An objection kindred to the preceding now claims notice.  It is the profound induction that slaves must be well treated because slaveholders say they are!

OBJECTION.  II.—­’SLAVEHOLDERS PROTEST THAT THEY TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.’

Self-justification is human nature; self-condemnation is a sublime triumph over it, and as rare as sublime.  What culprits would be convicted, if their own testimony were taken by juries as good evidence?  Slaveholders are on trial, charged with cruel treatment to their slaves, and though in their own courts they can clear themselves by their own oaths,[21] they need not think to do it at the bar of the world.  The denial of crimes, by men accused of them, goes for nothing as evidence in all civilized courts; while the voluntary confession of them, is the best evidence possible, as it is testimony against themselves, and in the face of the strongest motives to conceal the truth.  On the preceding pages, are hundreds of just such testimonies; the voluntary and explicit testimony of slaveholders against themselves, their families and ancestors, their constituents and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence.  Now let candor decide between those two classes of slaveholders, which is most entitled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to gain, but every thing to lose by such testimony, still utters it.

But if there were no counter testimony, if all slaveholders were unanimous in the declaration that the treatment of the slaves is good, such a declaration would not be entitled to a feather’s weight as testimony; it is not testimony but opinion.  Testimony respects matters of fact, not matters of opinion:  it is the declaration of a witness as to facts, not the giving of an opinion as to the nature or qualities of actions, or the character of a course of conduct.  Slaveholders organize themselves into a tribunal to adjudicate upon their own conduct, and give us in their decisions, their estimate of their own character; informing us with characteristic modesty, that they have a high opinion of themselves; that in their own judgment they are very mild, kind, and merciful gentlemen!  In these conceptions of their own merits, and of the eminent propriety of their bearing towards their slaves, slaveholders remind us of the Spaniard, who always took off his hat whenever he spoke of himself, and of the Governor of Schiraz, who, from a sense of justice to his own character added to his other titles, those of, ‘Flower of Courtesy,’ ’Nutmeg of Consolation,’ and ‘Rose of Delight.’