 imaginable lo the happiness of both master and 

 elave. It lends to diminish the humanity of one 

 class, and increase the malignity of the other, and 

 in contemplating its utter desliiution ol' good, our 

 admiration is equally excited, by the error of ihoae 

 who produce, and the folly of those who suffer it. 

 Slaves are docile, useful and happy, if they are 

 well managed; and if their docility, utility and 

 happiness are not obstructed by the circumstances 

 adverted to in the last number. Knowledge ma- 

 nages ignorance with great ease, whenever igno- 

 rance is not used as an instrument by knowledge 

 against itself. But our religious and philosophical 

 Quixotes have undertaken to make ignorance in- 

 dependent of knowledge. They propose to be- 

 stow a capacity lor liberty and rule on an extreme 

 degree of ignorance, when the whole history of 

 mankind announces, that far less degrees possess 

 no such capacity. One would suspect, except for 

 the integrity of these divines and philosophers, 

 that they were imposters disguised in the garb of' 

 religion and philosophy, striving to disengage a 

 mass of ignorance from those who now direct it, 

 for the purpose of appropriating it to themselves. 

 Free it cannot be. It must become the slave of 

 Buperstiiion, cunning or ambition, in some form. 

 And what is still worse, when thrown upon the 

 great national theatre to be scrambled for, that 

 interest which shall gain the prize, will use it to 

 oppress other branches of knowledge. In its hands 

 the blacks will be more enslaved than they are at 

 present ; and the whiles, in pursuit of an ideal 

 freedom for them, will create some vortex for 

 ingulfing the remnant of liberty left in the world, 

 and obtain real slavery for themselves. 



Under their present masters the negroes would 

 enjoy more happiness, and even more liberty, than 

 under a conqueror or a hierarchy. Slavery lo an 

 individual is preferable to slavery to an interest or 

 faction. The individual is res' rained by his pro- 

 perty in the slave, and susceptible of humanity. 

 An interest or faction is incapable of both. Did a 

 hierarchy or a paper system ever shed tears over 

 its oppressions, or feel compunction for its exac- 

 tions? On the contrary, joy swells with the fruit 

 of guilt; and the very conscience, which abhors 

 the secret guillotine, used to cut out a neighbor's 

 purse, and transfer it to its own pocket, without 

 difficulty retains the contents. Thus men imagine 

 that they have discovered a way to elude thejus- 

 tice of God, whose denunciations have overlooked 

 chartered corporations, and are only levelled against 

 individuals. The crime, they suppose, is com- 

 mitted by a body politic, and scripture having 

 exhibited no instance of one of these artificial 

 bodies being consigned to the regionof punishment, 

 their oppressions, however atrocious, are consider- 

 ed as a casus omissus, and as afibrding a mode for 

 fattening the body with crimes and frauds, with- 

 out hurting the soul. 



It is otherwise with the personal owner of slaves. 

 Religion assails him both wiih her blandishments 

 and terrors. It indissolubly binds his, and his 

 slave's happiness or misery together. These 

 associates he cannot dissever; be chooses the 



alternative indeed for both, but he must choose the 

 same. 



If an interest or a combination of men is the 

 worst species of master, and if this black mass of 

 ignorance, turned at large and defined by the 

 plainest marks, must naturally fall under the do- 

 minion of some interest or combination, the mise- 

 ries inflicted both on their owners and themselves, 

 by the perpetual excitements to insurrection, and 

 those to be expected from the experiment whene- 

 ver it is made, are attended with no compensating 

 counterpoise whatsoever to either of the parties, 

 even in hope. Should these fruitless attempts be 

 forborne, and should the slave states take mea- 

 sures for abolishing these excitements to general 

 disquietude and calamity, some system lor the 

 management of slaves, beneficial to themselves 

 and their owners, is so closely connected with agri- 

 culture, that the next number will be devoted to 

 that subject. 



Animal labor is brought to its utmost value, by 

 being completely supplied wiih the necessaries and 

 comforts required by its nature. These comforts 

 have more force to attach the reasonable than the 

 brute creation to a place, and yet the attachments 

 of the latter from this cause often are strong. The 

 addition of comfort to mere necessaries is a price 

 paid by the master, for the advantages he will de- 

 rive fi-om binding his slave to his service, by a 

 ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their 

 value in a pecuniary point of view ; and he will 

 moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections 

 throughout life, which will cost him nothing. 



A project towards an object so desirable, may 

 possibly contain a hint which some one will im- 

 prove. Let the houses of the slaves be of brick 

 walls, able to withstand hard usage, and remain 

 tight, built in one connected line, with partitions, 

 making each a room sixteen or eighteen feet 

 square; let there be a brick chimney in the centre 

 between each two rooms, afl'ording a fire place to 

 each, and two warm chasms, one on each side of 

 the fire place for beds. A square window, with a 

 wooden shutter, to be opposite the door of each 

 room, and three panes of glass above each door. 

 No joists or loit, but to be lathed on the rafters and 

 their couplings, nearly to the top of the roof, and 

 the whole inside to be plastered. Hence, though 

 the house should be low, the pitch of the rooms 

 will be high ; and salubrity will be consulted with 

 a precaution against fire, amounting to a certainty 

 within the house, as there will be no inside fuel, 

 the floor being of earth. The roof will be a mere 

 shell plastered within, and if the chimneys are 

 sufficiently high, the absence of interior combusii- 

 bles, combined with the lowness of the house, will 

 form a great security against fire, so fi-equently fa- 

 tal to the houses of slaves, and sometimes to the 

 inhabitants. 



A regular supply of a winter's coat, jacket and 

 breeches, with the latter and the sleeves of the 

 former Imed, two osnaburg shirts, a good hat and 

 blanket every other year, two pair of stockings 

 annually, a pair of shoes, a pair of summer over- 

 alls, and a great coat every third year, will consti- 

 tute a warm clothing for careful slaves, and the 

 acquisitions they make from their usual permis- 

 sions will supply them with finery. 



The best source for securing their happiness, 

 their honesty and their usefulness, is their food ; 

 and yet it is seldom considered as a means for ad- 



