A FACT WITH A SHORT COMMENTARY. Nor many years ago, a slave was murdered near Woodville, Mississippi, under the following circumstances. The master's child went into the slave's hut and took a stool which belonged to the slave's child. The slave took away the stool and sent the white child home. The child ran crying to his father, and complained bitterly of the ill-treatment he had received in the hut. The father, in a passion, proceeded to the hut, threw the stool out of doors, and severely reprimanded the slave, threatening to flog him. The slave, who had never been flogged, declared he would not be, and fled. After being gone beyond reach, for a day or two, he returned to his master's door, and offered to work faithfully, as he ever had done, if he might not be flogged. His master refused this condition, and repeated his threat. "I have heard," said the slave, "that you have threatened to shoot me. If you do it, you must do it soon." On this, he turned upon his heel and ran. The master took down his double-barreled fowling-piece, and pursued. He presently discharged a load of shot from one barrel, which wounded the negro in the thigh, and brought him to the ground. He then walked deliberately up, and lodged the contents of the other barrel in his head, producing instant death. Of this crime there were no witnesses, at least, no white ones. The master, however, told the story himself, professing great regret. No legal proceedings were instituted against him, the public opinion being that he was sufficiently punished by the loss of his best slave, whom he valued at one thousand dollars. We have this fact from the lips of a gentleman who resided in Woodville. The planter is a respectable man by the name of Coon, and the statement can be more fully verified, if called in question. We have not quoted this story, however, as evidence of the peculiar cruelty of slaveholders. We believe that many, if pot most of them, would shudder at the thought of murdering a slave as much as ourselves. We wish only to make the fact a sort of text for a few comments, which would not lose much of their force even if the text should prove fictitious. 1. This master was probably a kind one. His slave had always lived with him and never been flogged. Hence, the slave had acquired some self-respect, and flogging was a disgrace, as well as a suffering, which he could not think of bearing. Kind treatment will infallibly produce some degree of self-respect on the part of the slave, and this self-respect will not well brook any arbitrary and unreasonable exercise of power. Hence, there is a strong motive against the kind treatment (by this, we mean, treating him like a man) of the slave. It tends to make difficulty in the management of the plantation-to make the master stand in some fear of the slave-to curtail his power, and make him responsible. It must be a bad system, which makes a kind and respectful treatment of the laborers by their employer dangerous. It may have been true, that the slave in question, by never being flogged, and by his great usefulness on the plantation, had grown so much a lord in his own hut, and so important among his fellow-slaves, that the master was troubled for his authority, and was glad of an occasion to humble the growing spirit of independence. We have heard kind masters lament their indulgence to their slaves as a weakness, ruinous to good discipline and the happiness of the slaves. 2. Any kind of government is a trial to the temper. Parents find their natural affection for their children none too strong to repress those outbreakings of passion called forth by perverse conduct. Now, think of the trial to which that man's temper is subjected, who holds by a power less restrained than the parent's, one hundred despised slaves. Every one of these beings thinks it is his interest to consult the wishes of his master as little as he can safely. God has not placed in the bosom of the slave that natural affection towards his master, which, in the child, prompts obedience to the parent. Hence, the master is destined to see in the slave, ever repeated proofs of perverseness, unfaithfulness, and what he thinks ingratitude. "Ah!" he exclaims in vexation of spirit, "here are a hundred of these people dependant upon me for every morsel of bread, and yet they show me by a thousand little mean tricks and provocations, daily, that they care not a straw what becomes of them or me. The more I indulge them, the less do I get for it." If it would be ten times too much for the temper of a common man to have the parental government of a hundred children, surely it must be a thousand times too much, to have the master's government of a hundred slaves. The mas ter who is not rendered fretful, passionate, and vindictive, must be more than human. The task may well be regarded as too hard for the temper of an angel. We speak, of course, of those masters who manage and reside on their own estates. With those who throw all care of their slaves upon the tender mercies of an overseer, it may be different. They may have the sweetest of tempers, but, alas! their poor slaves do not enjoy the benefit. We are aware we shall be told of the unlimited confidence that masters repose in long tried slaves, and of the joy and shouts of the whole plantation, when young master returns from the distant college. We know, too, that Nicholas and his brother potentates have their faithfu ministers-their Potemkins and their Metternichs--and the Russians, Turks, and Austrians, make the welkin ring with their joy, when some young potentate condescends to show them his precious self; but it may be doubted, whether they do not shout, drink, smoke, and carouse, as much for their own gratification as from genuine affection for their legiti mate sovereigns. Poor wretches, they are glad of a holiday. But be the fidelity real and the joy all sincere, it is proverbially certain, that all does not avail to blunt the thorns that make the wearing of their crowns a misery, nor to quell the mutinous passions which make the poor hearts of those potentates objects of pity. Now, if slavery is the very wet-nurse of vindictive passion, and if the provocations are incessant, ever fretting upon the galled spot-power being so slightly restrained-what wonder if passion should sometimes, yea, often, break forth into brutal cruelty, and even murder? Cain slew his own brother. The duellist, on the slightest provocation, seeks the lifeblood of an equal. Shall the master-the absolute owner of the property -on a greater provocation, stop short of the life of his slave? Common sense wants no such facts as that we have taken for a text, to prove the murderous tendency of slavery. 3. Running away is the unpardonable sin with slaveholders. Why should it not be? It is a denial, both theoretical and practical, of the master's right of property. It gives the lie direct, and before the world, to the master's assertion that the save is contented and happy.-No man would run from his happiness.—And, last, and worst of all, it sets to ali slaves an example of insurrection-of insurrection the more intolerably pernicious, because it is bloodless, and thereby adapted to excite no sympathy for the master except among his fellow slaveholders. Hence, if we look for terrible punishments anywhere in the system, we must find them here. The necessity is imperative and absolute. The door must be shut against DESERTION, or all is lost,-not only the property, but the character of the master, for what but grim tyranny could thus be left. alone in its glory? Thus, like those persons who tell one lie to hide an other, the masters may be-nay, must be, terribly cruel to hide their cruelty. Now, what sort of a system must it be, which reserves its severest penalty for the greatest virtue which can rationally be expected to grow under it: viz., the manly disposition of the slave to vindicate his own rights, with the least possible revenge for his wrongs? 4. The master, who murdered his slave, had no trial. This was perhaps extraordinary. But suppose he had been tried, found guilty of murder in the first degree, sentenced, and publicly executed, as he would have been, had his victim been a free white person. What would have been the effect? Obviously to make the slaves understand that they have rights, that the master in violating these rights does wrong, that they may in some cases resist the master's authority, successfully, through the master's fear of the law. The slaves would, of course, infer that in the case in question, the slave was in the right, and the master in the wrong. They are not dull to such lessons. Had it been the slave who murdered his master, he would certainly have been hung, and the slaves of all the neighboring plantations would have been collected to witness his death. And why? Because they would thereby learn a moral lesson-they would make a self-application. It would have a very different effect upon the discipline of the plantations from the hanging of the master. If the fiction that "the king can do no wrong," is an important lesson for the subjects of monarchy, why should not the like deception be still more useful on a plantation? There may have been, and we think there have been, some instances of the hanging of masters for the murder of their slaves, but they were obviously dangerous to plantation discipline, and though they have been claimed and quoted for the perverse purpose of defending slavery, yet they deserve to be recorded as among the noblest proofs of the dignity of human nature-of that constitutional idea of justice, which even long habits of wrong-doing cannot wholly erase from the soul. What sort of a system, let us ask again, must that be, which strongly tempts to a partial administration of the laws for the protection of life, even admitting what is far from being true, that the laws themselves are impartial? Alas! the testimony of no colored man, bond or free, can anywhere be legally received against a white man; and if it could, the punishment of the master, for a crime committed on his own slave and property, would be at open war with that whole system of discipline, which is called "the peculiar policy of the South!" 5. It may seem astonishing, that any community of men should be so hardened, as to think the murder of a fellow-man amply punished by a pecuniary fine,-of a laborer, by the loss of his services. But let us examine the matter. If you narrate to a company of pedagogues a case of the cruel infliction of the rod, whose conduct will they naturally incline to extenuate? That of the culprit, or of the master? We say there is an esprit du corps, a spirit of the class, among the schoolmasters, which stimulates them to honor their profession, by taking the part of its members. This spirit leads them naturally and almost inevitably to sympathize with the master rather than with the scholar, at least, in all not very flagrant cases. But if, in the mild and beneficent institutions of society, the judgment of men is liable to be warped, and their sympathy to be perverted, how much more in the harsh system of domestic bondage, where a common avarice is to be added to the esprit du corps, which takes sympathy from the slave and gives it to the master. And yet another and more fearful element is to be added-it is the common danger-common not only to the slaveholders, but to all the whites. The slaves are regarded, if they are not in reality, the "jacobins of the south,” whose highest desires and interests meet in a successful revolution. For protection from such a catastrophe, the whites rely, not upon nature or law, but upon power. There is, therefore, no denying the danger. We might with almost as much rease expect soldiers to sympathize with their ene mies, as the whites of a slaveholding community, with the slaves. If a |