"Not on my estates!" said papa, rousing himself again. "There is no selling and buying of the people there."
"Pete's wife was forcibly taken from him, papa, and then sent South."
"By Edwards. And the rest of the hands were in mortal fear of him; utterly cowed. They dared not move without his pleasure."
"Abuses," papa muttered; - "nothing to do with the system."
"What must the system be where such things are possible? where one such thing is possible? And oh, papa, they suffer! there is no such thing as real comfort of life; there is no scope or liberty for the smallest upward tendency. Nothing is their own, not their own time; they have no chance to be anything but inferior."
"They have all the essentials of comfortable living, and they are comfortable," said my father.
"Few people do think so," said papa. "It is a vice of humanity."
I was silent a little bit, and then I ventured to say, -
"Papa, the Lord Jesus loved them well enough to die for them."
"Well," said papa, rather growlingly, "what then?"
"I am thinking, what will He say to us for handling them so."
"Papa, I would not stop as long as there was anything more to be done."
"I suppose you would begin by setting them all free?"
"Wouldn't you wish it, papa, for yourself and me, if we were two of them? - and for mamma and Ransom, if they were two more?"
"You are mistaken in thinking it is a parallel case. They do not wish for liberty as we should."
"Then it only shows how much harm the want of liberty has done them already. But they wish for it quite enough, papa; quite enough. It breaks my heart to think how much they do wish for it."
"My child, you do not know what you are talking about!" papa answered; half worried, I thought, and half impatient. "In the first place, they would not be better off if they were set free; though you think they would; and in the second place, do you know how it would affect our own condition?"
"Papa," I said low, - "it has nothing to do with the question. I do not care."
"Daisy, understand. Instead of being well off, you would be poor; you would be poor. The Southern estates would be worth nothing without hands to cultivate them; and my Northern estates will go to your brother."
"I should never be rich in the way you think, papa."