AN INVENTING SLAVE.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 166, 24 May 1859, Page 4

AN INVENTING SLAVE.

A slave that can hoe is excellent. A slave that can sow is delightful. A slave that can reap is admirable. A slave that can gather into barns is a treasure. A slave that will not run away is indeed a possession. . 'A slave that will stand anything from the cat and the paddle up to the vendition of his wife and children is an Abrahamic model. Here one would suppose the catalogue of slavish virtues might end, unless ' we added to it that dubious virtue of fecundity upon which decency will not permit us to dilate. But what will our readers say to a slave figuring in the light of an' inventor ? Of an inventor of an agricultural' machine ?' Of a ' machine' so useful that it promised to be profitable? And what will our readers think of the botherations, dilemmas, obfuscations, and general topsyturviness of the Patent-office when a chattel with a black skin walked into the cloisters sacred to invention, and claimed to have shown a little intellectual power, and to be entitled to remuneration therefore? Claimed—poor chattel that he was—to have invented something which human beings might find profitable and convenient. Horrible was the dignified distress of the Patent-office at the application. Here was a thing—in the light of the constitution nothing but a thing—claiming the honours and emoluments of an inventor ! What should a thing be doing there? A thing with two legs, and a. stomach, and a head and two hands, absolutely pretending.to have invented• something? No plough 'ever applied.: No cart ever applied. No horse ever applied. Therefore when this two-legged thing came up there was a row in the office, and the magnates ordered her, or him, or it to go about his, her, or its business, and pointedly declined to issue any letters patent whatever, thereby establishing it a,s a fixed fact that no " nigger" could invent anything. In this way was the negro of Mr; Oscar J. E. Stewart, who had blundered upon " a" useful agricultural, machine," treated. Oscar J. E. Stewart considered that he had a right not merely to the brains but to whatever came out ofthe brains of his private and personal " nigger." So Oscar J. E. Stewart petitioned the Senate that if the Patent-office would not, could not, or should not, issue a patent to his ingenious " nigger," it might be compelled to issue the patent to him. The petition was received, and the report- says that- it was appropriately referred. We have tried pretty hard to make out what an appropriate reference would be. Was it to. the Committee on Agriculture? Or to the Committee on Claims?- Or to the Committee on • Ways and Means? ,We shall watch this case for Mr. Oscar J. E. Stewart, and he shall have the benefit* of our assistance. Pie shall have the hard .cash for his " nigger's" brain work as well as for his " nigger's" handicraftness, and much good may it do him.— New York Tribune...