Before the holidays, these are pleasures in prospect; after the holidays, they become pleasures of memory, and they serve to keep out thoughts and wishes of a more dangerous character.

Were slaveholders at once to abandon the practice of allowing their slaves these liberties, periodically, and to keep them, the year round, closely confined to the narrow circle of their homes, I doubt not that the south would blaze with insurrections.

These holidays are conductors or safety valves to carry off the explosive elements inseparable from the human mind, when reduced to the condition of slavery.

But for these, the rigors of bondage would become too severe for endurance, and the slave would be forced up to dangerous desperation.

Woe to the slaveholder when he undertakes to hinder or to prevent the operation of these electric conductors.