"This must belong to Miss Clara," said Vance, "for it bears the initials C. A. B."

The mother took it and fixed it in the little dimity pelisse which the child wore.

Hattie now offered to receive Miss Clara from Vance's arms; but, with an utterance and gesture of remonstrance, the child signified she did not choose to be parted without a kiss; so he bent down and kissed her, while she threw her little arms about his neck. Then seeing the boy, who felt like a culprit for chasing her, she called him to her and gave him absolution by the same token. Thanking Vance for his service, Mr. Ber wick walked away with Leonora.

"That's a noble boy of yours, sir," said Vance, addressing himself to Mr. Onslow.

All the father's displeasure vanished with the compliment, and he replied, "Yes, Robert is a noble boy; that's the true word for him."

"I fear," resumed Vance, "I gave you some cause just now to form a bad opinion of me because of my conduct to one of the waiters."

"To be frank,” replied Onslow, "I did feel surprise that you should take not only the strong side, but the wrong one."

"Mr. Onslow, did you ever read Parnell's poem of the 'Hermit'?"

"Yes, it was one of the favorites of my youth."

"And do you remember how many things seemed wrong to the hermit that he afterwards found to be right?"

"I perceive the drift of your allusion, sir," returned Onslow; "but I am puzzled, nevertheless."

66

Perhaps one of these days you will be enlightened." Then, changing the subject, Vance remarked, "How do you succeed in Texas in your attempt to substitute free labor for that of slaves?"

66

My success has been all I could have hoped; but the more successful I am, the more imminent is my failure."

66

'Why so? That sounds like a paradox.”

"The rich slave-owners look with fear and dislike on my experiment."

"What else could you expect, Mr. Onslow? Take a case,

publicly vouched for as true. Not long since a New York capitalist purchased mineral lands in Virginia, with a view to working them. He went on the ground and hired some of the white inhabitants of the neighborhood as laborers. All promised well, when lo! a committee of slaveholders, headed by one Jenkins,* waited on him, and told him he must discharge his hands and hire slaves. The white laborers offered to work at reduced wages rather than give up their employment, but they were overawed, and their employer was compelled by the slave despots to abandon his undertaking and return to a State where white laborers have rights."

"And yet," said Onslow, "there are politicians who try to persuade the people that the enslaving of a black man removes him from competition with white labor; whereas the direct effect of slavery is to give to slaveholders the monopoly and control of the most desirable kinds of labor, and to enable them to degrade and impoverish the white laboring man!"

Here the furious ringing of a bell called the gentlemen to dinner.

* Afterwards the notorious proslavery guerilla leader in Virginia.

A

CHAPTER XI.

MR. ONSLOW SPEAKS HIS MIND.

"How faint through din of merchandise
And count of gain

Has seemed to us the captive's cries!

How far away the tears and sighs

Of souls in pain!"

Whittier.

N opportunity for resuming the conversation did not occur till long after sundown, and when many of the passengers were retiring to bed.

"I have heard, Mr. Onslow," said Vance, "that since your removal to Texas you have liberated your slaves." "You have been rightly informed,” replied Onslow. "And how did they succeed as freedmen?"

"Two thirds of them poorly, the remaining third well." "Does not such a fact rather bear against emancipation, and in favor of slavery?"

"Quite the contrary. I am aware that the enthusiastic Mr. Ruskin maintains that slavery is 'not a political institution at all, but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large portion of the human race.' But as his theory would involve the enslaving of white men as well as black, I think we may dismiss it as the sportive extravagance of one better qualified to dogmatize than argue.”

"But is he not right in the application of his theory to the black race?"

"Far from it. Look at the white men you and I knew some twenty-five years ago. How many of them have turned out sots, gluttons, thieves, incapables! Shall the thrifty and wise, therefore, enslave the imprudent and foolish? Assuredly not, whatever such clever men as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Thomas Carlyle may say in extenuation of such a proceeding." "Do not escaped or emancipated negroes often voluntarily return to slavery?"

"Not often, but occasionally; and so occasionally a white man commits an offence in order that he may be put in the penitentiary. A poor negro is emancipated or escapes. He goes to Philadelphia or New York, and has a hard time getting his grub. In a year or two he drifts back to his old master's plantation, anxious to be received again by one who can insure to him his rations of mush; and so he declares there's no place like 'old Virginny for a nigger.' Then what peans go up in behalf of the patriarchal system! What a conclusive argument this that 'niggers will be niggers,' and that slavery is right and holy! Slave-drivers catch at the instance to stiffen up their consciences, and to stifle that inner voice that is perpetually telling them (in spite of the assurances of bishops, clergymen, and literary dilettanti to the contrary) that slavery is a violation of justice and of that law of God written on the heart and formulized by Christ, that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and that therefore liberty is the God-given right of every innocent and able-minded man. Instances like that I have supposed, instead of being a palliation of slavery, are to my mind new evidences of its utter sinfulness. A system that can so degrade humanity as to make a man covet repression or extinction for his manhood must be devilish indeed."

"But, Mr. Onslow, do not statistics prove that the blacks increase and multiply much more in a state of slavery than in any other? Is not that a proof they are well treated and happy?"

"That is the most hideous argument yet in favor of the system. In slavery women are stimulated by the beastly ambition of contending which shall bear 'the most little nigs for massa'! Among these poor creatures the diseases consequent upon too frequent child-bearing are dreadfully prevalent. Surely the welfare of a people must be measured, not by the mere amount of animal contentment or of rapid breeding with which they can be credited, but by the sum of manly acting and thinking they can show. A whole race of human beings is not created merely to eat mush, hoe in cotton-fields, and procreate slaves. The example of one such escaped slave as Frederick Douglas shows that the blacks are capable of as high a civilization as the whites."

"Do they not seem to you rather feeble in the moral faculty?"

"No more feeble than any race would be, treated as they have been. The other day there fell into my hands a volume of sermons for pious slaveholders to preach to their slaves. It is from the pen of the excellent Bishop Meade of Virginia. The Bishop says to poor Cuffee: 'Your bodies, you know, are not your own; they are at the disposal of those you belong to; but your precious souls are still your own?' What impious cajolery is this? The master has an unlimited, irresponsible power over the slave, from childhood up, can force him to act as he wills, however conscience may protest! The slave may

be compelled to commit crimes or to reconcile himself to wrongs, familiarity with which may render his soul, like his body, the mere unreasoning, impassive tool of his master. And yet a bishop is found to try to cozen Cuffee out of the little common sense slavery may have left him, by telling him he is responsible for that soul, which may be stunted, soiled, perverted in any way avarice or power may choose."

66

Well, Mr. Onslow, will you deny that slavery has an ennobling effect in educating a chivalrous, brave, hospitable aristocracy of whites, untainted by those meannesses which are engendered by the greed of gain in trading communities?"

"I will not deny," replied Onslow, "that the habit of irresponsible command may develop certain qualities, sometimes good, sometimes bad, in the slave-driver; and so the exercise of the lash by the overseer may develop the extensor muscles of the arm; but the evils to the whites from slavery far, far outbalance the benefits. First, there are the five millions of mean, non-slaveholding whites. These the system has reduced to a condition below that of the slave himself, in many cases. Slavery becomes at once their curse and their infatuation. fascinates while it crushes them; it drugs and stupefies while it robs and degrades."

It

"But may we not claim advantages from the system for the few, for the upper three hundred thousand?"

"That depends on what you may esteem advantages. Can an injustice be an advantage to the perpetrator? The man who betrays a moneyed trust, and removes to Europe with his