In an Essay on the "improvement of negroes on plantations," by Rev.
Thomas S. Clay, a slaveholder of Bryan county, Georgia, and Printed at
the request of the Georgia Presbytery, in 1833, we are told "that the
present economy of the slave system is _to get all you can_ from the
slave, and give him in return _as little as will barely support him in a
working condition_!" Here, in a few words, the whole enormity of slavery
is exposed to view: "to _get all you can_ from the slave"--by means of
whips and forks and irons--by every device for torturing the body,
without destroying its capability of labor; and in return give him as
little of his coarse fare as will keep him, like a mere beast of burden,
in a "_working condition_;" this is slavery, as explained by the
slaveholder himself. Mr. Clay further says: "_Offences against the
master_ are more severely punished than violations of the law of God, a
fault which affects the slave's personal character a good deal. As
examples we may notice, that _running away_ is more severely punished
than adultery." "He (the slave) only knows his master as lawgiver and
executioner, and the _sole object of punishment_ held up to his view, is
to make him _a more obedient and profitable slave_."

Hon. W.B. Seabrook, in an address before the Agricultural Society of St.
John's, Colleton, published by order of the Society, at Charleston, in
1834, after stating that "as Slavery exists in South Carolina, the
action of the citizens should rigidly conform to that state of things:"
and, that "no _abstract opinions of the rights of man_ should be allowed
in any instance to modify the _police system of a plantation_," proceeds
as follows. "_He_ (the slave) _should be practically treated as a
slave_; and thoroughly taught the true cardinal principle on which our
peculiar institutions are founded, viz.; that to his owner he is bound
by the law of God and man; and that no human authority can sever the
link which unites them. The great aim of the slaveholder, then, should