That the overseers are, as a body, sensual, brutal, and violent men is proverbial.  The tender mercies of such men must be cruel.

4.  The ownership of human beings necessarily presupposes an utter disregard of their happiness.  He who assumes it monopolizes their whole capital, leaves them no stock on which to trade, and out of which to make happiness.  Whatever is the master’s gain is the slave’s loss, a loss wrested from him by the master, for the express purpose of making it his own gain; this is the master’s constant employment—­forcing the slave to toil—­violently wringing from him all he has and all he gets, and using it as his own;—­like the vile bird that never builds its nest from materials of its own gathering, but either drives other birds from theirs and takes possession of them, or tears them in pieces to get the means of constructing their own.  This daily practice of forcibly robbing others, and habitually living on the plunder, cannot but beget in the mind the habit of regarding the interests and happiness of those whom it robs, as of no sort of consequence in comparison with its own; consequently whenever those interests and this happiness are in the way of its own gratification, they will be sacrificed without scruple.  He who cannot see this would be unable to feel it, if it were seen.

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

Objection I—­“SUCH CRUELTIES ARE INCREDIBLE.”

The enormities inflicted by slaveholders upon their slaves will never be discredited except by those who overlook the simple fact, that he who holds human beings as his bona fide property, regards them as property, and not as persons; this is his permanent state of mind toward them.  He does not contemplate slaves as human beings, consequently does not treat them as such; and with entire indifference sees them suffer privations and writhe under blows, which, if inflicted upon whites, would fill him with horror and indignation.  He regards that as good treatment of slaves, which would seem to him insufferable abuse if practiced upon others; and would denounce that as a monstrous outrage and horrible cruelty, if perpretated upon white men and women, which he sees every day meted out to black slaves, without perhaps ever thinking it cruel.  Accustomed all his life to regard them rather as domestic animals, to hear them stormed at, and to see them cuffed and caned; and being himself in the constant habit of treating them thus, such practices have become to him a mere matter of course, and make no impression on his mind.  True, it is incredible that men should treat as chattels those whom they truly regard as human beings; but that they should treat as chattels and working animals those whom they regard as such, is no marvel.  The common treatment of dogs, when they are in the way, is to kick them out of it; we see them every day kicked off the sidewalks, and out of shops, and on Sabbaths out of churches,—­yet, as they are but dogs, these do not strike us as outrages; yet, if we were to see men, women, and children—­our neighbors and friends, kicked out of stores by merchants, or out of churches by the deacons and sexton, we should call the perpetrators inhuman wretches.