An
excellent minister in Cincinnati not long since preached a sermon on
murder, in which he stated that "during his residence in that city,
there had been more than one hundred murders, or an average of two a
month, while in no instance had the perpetrator been executed." Reading
lately of a husband at the North throwing oil of vitriol from a bottle,
filled for the purpose, over his wife's face and neck, and of a Northern
clergyman feeding his young wife, as she sat on his knee, with apple on
which he had sprinkled arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were
not about the same everywhere. The theoretical right of a master, in
certain cases, to put his slave to death, without judge or jury, is
controlled by the self-interest of the owner who, of course, does not
recklessly destroy his own property. The slave-codes are no just
exponent of the actual state of things in slavery. For example,--by law
a master may not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week.
This has a barbarous look. But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of
the land you certainly would not be reminded of the "peck of corn,"
except by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below which if
an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be
prosecuted.
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