Cannibals all! or, Slaves without mastersFitzhugh, George
General
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Fitzhugh, George
Slave labor; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Working class
Irishmen, who are as intellectual a race of men as any in all Europe,
have lost infinitely in physical comfort, and gained nothing in morals
or in mind by liberty, what will it avail negroes? Let Hayti and Jamaica
answer. But Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Englishmen, we mean the masses, the
proletariat, have lost as much by emancipation as Irishmen. History and
statistics, the jails, the gallows, and the poor-house tell the same sad
tale everywhere. We would be willing, if necessary, to rest the complete
justification of negro slavery on this single extract:
[From the Edinburgh Review, 1846.]
The moral and domestic feelings of the slave are sacrificed, and
his intellect is stunted; but in respect of his physical condition
he may be a gainer. "It is necessary," says Aristotle, in his
celebrated justification of slavery, "that those who cannot exist
separately should live together. he who is capable of foreseeing
by his intellect, is naturally a master; he who is able to execute
with his body what another contrives, is naturally a slave:
wherefore the interest of the master and slave is one." There is a
certain degree of force in this argument, if it is limited to the
economical relations of the two parties. It is the interest of the
master to maintain his slave in good working order. In general,
therefore, he is comparatively well fed, clothed and lodged; his
physical wants are provided for; his food descends into his mouth
like the manna in the wilderness; he is clothed like the lilies of
the field; he has no thought or care for the morrow. Although
complaints were made of insufficient food and overwork, the
arguments against negro slavery in our West India colonies were
founded, mainly, on the necessity of constant punishment--on the
_driving system_, as it was called--and the cruelty of the
inflictions. The Report of the French Commission, framed by the
Due de Broglie, which recommended the gradual abolition of
slavery, likewise bears testimony to the excellent physical
condition of the slaves in the French colonies. It is on account
of the advantages which may belong to dependence upon a wealthy
lord, as compared with a needy independence, that the slave in
Menander exclaims, that "it is better to obtain a good master,
than to live meanly and wretchedly as a freeman." So the
Rhetorician Libanus, who lived in the fourth century, in a
declamation entitled a _Vituperation of Poverty_, after having
enumerated the privations and sufferings which fall to the lot of
the poor freeman, proceeds thus:--"None of these evils belong to
slavery. The slave sleeps at his ease, being fed by the cares of
his master, and supplied with all the other things needful for his
body. But the poor freeman is constantly awake, seeking the means
of subsistence, and subjected to the severe dominion of want which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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