Let us place along side of this a view of the condition of slave labor, as ascertained by observation, and by the laws that determine that condition.
Of slave labor then, as of free labor, it may be said, that its wages are food and raiment for the laborer of to-day, and for those future laborers who are rising up to supply the future demand. Thus much they have in common. I shall not pretend to point out all the differences between the two, but shall remark on some of the most obvious and important.
To the slave these wages are paid in kind, and can therefore be always made precisely adequate, and no more. To the free man they are paid in money, and may become deficient or superfluous, from a state of scarcity or abundance. In the last case a slight advantage is afforded to those who need it least; in the first a ruinous loss is sustained by those least able to bear it.
To the slave, his due proportion of the common fund, paid to labor as a whole, is measured out with unerring accuracy. Among free laborers, some receive too much, and others, in a like degree, too little. For be it remembered, that the average wages of free labor are given, not merely as the price of the labor of the day, but also to indemnify the daily expense of producing that amount of future labor, which the future demand is to render necessary. He therefore who labors only, but rears no children, receives more than his just share. He defrauds the concern, by drawing from the common income a portion he has not earned; while others, whom nature has burdened with more than the due proportion of children, earn more than they receive, and suffer for want of the necessaries of life. This is historically as well as theoretically true.
The slave is said to labor, uncheered by hope. This may be so. To those who know him best, he certainly seems a stranger to despair. Metaphysicians, I think, tell us that _hope will not be without its objects_. But it must be confessed there are things which the slave cannot hope for, though the freeman may. On the other hand, he is free from many anxieties to which the freeman is exposed. In this sense of security he has something which may well be offset against the freeman's hopes, and which some (and they not the least wise) may deem a fair equivalent to men of sordid habits and untaught minds; and such are the great body of laborers, bond or free.