If we do not like our servants or apprentices, we can get rid of them." "Then," said I, "you surely ought to pity those who are bound to their slaves and have to put up with a thousand things which you say we can escape by changing our help." "But," said he, "can they not sell off their slaves when they please ?" "Suppose, however," said I, "that they happen to be humane, as Mr.North is, and as we all are in the Free States! and that they are unwilling to turn off a poor helpless creature for her faults, to be sold, and to go they know not where!" "Slavery," said Mr.North, "is surely a great curse.

I am so glad that I live under free institutions." "Who made us to differ from the South in this respect?
How came those blacks there?
Whose ships, whose money, imported them?
You remember that it was by the votes of Free States, that the importation of slaves was continued for eight years beyond the time when the Southern States had voted in the Convention that it should cease.

And now what would you have the South do with the slaves, to-day ?" "Set them all free," said he, "'break every yoke; proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound.'" "Allow me," said I, "to smile at your simplicity, for you are very child-like, not to say childish, in your feelings.

You would have the colored people universally go free.

Do you really think that Kate is worse off in being what you call a slave, than that young, free black woman who keeps a stall and sells verses and knives near our Park ?" "O dear sir," said he, "liberty is a priceless boon; liberty"-- "Liberty to what ?" said I.
"Why," said he, "liberty not to be sold, nor to be beaten, nor to be subject to the wicked passions of a master." "Would you rather," said I, "have your daughter a servant in a Southern family, brought up as a playmate with the children, a sharer in many of their gifts, a partner with their parents, as the children grew up, in the pride and joy of the parents, an honored member of the wedding party when a daughter is married, one of the principal mourners when the bride departs, identified with the history of the family, provided for in the will, a support guaranteed to her by law in sickness and old age, and that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her owner's home, and when the parents die, if she survives, taken by some branch of the family or neighbor from regard to her and to them; her moral and religious character improved under their training, a respectable standing in society conferred upon her by her connection with them, her religious privileges sacredly secured to her, any insult redressed as though it were the family's personal affair; she a partaker of their food and of all their comforts, and followed to her grave with respect and love; or, for the sake of 'priceless liberty,' 'heaven's best gift to man,' would you prefer to see her seated under the iron fence of a park, an old umbrella tied to the pickets for her shelter, and she, in rain and sunshine, selling 'Old Dan Tucker,' 'Jim Crow, Illustrated,' and pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where?
Which lot would you choose for a child?
Which is best for this world and the next?
In one case, she is 'owned,' she is 'a slave;' and in the other, she is a free woman." "You have no right," said he, with some warmth, "to take the best condition in slavery, and the very worst in freedom, and compel me to choose." "'Best condition in slavery!'" said I; "is there any 'best' in being a slave, in not being free?
Does it admit of degrees?
Is not being 'owned' such a curse, such an unmixed iniquity in its essence, that to compare its best estate with the worst in freedom, is like comparing the best devil with the most inferior saint?
Is not a devil's nature incapable of comparison as good, better, best, with anything which is not, in its nature, devilish?
According to your conversation just now, it seemed as though being 'owned' always implied an unmitigated transgression; and now when I inquire whether you would prefer degradation to the iniquity of being 'owned' in comfort and usefulness, respectability and happiness, you shrink from the question.