“What else could you expect, Mr. Onslow? Take a case, publicly vouched for as true. Not long since a New York capitalist purchased mineral lands in Virginia, with a view to working them. He went on the ground and hired some of the white inhabitants of the neighborhood as laborers. All promised well, when lo! a committee of slaveholders, headed by one Jenkins,[15] waited on him, and told him he must discharge his hands and hire _slaves_. The white laborers offered to work at reduced wages rather than give up their employment, but they were overawed, and their employer was compelled by the slave despots to abandon his undertaking and return to a State where white laborers have rights.” “And yet,” said Onslow, “there are politicians who try to persuade the people that the enslaving of a black man removes him from competition with white labor; whereas the direct effect of slavery is to give to slaveholders the monopoly and control of the most desirable kinds of labor, and to enable them to degrade and impoverish the white laboring man!” Here the furious ringing of a bell called the gentlemen to dinner. CHAPTER XI. MR. ONSLOW SPEAKS HIS MIND. “How faint through din of merchandise And count of gain Has seemed to us the captive’s cries! How far away the tears and sighs Of souls in pain!” _Whittier._ An opportunity for resuming the conversation did not occur till long after sundown, and when many of the passengers were retiring to bed. “I have heard, Mr. Onslow,” said Vance, “that since your removal to Texas you have liberated your slaves.” “You have been rightly informed,” replied Onslow. “And how did they succeed as freedmen?” “Two thirds of them poorly, the remaining third well.” “Does not such a fact rather bear against emancipation, and in favor of slavery?” “Quite the contrary. I am aware that the enthusiastic Mr. Ruskin maintains that slavery is ‘not a political institution at all, but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large portion of the human race.’ But as his theory would involve the enslaving of white men as well as black, I think we may dismiss it as the sportive extravagance of one better qualified to dogmatize than argue.” “But is he not right in the application of his theory to the black race?” “Far from it. Look at the white men you and I knew some twenty-five years ago. How many of them have turned out sots, gluttons, thieves, incapables! Shall the thrifty and wise, therefore, enslave the imprudent and foolish? Assuredly not, whatever such clever men as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Thomas Carlyle may say in extenuation of such a proceeding.” “Do not escaped or emancipated negroes often voluntarily return to slavery?”