give one's self but little trouble to correct immoralities and reform wicked practices and habits, should they do their work quietly and profitably, and enjoy health, and go on to multiply and increase upon the earth."
This is addressed to a body of "professing evangelical
Christians," in a district in which more is done for the
elevation of the slaves than in any other of the South.
What they are called to witness from their own experience, as
the tendency of a system which recognizes slaves as absolute
property, mere instruments of labour and means of wealth,
"exceedingly difficult" for them to resist, is, I am well convinced,
the entirely irresistible effect upon the mass of
slaveholders. Fearing that moral and intellectual culture
may injure their value as property, they oftener interfere to
prevent than they endeavour to assist their slaves from using
the poor opportunities that chance may throw in their way.
Moreover, the missionary adds:—
"The current of the conversation and of business in society, in respect
to negroes, runs in the channel of interest, and thus increases the blindness
and insensibility of owners. * * * And this custom of society acts also
on the negroes, who, seeing, and more than seeing, feeling and knowing,
that their owners regard and treat them as their money—as property only—are
inclined to lose sight of their better character and higher interests,
and, in their ignorance and depravity, to estimate themselves, and religion,
and virtue, no higher than their owners do."
Again, from the paramount interest of owners in the
property quality of these beings, they provide them only such
accommodations for spending the time in which they are not
actively employed, as shall be favourable to their bodily
health, and enable them to comply with the commandment,
to "increase and multiply upon the earth," without regard
to their moral health, without caring much for their obedience
to the more pure and spiritual commands of the
Scriptures.
