Public opinion is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it can reach them; but there are certain secluded and out-of-the-way places, even in the state of Maryland, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public sentiment--where{48} slavery, wrapt in its own congenial, midnight darkness, _can_, and _does_, develop all its malign and shocking characteristics; where it can be indecent without shame, cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear of exposure.
Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place, is the "home plantation" of Col.

Edward Lloyd, on the Eastern Shore, Maryland.

It is far away from all the great thoroughfares, and is proximate to no town or village.

There is neither school-house, nor town-house in its neighborhood.

The school-house is unnecessary, for there are no children to go to school.