may be added the testimony of Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, as quoted in Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, p. 217.  “The slave, to remain a slave, must feel that there is no appeal from his master.  No man can anticipate the provocations which the slave would give, nor the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to BLOODY VENGEANCE on the turbulent traitor, a vengeance generally practised with impunity by reason of its privacy.”

In an Essay on the “improvement of negroes on plantations,” by Rev. Thomas S. Clay, a slaveholder of Bryan county, Georgia, and Printed at the request of the Georgia Presbytery, in 1833, we are told “that the present economy of the slave system is to get all you can from the slave, and give him in return as little as will barely support him in a working condition!” Here, in a few words, the whole enormity of slavery is exposed to view:  “to get all you can from the slave”—­by means of whips and forks and irons—­by every device for torturing the body, without destroying its capability of labor; and in return give him as little of his coarse fare as will keep him, like a mere beast of burden, in a “working condition;” this is slavery, as explained by the slaveholder himself.  Mr. Clay further says:  “Offences against the master are more severely punished than violations of the law of God, a fault which affects the slave’s personal character a good deal.  As examples we may notice, that running away is more severely punished than adultery.”  “He (the slave) only knows his master as lawgiver and executioner, and the sole object of punishment held up to his view, is to make him a more obedient and profitable slave.”

Hon. W.B.  Seabrook, in an address before the Agricultural Society of St. John’s, Colleton, published by order of the Society, at Charleston, in 1834, after stating that “as Slavery exists in South Carolina, the action of the citizens should rigidly conform to that state of things:”  and, that “no abstract opinions of the rights of man should be allowed in any instance to modify the police system of a plantation,” proceeds as follows. “He (the slave) should be practically treated as a slave; and thoroughly taught the true cardinal principle on which our peculiar institutions are founded, viz.; that to his owner he is bound by the law of God and man; and that no human authority can sever the link which unites them.  The great aim of the slaveholder, then, should be to keep his people in strict subordination.  In this, it may in truth be said, lies his entire duty.”  Again, in speaking of the punishments of slaves, he remarks:  “If to our army the disuse of THE LASH has been prejudicial, to the slaveholder it would operate to deprive him of the MAIN SUPPORT of his authority.  For the first class of offences, I consider imprisonment in THE STOCKS[A] at night, with or without hard labor by day, as a powerful auxiliary in the cause of good government.” “Experience has convinced me that there is no punishment to which the slave looks with more horror, than that upon which I am commenting, (the stocks,) and none which has been attended with happier results.”