"Well?" answered the traveller, interrogatively.
"We would make niggers work it."
"I dare say," replied Picton, drily and satirically; "but, sir, I am proud to say that our government does not tolerate barbarity; to consign an inoffensive fellow-creature to such horrible labor, merely because he is black, is at variance with the well-known humanity of the whole British nation, sir."
"But those miners, Picton, were black as the devil himself."
"The miners," replied Picton, with impressive gravity, "are black, but not negroes."
"Nothing but mere white people, Picton?"
"Eh?" said the traveller.
"Only white people, and therefore we need not waste one grain of sympathy over a whole pit full of them."
"Why not?"
"Because they are not niggers, what is the use of wasting sympathy upon a rat-hole full of white British subjects?"