The indolence and disorderly conduct of slaves, together with their frequent elopements, occasion much uneasiness to their holders. It is not uncommon to hear the master, in ill humour, say that he wishes there was not a slave in the country; but the man who is tenacious of this sort of stock, or who purchases it at a high price, will always find it difficult to convince other people, that his pretensions to humanity towards slaves are in earnest. Some say that the fault is with the British, who first introduced them. Others reprobate the practice; but affirm that, while the laws of the country permit it, and while slaves must be somewhere, _we may have them as well as our neighbours_; and there are a few who vindicate both principle and practice, by declaring, that the negro is a being of an inferior species formed for servitude: and allege that slave-keeping has the divine sanction, as in the case of the Jews. Negroes, even in America, are said to be more prolific than the white variety of the species. They do not delay marriage because they are not in possession of lands, slaves, horses, and the other essentials of their masters: nor does the support of {116} their progeny give them much concern; the coloured children being held as the property of the owner of the mother. By him they are reared with more or less tenderness, or sold to another, as he thinks fit. The treatment of slaves is understood to be much milder in Kentucky than in the south-easterly part of the Union, where provisions are dearer, and blacks sell at a lower price. At Lexington slaves are well fed, and have a healthy appearance, and the greater part of them are well clothed. Some of the abettors of the system assert, that negroes are happier here than the free poor of other countries; but there are several circumstances which may be opposed to this position. The happy Kentuckian slave lives under the danger of being cow-hided, (a term signifying a whipping, with a stripe of half tanned leather, which is twisted into the form of a tapered switch of a very rigid texture,) for the slightest real or imaginary offence. His evidence is not received in court when he is opposed to a white man. Thus he has not the protection of the law, and less hope of bettering his condition. The practice disregards the strongest ties of kindred and of nature. The husband is torn from the wife, and the child from the parent, to be sold into an unhealthy region, where a more galling yoke is imposed. He must not eat nor even converse in the room where white men are. Every degrading mark is set upon him. While white men ransack the Christian volume, that they may find fit names to their children, heathenish appellations, such as Pompey, Nero, &c. usually given to dogs, are bestowed on the coloured infant. The ordinary names of dogs and horses, the days of the week, and the months of the year, seem now exhausted in the negro nomenclature.