Hence those manifest forms of dependent servitude which produce a sense of superiority in the masters or employers, and of inferiority on the part of the servants. Where these offices are performed by members of the political community, a dangerous element is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence the alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian legislation which is beginning to be manifest in the older states where universal suffrage prevails without domestic slavery.
"In a word, the institution of domestic slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of nobility and all the other appendages of a hereditary system of government."—Gov M'Duffie's Message to the South Carolina Legislature, 1836.
We of the south have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among us which excludes the populace which in effect rules some of our northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever slavery does not exist—a populace made up of the dregs of Europe, and the most worthless portion of the native population."—Richmond Whig, 1837
Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding, a fine feeling! So far as the mere laborer has the pri. dethe knowledge or the aspiration of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid, servile. laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to perform them?
"Odium has been cast upon our legislation on account of its forbidding the elements of education being communicated to slaves. But in truth what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands, does not read in the intervals of leisure for his amusement or the improvement of his mind, or the exception is so very rare as scarcely to need
