"Cattle are fixed capital, and so are slaves: But slaves differ from cattle on the one hand, in yielding (from internal opposition) a less return for their maintenance; and from free laborers on the other hand, in not being acted upon by the inducements which stimulate production as an effort of mind as well as of body. In all three cases the labor is purchased. In free laborers and cattle, all the faculties work together, and to advantage; in the slave they are opposed; and therefore he is, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, the least valuable of the three. The negroes _can_ invent and improve--witness their ingenuity in their dwellings, and their skill in certain of their sports; but their masters will never possess their faculties, though they have purchased their limbs. Our true policy would be to divide the work of the slave between the ox and the hired laborer; we should get more out of the sinews of the one and the soul of the other, than the produce of double the number of slaves." As a matter of humanity, let it be remembered that men having more _reason_ than brutes, must be treated with much greater severity, in order to keep them in a state of abject submission. It seems unnecessary to say that what is unjust and unmerciful, can never be expedient; yet men often write, talk, and act, as if they either forgot this truth, or doubted it. There is genuine wisdom in the following remark, extracted from the petition of Cambridge University to the Parliament of England, on the subject of slavery: "A firm belief in the Providence of a benevolent Creator assures us that no system, founded on the oppression of one part of mankind, _can_ be beneficial to another." But the tolerator of slavery will say, "No doubt the system is an evil; but we are not to blame for it; we received it from our English ancestors. It is a lamentable _necessity_;--we cannot do it away if we would:--insurrections would be the inevitable result of any attempt to remove it"--and having quieted their consciences by the use of the word _lamentable_, they think no more upon the subject. These assertions have been so often, and so dogmatically repeated, that many truly kind-hearted people have believed there was some truth in them. I myself, (may God forgive me for it!) have often, in thoughtless ignorance, made the same remarks. An impartial and careful examination has led me to the conviction that slavery causes insurrections, while emancipation prevents them.