society, would become the natural enemies of the more favoured one, which would result in all the horrors of bloodshed. The stronger party would argue that their safety was in the annihilation of their enemy, which would be the inevitable end either of the white or black community in any other than in their present relations of master and slave. In this relation, the master is not the enemy, but the friend and protector of his slave. He is so from interest, and, from long habit of protection and friendship, is so from choice. He is the lawful guardian of these dependants, and interest, feeling, law, and public morality require him to be so - to provide them with food and raiment, to nurse them in sickness and in health, to govern them with humanity. In an immense majority of the slaves of the United States, they value this protection; they feel proud of their master's friendship; they partake of his character with all the feelings of birth or aristocracy to which he may have been raised, or to which pride, circumstance, or ambition may cause [422] him to aspire. With such feelings, millions of white and black do live in friendship; sever these ties, and you make them enemies by arming each with political jealousies which must prove the injury of both, and certainly the destruction of one.

Let us look into those countries of Europe where the labouring classes are said to be the best off - in England, Scotland, France, and some of the German states - in those countries where the more social names of lord and tenant are used instead of master and slave, as in the United States; and where do we find the owner responsible under all circumstances for the food and raiment, the medicine and physician's bill of the operative, but in the United States and Texas? In these countries, the law makes it the master's duty, and both interest and attachment to the needy and afflicted makes it his pleasure. In these countries, the physician who visits the master also visits the slave; he serves each with the same medicine out of the same spoon, and charges the identical rates per mile for visiting the one as the other. In these countries, if from drought or flood, or other calamities, dearth ensues, it is the master's duty to look abroad to supply the deficiency. From the first settlement of the English American colonies to the present day, there cannot be a solitary instance cited of a slave perishing for the want of food. We do not believe that the same can be said of any other nation, in this or in any age, where the peasant is dependant upon [423] the landlord for hire, and where he has no resource in case of misfortune or calamity to fall back upon save that hire. In the United States the dearth falls upon the master; in Europe, it falls upon the peasant. In the former countries the master is the responsible commissariat of his establishment; in the latter, the land-rents must be paid, or a new tenantry substituted, and the greatest want will be endured by the tenant sooner than the loss of home. Here, if a tenant die for want of bread or medicine, a surplus labour of a like kind supplies his place at as cheap a rate.