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
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness
with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife,
children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the
whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the
master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they
do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate
goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily,
usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites
in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and
sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well.
The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town,
visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of
collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted
slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the
capitalists in free society are to be put to work. The master labors for
the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on
his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere
exploitation.
It is objected that slavery permits or induces immorality and ignorance.
This is a mistake. The intercourse of the house-servants with the white
family, assimilates, in some degree, their state of information, and
their moral conduct, to that of the whites. The house-servants, by their
intercourse with the field hands, impart their knowledge to them. The
master enforces decent morality in all. Negroes are never ignorant of
the truths of Christianity, all speak intelligible English, and are
posted up in the ordinary occurrences of the times. The reports to the
British Parliament shew, that the agricultural and mining poor of
England scarce know the existence of God, do not speak intelligible
English, and are generally depraved and ignorant. They learn nothing by
intercourse with their superiors, as negroes do. They abuse wives and
children, because they have no masters to control them, and the men are
often dissipated and idle, leaving all the labor to be done by the women
and children--for the want of this same control.
Slavery, by separating the mass of the ignorant from each other, and
bringing them in contact and daily intercourse with the well-informed,
becomes an admirable educational system--no doubt a necessary one. By
subjecting them to the constant control and supervision of their
superiors, interested in enforcing morality, it becomes the best and
most efficient police system; so efficient, that the ancient Romans had
scarcely any criminal code whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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