John Aikin and his sister Anna imagined a dialogue in which a plantation owner taxed a slave with ingratitude for running away, despite satisfactory conditions and even provision for his old age. The slave replied that if such comforts and securities meant toiling for another man’s wealth and accepting whatever was supposedly best for him, they were not worth having.

To his credit, the planter accepted that if only force could keep his slave, then he may as well let him go. The slave thanked him heartily, but warned him and other benevolent slaveowners that only force was keeping their slaves in line, and that when it wavered past kindnesses would not be remembered by those they had wronged.

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