and with many the evils of the domestic slave-trade are the most powerful argument in favor of emancipation.  That there are grievous trials and sorrows, as well as wrongs and violence, in the disposal of slaves, is known to all.  As to those who are to remain within the State, we are told to go, if we will, and inquire into the history of slaves who are to be publicly sold, and take the number of cases in which a wanton disregard of a slave’s feelings can be detected.  An owner is compelled to part with his property in his slave; or, the slave is taken for debt; estates are to be divided; an owner dies intestate; titles are to be settled, mortgages foreclosed, the number of the household is to be reduced; and for these and numerous other reasons new owners are to be sought for the slaves.  Here is a man and his wife and children to be sold.  There is a general interest felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in the same neighborhood.  This is for the interest of the owners; it promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the servants.  Cases of hardship are the exceptions to the general rule in disposing of servants.  Admitting all that can properly be said of such cases, and of the various other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What is to be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of the bondmen, to cultivate a kind and generous disposition toward them, and to prepare them, as far and as fast as the good of all concerned will warrant, for any other condition which Providence may in time point out?  My belief is, that if you take four millions of laboring people anywhere under the sun, and put down in separate columns the good and the evil in their conditions, the balance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of their wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern slaves than elsewhere.  But, still, this leaves them slaves.  My reply to myself, when I say this, is, They were so in their own land; or, they were in a condition of fearful degradation and misery.  Their God is their judge; we have not increased their degradation; woe to us if we add needless sorrows to their lot.  But as for thrusting them up to an ideal state of elevation, before their time and ours has come, I am not disposed to aid in it.  Moreover, Southern Christians are doing all that we would do if in their place; I will not affect to be more humane or just than they; this is our great error.

“Here,” said I, “is another view of the subject”: 

“In the sale of slaves (in America) nothing but labor is transferred.  It passes from master to master, as it passes, in countries of hired labor, from employer to employer.  The mode in which the transfer is made differs in the two systems of labor.  The slave-laborer is never compelled to hunt for work and starve till he finds it.  Is this an evil to the laborer?  Would it be thought an evil, by the hired man in Europe, that his employer should be obliged, by-law, to find him another employer before dismissing him from service?

    “But, it is said, the slave is too much exposed to the master’s
    abuse of power; he is liable to wrongs without a remedy; and, so
    far, his condition is below that of the hired laborer.