Slave Luxuries (Essay)

Slave Luxuries (Essay)

I BELIEVE it is Addison who declared, in one of his essays, that the sight of a luxuriously spread table, always exhibited to his imagination, the sight of innumerable diseases lying in ambush among the dishes. An idea, somewhat similar to this, has arisen in my mind with respect to an entertainment imbued with the spirit of the slave-cultivated cane. I have fancied that the death-sigh of some unfortunate victim of oppression might be yet trembling on the bosom of a jelly, and the rich flavour of a conserve conceal the briny tears that have mingled with the saccharine crystals that enter into its composition. A pound-cake seems like the sepulchre of the broken heart with which it may, perhaps, have been purchased, and the delicious ice to wear the red tinge of human blood. If those who un- scrupulously partake of these delicacies, had beheld the horrors by which they are too often purchased, if they could witness, gathered up before them, all the agony endured by their fellow- creatures, only that the gratification of their palates might be ministered to, I believe there are few females who would retain any desire to taste of the blood-polluted banquet. Yet why should the sight of blood be needed, when they know it has been shed, to awaken their sleeping sensibilities ? Under other circumstances they would shudder to be told that the morsel upon their lips, or the garments upon their forms, had been torn by rapine and murder from the hands of their rightful possessors ; and who can assure them that the price of tiie very article now before them, has not been the life of a fellow- creature? The whole system of slavery is replete with barba- rity, and there are numerous instances of the o'erwearied slave having perished with exhaustion amidst his toil, or died beneath the tortures of the mercilessly inflicted lash ; — and how can it be said that the object for which such cruelties are perpetrated, is free from the stain of blood ?

Elizabeth Margaret Chandler

Lemuel Howell

1836