let them dwell; and if thou knowest any men of activity
among them, then make them rulers over my cattle."[5]

I ask those people who treat us so _well_, Oh! I ask them, where is
the most barren spot of land which they have given unto us? Israel had
the most fertile land in all Egypt. Need I mention the very notorious
fact, that I have known a poor man of color, who labored night and
day, to acquire a little money, and having acquired it, he vested it
in a small piece of land, and got him a house erected thereon, and
having paid for the whole, he moved his family into it, where he was
suffered to remain but nine months, when he was cheated out of his
property by a white man, and driven out of door!--And is not this the
case generally? Can a man of color buy a piece of land and keep it
peaceably? Will not some white man try to get it from him even if it
is in a _mud hole_? I need not comment any farther on a subject, which
all, both black and white, will readily admit. But I must, really,
observe that in this very city, when a man of color dies, if he owned
any real estate it must generally fall into the hands of some white
person. The wife and children of the deceased may weep and lament if
they please, but the estate will be kept snug enough by its white
possessors.

But to prove farther that the condition of the Israelites was better
under the Egyptians than ours is under the whites. I call upon the
professing christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the
very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or
profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the
Egyptians heaped the _insupportable insult_ upon the children of
Israel by telling them that they were not of the _human family_. Can
the whites deny this charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to