The enslaved peasant attached to an extensive domain, as in Russia or Poland, may find his legal relations to free persons in general, of little moment to his security or welfare.—To him, the lord, the family and the agents of the lord, and his brother bondmen, constitute, for every important purpose, the whole community; for as it is with them alone that he has any ordinary intercourse, from their hands only, can he often receive either good or evil.

Such must have been generally the case with all territorial slaves in ancient Europe; and probably is so in every country in which such men are still to be found, except in the western world.

But the plantation negro in our colonies, is exposed to daily intercourse with free persons who are wholly unconnected with the owner to whom he belongs.—He cannot attend the team to a town or shipping place, go to the market or neighbouring rivulet, or pass on any occasion beyond the boundaries of the estate, without meeting white persons, who possess, in regard to him, neither the rights nor feelings of a master.

The household slave, has naturally a still more frequent and extensive intercourse with free persons not of the master's family, especially when resident in a town. Unless, therefore, morals and manners are so singularly pure in the West Indies, as to supply the place of laws, the subject now under consideration must be one of no trivial consequence to the security and well being of the slaves.