choose and will--are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter;
possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable
than their fullest enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of ragged
destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of
existence--ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give
up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult
struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate
dependance of the slave: the indignation with which he would spurn the
offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that
his birthright as a man is more precious to him yet than the mess of
pottage for which he is told to exchange it because he is starving.

Of course the reverse alternative cannot be offered to the slaves, for
at the very word the riches of those who own them would make themselves
wings and flee away. But I do not admit the comparison between your
slaves and even the lowest class of European free labourers, for the
former are _allowed_ the exercise of no faculties but those which they
enjoy in common with the brutes that perish. The just comparison is
between the slaves and the useful animals to whose level your laws
reduce them; and I will acknowledge that the slaves of a kind owner may
be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful
master; but the latter condition--i.e. that of happiness--must again
depend upon the complete perfection of their moral and mental
degradation. Mr. ----, in his letter, maintains that they _are_ an
inferior race, and, compared with the whites, '_animals_, incapable of
mental culture and moral improvement:' to this I can only reply, that if
they are incapable of profiting by instruction, I do not see the
necessity for laws inflicting heavy penalties on those who offer it to
them. If they really are brutish, witless, dull, and devoid of capacity
for progress, where lies the _danger_ which is constantly insisted upon