"Why, father, I am told that the Virginia negroes, like our faith-mongers, fond of ease and glad of soft substitutes to hard duties, are continually sighing for freedom; '_O if they had but freedom! if they had but freedom! how happy should they be! They should not then be obliged to work any more. Freedom would do every thing for them. Freedom would spread soft beds for them, and heap their tables with roast pigs, squealing out, 'come and eat me.' Freedom would give them fine jackets, and rivers of grog, and mountains of segars and tobacco, without their sweating for it_.' Well, by and by, they get their freedom; perhaps by running away from their masters. And now see what great things has freedom done for them. Why, as it is out of the question to think of _work_ now they are _free_, they must give themselves up like gentlemen, to visiting, sleeping, and pastime. In a little time the curses of hunger and nakedness drive them to stealing and house-breaking, for which their backs are ploughed up at whipping-posts, or their necks snapped under the gallows! and all this because they must needs live easier than by honest labour, which would have crowned their days with character and comfort. So, father, it is, most exactly so it is, with too many of our FAITH-MONGERS. They have not courage to practise those exalted virtues that would give them the moral likeness of the Deity. Oh no: they must get to heaven in some easier way. They have heard great things of faith. Faith, they are told, has done wonders for other people; why not for them? Accordingly they fall to work and after many a hard throe of fanaticism, they conceit they have got faith sure enough. And now they are happy. Like the poor Virginia negroes, they are clear of all _moral working now_: thank God they can get to heaven without it; yes, and may take some indulgences, by the way, into the bargain. If, as jovial fellows, they should waste their time and family substance in drinking rum and smoking tobacco, where's the harm, _an't they sound believers_? If they should, as _merchants_, sand their sugar, or water their molasses, what great matter is that? Don't they keep up family prayer? If, as men of HONOUR, they should accept a challenge, and receive a shot in a duel, what of that? They have only to send for a priest, and take the sacrament. Thus, father, as freedom has proved the ruin of many a lazy Virginian negro, so I am afraid that such faith as this has made many an hypocritical christian ten times more a child of the devil than he was before."