"If this be true at all, it is true as regards the able-bodied hired
man only. But take into the account children and women, those, for
example, that work naked in coal-mines, or wives whose sufferings
from the brutal treatment of husbands daily fill the reports of
police courts; take these into the reckoning, and the difference in
the consequences of abused power will be very small. The negro-slave
is as thoroughly protected as any laborer in Europe. He is protected
from every other man's wrong-doing by the ready interference of his
master; he is guarded from the master's abuse by the laws of the
land, and a vigilant, earnest public opinion. Let all cruelty be
punished; let all abuse of power be restrained; but to abolish the
relation of master and slave, because there are bad masters and
ill-treated slaves, would not be a whit wiser than to abolish
marriage, because there are brutal husbands and murdered wives.
"Yet, surely, it will be said, it must be admitted, after all, that
slavery is an evil. Yes, certainly, it is an evil; but in the same
sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an evil.
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