"
"Why so?" inquired Mr. North.
"The slaves are not treated as hired horses are liable to be treated," I
replied. "We know how a man is likely to treat his own horse, compared
with the horse which he hires. Men nurse their slaves when they are
sick; they provide for them when they are old. By their care and
responsibility for them, and in relieving them from responsibility, they
pay them wages whose market-value, if it could be reckoned in dollars,
would be higher wages than are paid to the same class of laborers in the
land. There are not four millions of the lower class of the laboring
people in any one district of the earth whose condition is to be
compared with that of the Southern slaves for comfort and happiness."
"I presume," said Mrs. North, "that you would not regard exemption from
responsibility as in itself a blessing. You know how it educates us, how
it sharpens the faculties, how it makes a man more of a man; therefore
is it, after all, any kindness to the slaves, that they are relieved
from responsibility?"
"I thank you," said I, "for that question. Does it concern us that our
domestic servants are relieved, for the time, of all responsibility for
house-rent, taxes, political duties?
"Every condition of poverty and toil has its peculiar hardships and
sorrows.
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