A slave may get blows and kicks every hour in the day, without having his constitution broken, or without suffering sensibly in his health, or flesh, or appetite, or power to labor.  Therefore, beaten and kicked as he is, he must be treated well, according to the objector, since the master’s interest does not suffer thereby.

Finally, the objector virtually maintains that all possible privations and inflictions suffered by slaves, that do not actually cripple their power to labor, and make them ‘damaged merchandize,’ are to be set down as ‘good treatment,’ and that nothing is bad treatment except what produces these effects.

Thus we see that even if the slave were effectually shielded from all those inflictions, which, by lessening his value as property, would injure the interests of his master, he would still nave no protection against numberless and terrible cruelties.  But we go further, and maintain that in respect to large classes of slaves, it is for the interest of their masters to treat them with barbarous inhumanity.

1. Old slaves. It would be for the interest of the masters to shorten their days.

2. Worn out slaves. Multitudes of slaves by being overworked, have their constitutions broken in middle life.  It would be economical for masters to starve or flog such to death.

3. The incurably diseased and maimed. In all such cases it would be cheaper for masters to buy poison than medicine.

4. The blind, lunatics, and idiots.  As all such would be a tax on him, it would be for his interest to shorten their days.

5. The deaf and dumb, and persons greatly deformed. Such might or might not be serviceable to him; many of them at least would be a burden, and few men carry burdens when they can throw them off.

6. Feeble infants. As such would require much nursing, the time, trouble and expense necessary to raise them, would generally be more than they would be worth as working animals.  How many such infants would be likely to be ‘raised,’ from disinterested benevolence?  To this it may be added that in the far south and south west, it is notoriously for the interest of the master not to ‘raise’ slaves at all.  To buy slaves when nearly grown, from the northern slave states, would be cheaper than to raise them.  This is shown in the fact, that mothers with infants sell for less in those states than those without them.  And when slave-traders purchase such in the upper country, it is notorious that they not unfrequently either sell their infants, or give them away.  Therefore it would be for the interest of the masters, throughout that region, to have all the new-born children left to perish.  It would also be for their interest to make such arrangements as effectually to separate the sexes, or if that were not done, so to overwork the females as to prevent childbearing.