“For the master’s security, I presume,” said Mr. North.

“I should say,” said I, “for the mutual benefit of both.  The master then became responsible for him; his support was a lien on his estate, the children must always be responsible for his maintenance.  The awl made its record in the master’s door-post, as well as in the servant’s ear.

“Now, suppose,” said I, “that God chooses to supply this nation with menial servants to the end of time.  Suppose that he has designed that one race, the African, shall be the source from which he will draw this supply, and that down through long generations he proposes to make this black race our servants, seeking at the same time, by means of this, their elevation, by connecting them with us, and keeping up the relation; and that for the permanence of the relation, and for the security of all concerned, there should be ‘ownership,’ such as he himself ordained when he prescribed the boring of the ear?  For my part, I cannot see in this ‘the sum of all villanies,’ ‘an enormous wrong,’ ’a stupendous injustice.’  Yet this would be slavery.  I am not arguing for such a constitution of things.  As was before observed, the whole black race may, in a few years, be swept off from the country; but who will undertake to say that, as the people of other nations have been employed by Providence to make our railroads and canals, the black race may not be employed for a much longer term to be our servants, both North and South, both East and West?  And who will say that the tenure of ‘ownership’ may not be the wisest and most benevolent arrangement for all concerned?  I repeat it, I am not arguing for this; I am only trying to show you that the present abuses in slavery are no valid argument against the relation itself; that this may remain when the abuses cease, and therefore that at the present time we ought to discriminate in our arguments against slavery, and direct our assaults, if we continue to be assailers, against its abuses.”

“On one disagreeable subject,” I said to him aside, “I will make this general remark:  The Southern slaves are, as a whole, a religious people; their religion, indeed, is of a type corresponding to their condition.  But still, if the South were one festering pool of iniquity, as many at the North fancy, would the colored people show such evidences as they do of moral and spiritual improvement?  Look at Hayti.  A very large majority of the children are not born in wedlock.  Slavery is a moral restraint upon the Southern colored people.  Evil as slavery is, it is, in many things, taking the slaves as they are, a comparative blessing.”

“But,” said Mr. North, “our people generally insist that abuses, oppression, cruelty, are so inherent in slavery that they cannot be removed without destroying the relation itself.”

“Here,” said I, “is the mistake under which Southerners perceive that we labor, and which prevents us from having the least influence with them.