"There is certainly," I said, "a wide difference between Shaler's view of the relation of the master to his laborers and Harvey's. Shaler believed that these dependent beings were a charge intrusted to him by their Maker and his. As unto him more had been given than unto them, of him, he knew, more would be required. Harvey supposes that these inferior creatures have been given to him for his use. His part is to supply them with sustenance, and to show them so much of kindness and indulgence as is consistent with keeping them in the condition to which they have been called; theirs is to serve him with all their soul and all their strength, to render him an unqualified obedience, to subordinate even the most sacred ties of nature to their attachment to him. Here is, indeed, no danger to slavery. Ameliorations, under such conditions, fortify instead of undermining it. The sight of an apparent well-being in this state pacifies uneasy consciences in the master-class; while the slave, subjugated by ideas instilled from infancy, not less than by the inexorable material force which incloses him, finds even his own conscience enlisted in his oppressor's service, steeled and armed against himself." "You wrong Frank Harvey, if you suppose he allows his slaves a mere animal support; he has them taught what is needful for them to know." "He has them taught just so much as shall increase their usefulness to him, without giving them a dangerous self-reliance." "Precisely, so far as secular knowledge is concerned. And it is possible he may be right in view of their interests as well as of his own. But he allows them religious instruction to any extent,--takes care that they have it." "The religious instruction allowed by Harvey, and by other humane slaveholders who maintain the lawfulness of slavery, inculcates the service of the earthly master as the fulfilment of the practical service of God on earth. For the rest, the slaves are allowed to look forward to another world, to which this life is a sorrowful passage,--whose toils, pains, and privations, however unnecessary and resultless, are, if only passively accepted, to be compensated by proportionate enjoyments." "This constitutes, then, the whole of the much talked-of religion of your negro Christians?" "Of too many; but the promise, 'Ask, and ye shall receive,' was made to them as to all. Even to the slave-cabin has been sent the Comforter who teacheth all things. But we were speaking not so much of the religion of the slaves as of the religious instruction given or allowed them by their masters. It is necessarily circumscribed, as I have told you." "What was the creed inculcated upon Colonel Shaler's protégés?"