W.B.Seabrook, in an address before the Agricultural Society of St.
John's, Colleton, published by order of the Society, at Charleston, in 1834, after stating that "as Slavery exists in South Carolina, the action of the citizens should rigidly conform to that state of things:" and, that "no _abstract opinions of the rights of man_ should be allowed in any instance to modify the _police system of a plantation_," proceeds as follows.

"_He_ (the slave) _should be practically treated as a slave_; and thoroughly taught the true cardinal principle on which our peculiar institutions are founded, viz.; that to his owner he is bound by the law of God and man; and that no human authority can sever the link which unites them.

The great aim of the slaveholder, then, should be to keep his people in strict _subordination_.

In this, it may in truth be said, lies his _entire duty_." Again, in speaking of the punishments of slaves, he remarks: "If to our army the disuse of THE LASH has been prejudicial, to the slaveholder it would operate to deprive him of the MAIN SUPPORT of his authority.

For the first class of offences, I consider imprisonment in THE STOCKS[A] at night, with or without hard labor by day, as a powerful auxiliary in the cause of _good_ government." "_Experience_ has convinced me that there is no punishment to which the slave looks with more horror, than that upon which I am commenting, (the stocks,) and none which has been attended with happier results." [Footnote A: Of the nature of this punishment in the stocks, something may be learned by the following extract of a letter from a gentleman in Tallahassee, Florida, to the editor of the Ohio Atlas, dated June 9, 1835: "A planter, a professer of religion, in conversing upon the universality of whipping, remarked, that a planter in G____, who had whipped a great deal, at length got tired of it, and invented the following _excellent_ method of punishment, which I saw practised while I was paying him a visit.