Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
You may set your understanding or your hands at work. You may weave
stockings, or write poems, and exchange them for money; but these are tardy and
meagre schemes. The means are disproportioned to the end, and I will not suer
you to pursue them. My justice will supply your wants.
But dependance on the justice of others is a precarious condition. To be the
object is a less ennobling state than to be the bestower of benet. Doubtless you
desire to be vested with competence and riches, and to hold them by virtue of the
law, and not at the will of a benefactor . . . . . . He paused as if waiting for my assent
to his positions. I readily expressed my concurrence, and my desire to pursue any
means compatible with honesty. He resumed.
There are various means, besides labour, violence, or fraud. It is right to select
the easiest within your reach. It happens that the easiest is at hand. A revenue of
some thousands a year, a stately mansion in the city, and another in Kildare, old
and faithful domestics, and magnicent furniture, are good things. Will you have
them?
A gift like that, replied I, will be attended by momentous conditions. I cannot
decide upon its value, until I know these conditions.
The sole condition is your consent to receive them. Not even the airy obligation
of gratitude will be created by acceptance. On the contrary, by accepting them, you
will confer the highest benet upon another.
I do not comprehend you. Something surely must be given in return.
Nothing. It may seem strange that, in accepting the absolute controul of so
much property, you subject yourself to no conditions; that no claims of gratitude or
service will accrue; but the wonder is greater still. The law equitably enough fetters
the gift with no restraints, with respect to you that receive it; but not so with regard
to the unhappy being who bestows it. That being must part, not only with property
but liberty. In accepting the property, you must consent to enjoy the services of the
present possessor. They cannot be disjoined.
Of the true nature and extent of the gift, you should be fully apprized. Be aware,
therefore, that, together with this property, you will receive absolute power over
the liberty and person of the being who now possesses it. That being must become
your domestic slave; be governed, in every particular, by your caprice.
Happily for you, though fully invested with this power, the degree and mode in
which it will be exercised will depend upon yourself . . . . . You may either totally
forbear the exercise, or employ it only for the benet of your slave. However
injurious, therefore, this authority may be to the subject of it, it will, in some sense,
only enhance the value of the gift to you.
The attachment and obedience of this being will be chiey evident in one thing.
Its duty will consist in conforming, in every instance, to your will. All the powers
of this being are to be devoted to your happiness; but there is one relation between
you, which enables you to confer, while exacting, pleasure . . . . . This relation is
sexual. Your slave is a woman; and the bond, which transfers her property and
person to you, is . . . . marriage.
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