of offering them that of which they are incapable.  We have no laws forbidding us to teach our dogs and horses as much as they can comprehend; nobody is fined or imprisoned for reasoning upon knowledge, and liberty, to the beasts of the field, for they are incapable of such truths.  But these themes are forbidden to slaves, not because they cannot, but because they can and would seize on them with avidity—­receive them gladly, comprehend them quickly; and the masters’ power over them would be annihilated at once and for ever.  But I have more frequently heard, not that they were incapable of receiving instruction, but something much nearer the truth—­that knowledge only makes them miserable:  the moment they are in any degree enlightened, they become unhappy.  In the letter I return to you Mr. ——­ says that the very slightest amount of education, merely teaching them to read, ’impairs their value as slaves, for it instantly destroys their contentedness, and since you do not contemplate changing their condition, it is surely doing them an ill service to destroy their acquiescence in it;’ but this is a very different ground of argument from the other.  The discontent they evince upon the mere dawn of an advance in intelligence proves not only that they can acquire but combine ideas, a process to which it is very difficult to assign a limit; and there indeed the whole question lies, and there and nowhere else the shoe really pinches.  A slave is ignorant; he eats, drinks, sleeps, labours, and is happy.  He learns to read; he feels, thinks, reflects, and becomes miserable.  He discovers himself to be one of a debased and degraded race, deprived of the elementary rights which God has granted to all men alike; every action is controlled, every word noted; he may not stir beyond his appointed bounds, to the right hand or to the left, at his own will, but at the will of another he may be sent miles and miles of weary journeying—­tethered, yoked, collared, and fettered—­away from whatever he may know as home, severed from all those ties of blood and affection which he alone of all human, of all living creatures on the face of the earth may neither enjoy in peace nor defend when they are outraged.  If he is well treated, if his master be tolerably humane or even understand his own interest tolerably, this is probably all he may have to endure:  it is only to the consciousness of these evils that knowledge and reflection awaken him.  But how is it if his master be severe, harsh, cruel—­or even only careless—­leaving his creatures to the delegated dominion of some overseer, or agent, whose love of power, or other evil dispositions, are checked by no considerations of personal interest?  Imagination shrinks from the possible result of such a state of things; nor must you, or Mr. ——­, tell me that the horrors thus suggested exist only in imagination.  The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that