It will of course be asserted that the people would not be contented as slaves, but it is only to make a state inevitable, and humanity is soon reconciled to it, as we are to death, governments, and the income-tax. Besides, what is liberty? a word now almost forgotten; a battle sound used to juggle men in every age and country; in Greece, Rome, and America, the war-cry of slaves to fight for the liberty of slavery. Must we, then, ever remain the tools of words; reject all the true advantages of slavery because we cannot bear the name, and take all its evils, and more, because we wish to renounce the sound? What are soldiers and sailors but bondsmen? Indeed, they are a happy specimen of slavery; well fed, clad, and tended; with plenty of leisure and repose. Why, then, should they be happier than the peasant, who pines away his dreary existence on bread and potatoes and water? What is the convict but a slave, who by his crimes has earned his right to be kept well and safe from the elements and want? We reward the criminal with slavery and competence, and leave the honest man to liberty and want. If, indeed, the old noble cry of "Liberty _and Beer_" could be realized, then it were vain to urge my discovery; but as Englishmen, in proportion as they have gained their liberty, have lost their beer, it behooves us to see whether they had not better hasten back to that state, when inventoried with their masters' swine they shared also their superfluities. CHAPTER XVII. THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON SOUTHERN SLAVERY.