But putting together, respectively, all the advantages and the
disadvantages of our slaves, he who looks upon a population with
enlarged views of liabilities and of the inevitable results in the
working of different schemes of labor, and is not so weak or morbid as
to dwell inordinately on real and imaginary wrongs and miseries, which,
after all, if real, are compensated for by advantages or surpassed by
aggregated smaller evils in other conditions, must admit that, the
colored people being here, their being owned is the very best possible
thing for their protection, and the surest guarantee against all their
liabilities to want in hard times, sickness, and old age.
"Speaking of hard times leads me to say, that if you could put four
millions of laboring people in the Free States, for a winter or during
commercial distresses and the stagnation of every kind of business, in a
position where, while they were still active and useful, a single
thought or care about their sustenance would not visit them, you would
be deemed a philanthropist and public benefactor. There will not be the
same number of people in the laboring class throughout our land next
winter, in any one section, whose comfort and happiness will exceed that
of our slaves.
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