It is very true that in most European countries their poor establishments might furnish the simple article of medicine necessary to check disease. This is the most inconsiderable item towards complete cure. The mode of giving it, nursing, watching, supplying a thousand wants, and answering as many whims of the sick man, complete the cure. Such is the difference between the European hospitals, where the physician administers by the wholesale, and the American negro quarter, where the master sees that the most minute instructions of the physician is attended to, and where the wants and whims of the patient is answered by a sympathizing hand. In the latter, whatever the convalescent appetite requires, if not prohibited by the physician, is furnished, and at proper times and in proper quantities. Here the negro resumes his labour when he feels perfectly able to do so, and not like the European [424] pauper, who, to escape the constraints of the poorhouse, and mingle with his every-day associations, goes forth, half cured and half unprovided for, to relapse into worse sickness.

Knowing, as we do, the improved moral and physical condition of the slaves of the United States and Texas over their former naked, ignorant, and cannibal condition in Africa, we feel conscious of no moral wrong in their present ownership. We believe that this relationship is the happiest both for their physical condition and general mental capability.

Had Mr. O'Connell,10 the disturber of his own country, the calumniator of ours, and the reviler of Washington, known more of this institution, both justice and common sense would have taught him that his transcendent talents might be employed in a better manner than in a lifetime of abuse of that country which has opened wide the door of competence and happiness to hundreds of thousands of his own destitute countrymen. We have the evidence of hundreds and thousands of as honest Irishmen as Mr.O'Connell, that the worst possible condition of our negroes is far better than millions of their own citizens; and while we deeply sympathize with these suffering millions, our sympathy can never excite them to an unwise opposition to their own government; that sympathy is to be found in our open houses, in our well-filled granaries, around our hospitable hearths, and deeply rooted in our political Constitution.[425]

It cannot be denied that within the last twenty years a wonderful revolution has taken place in the United States in the improvement of the slave's condition, and that this improvement is still going on. The legislatures of the states have interposed their protection, while a true domestic economy has demonstrated the fact, that the better fed and clothed, the more profitable the negro. That which has done most for this improvement is a charitable morality, already wide, and still spreading throughout the slave portion of the Union. That just public opinion throughout the country, which stamps the bad master as the bad man, has done, and is still doing more for this improvement than all other causes. The master who would be guilty of wanton cruelty towards his slave is