This saintly Hopkins used to boast, that he was the best hand to manage a Negro in the county.

He whipped for the smallest offenses, by way of preventing the commission of large ones.
The reader might imagine a difficulty in finding faults enough for such frequent whipping.

But this is because you have no idea how easy a matter it is to offend a man who is on the look-out for offenses.

The man, unaccustomed to slaveholding, would be astonished to observe how many _foggable_ offenses there are in{201} the slaveholder's catalogue of crimes; and how easy it is to commit any one of them, even when the slave least intends it.

A slaveholder, bent on finding fault, will hatch up a dozen a day, if he chooses to do so, and each one of these shall be of a punishable description.