Let all cruelty be punished; let all abuse of power be restrained; but to abolish the relation of master and slave, because there are bad masters and ill-treated slaves, would not be a whit wiser than to abolish marriage, because there are brutal husbands and murdered wives.
"Yet, surely, it will be said, it must be admitted, after all, that slavery is an evil.

Yes, certainly, it is an evil; but in the same sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an evil.

To gain one's bread by the sweat of one's brow, is a curse.

But it is a curse attended with a blessing.

It is an evil that shuts out a greater evil.