"For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it _destroys every humane principle_, vitiates the mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of government."--_Buchanan"s Oration_, p. 12.
President EDWARDS the younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, in 1791, page 8, says:--
"Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness, and a _domineering spirit_ and conduct in the proprietors of the slaves, in their children, and in all who have the control of them. A man who has been bred up in domineering over negroes, can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or in any office, civil or military, with which he may be invested."
The celebrated MONTESQUIEU, in his "Spirit of the Laws," thus describes the effect of slaveholding upon the master:--
"The master contracts all sorts of bad habits; and becomes _haughty, pa.s.sionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel_."
WILBERFORCE, in his speech at the anniversary of the London Anti-Slavery Society, in March, 1828, said:--
"It is _utterly impossible_ that they who live in the administration of the petty despotism of a slave community, whose minds have been _warped_ and _polluted_ by that contamination, should not _lose that respect_ for their fellow creatures over whom they tyrannize, which is essential in the nature and moral being of man, to rescue them from the abuse of power over their prostrate fellow creatures."
In the great debate, in the British Parliament, on the African slave-trade, Mr. WHITBREAD said:
"Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best."
But we need not multiply proofs to establish our position: it is sustained by the concurrent testimony of sages, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and moralists, in every period of the world; and who can marvel that those in all ages who have wisely pondered men and things, should be unanimous in such testimony, when the history of arbitrary power has come down to us from the beginning of time, struggling through heaps of slain, and trailing her parchments in blood.
Time would fail to begin with the first despot and track down the carnage step by step. All nations, all ages, all climes crowd forward as witnesses, with their scars, and wounds, and dying agonies.
But to survey a mult.i.tude bewilders; let us look at a single nation.
We instance Rome; both because its history is more generally known, and because it furnishes a larger proportion of instances, in which arbitrary power was exercised with comparative mildness, than any other nation ancient or modern. And yet, her whole existence was a tragedy, every actor was an executioner, the curtain rose amidst shrieks and fell upon corpses, and the only shifting of the scenes was from blood to blood. The whole world stood aghast, as under sentence of death, awaiting execution, and all nations and tongues were driven, with her own citizens, as sheep to the slaughter. Of her seven kings, her hundreds of consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, and dictators, and her fifty emperors, there is hardly one whose name has come down to us unstained by horrible abuses of power; and that too, notwithstanding we have mere shreds of the history of many of them, owing to their antiquity, or to the perturbed times in which they lived; and these shreds gathered from the records of their own partial countrymen, who wrote and sung their praises. What does this prove? Not that the Romans were worse than other men, nor that their rulers were worse than other Romans, for history does not furnish n.o.bler models of natural character than many of those same rulers, when first invested with arbitrary power. Neither was it mainly because the martial enterprise of the earlier Romans and the gross sensuality of the later, hardened their hearts to human suffering. In both periods of Roman history, and in both these cla.s.ses, we find men, the keen sympathies, generosity, and benevolence of whose general character embalmed their names in the grateful memories of mult.i.tudes. _They were human beings, and possessed power without restraint_--this unravels the mystery.
Who has not heard of the Emperor Trajan, of his moderation, his clemency, his gashing sympathies, his forgiveness of injuries and forgetfulness of self, his tearing in pieces his own robe, to furnish bandages for the wounded--called by the whole world in his day, "the best emperor of Rome;" and so affectionately regarded by his subjects, that, ever afterwards, in blessing his successors upon their accession to power, they always said, "May you have the virtue and goodness of Trajan!" yet the deadly conflicts of gladiators who were trained to kill each other, to make sport for the spectators, furnished his chief pastime. At one time he kept up those spectacles for 123 days in succession. In the tortures which he inflicted on Christians, fire and poison, daggers and dungeons, wild beasts and serpents, and the rack, did their worst. He threw into the sea, Clemens, the venerable bishop of Rome, with an anchor about his neck; and tossed to the famished lions in the amphitheatre the aged Ignatius.
Pliny the younger, who was proconsul under Trajan, may well be mentioned in connection with the emperor, as a striking ill.u.s.tration of the truth, that goodness and amiableness towards one cla.s.s of men is often turned into cruelty towards another. History can hardly show a more gentle and lovely character than Pliny. While pleading at the bar, he always sought out the grievances of the poorest and most despised persons, entered into their wrongs with his whole soul, and never took a fee. Who can read his admirable letters without being touched by their tenderness and warmed by their benignity and philanthropy: and yet, this tender-hearted Pliny coolly plied with excruciating torture two spotless females, who had served as deaconesses in the Christian church, hoping to extort from them matter of accusation against the Christians. He commanded Christians to abjure their faith, invoke the G.o.ds, pour out libations to the statues of the emperor, burn incense to idols, and curse Christ. If they refused, he ordered them to execution.
Who has not heard of the Emperor t.i.tus--so beloved for his mild virtues and compa.s.sionate regard for the suffering, that he was named "The Delight of Mankind;" so tender of the lives of his subjects that he took the office of high priest, that his hands might never be defiled with blood; and was heard to declare, with tears, that he had rather die than put another to death. So intent upon making others happy, that when once about to retire to sleep, and not being able to recall any particular act of beneficence performed during the day, he cried out in anguish, "Alas! I have lost a day!" And, finally, whom the learned Kennet, in his Roman Antiquities, characterizes as "the only prince in the world that has the character of _never doing an ill action_." Yet, witnessing the mortal combats of the captives taken to war, killing each other in the amphitheatre, amidst the acclamations of the populace, was a favorite amus.e.m.e.nt with t.i.tus. At one time he exhibited shows of gladiators, which lasted one hundred days, during which the amphitheatre was flooded with human blood. At another of his public exhibitions he caused five thousand wild beasts to be baited in the amphitheatre. During the siege of Jerusalem, he set ambushes to seize the famishing Jews, who stole out of the city by night to glean food in the valleys: these he would first dreadfully scourge, then torment them with all conceivable tortures, and, at last, crucify them before the wall of the city. According to Josephus, not less than five hundred a day were thus tormented. And when many of the Jews, frantic with famine, deserted to the Romans, t.i.tus cut off their hands and drove them back. After the destruction of Jerusalem, he dragged to Rome one hundred thousand captives, sold them as slaves, and scattered them through every province of the empire.
The kindness, condescension, and forbearance of Adrian were proverbial; he was one of the most eloquent orators of his age; and when pleading the cause of injured innocence, would melt and overwhelm the auditors by the pathos of his appeals. It was his constant maxim, that he was an Emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit of his fellow creatures. He stooped to relieve the wants of the meanest of his subjects, and would peril his life by visiting them when sick of infectious diseases; he prohibited, by law, masters from killing their slaves, gave to slaves legal trial, and exempted them from torture; yet towards certain individuals and cla.s.ses, he showed himself a monster of cruelty. He prided himself on his knowledge of architecture, and ordered to execution the most celebrated architect of Rome, because he had criticised one of the Emperor"s designs. He banished all the Jews from their native land, and drove them to the ends of the earth; and unloosed the bloodhounds of persecution to rend in pieces his Christian subjects.
The gentleness and benignity of the Emperor Aurelius, have been celebrated in story and song. History says of him, "Nothing could quench his desire of being a blessing to mankind;" and Pope"s eulogy of him is in the mouth of every schoolboy--"Like good Aurelius, let him reign;" and yet, "_good_ Aurelius," lifted the flood gates of the fourth, and one of the most terrible persecutions against Christians that ever raged. He sent orders into different parts of his empire, to have the Christians murdered who would not deny Christ. The blameless Polycarp, trembling under the weight of a hundred years, was dragged to the stake and burned to ashes. Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons, at the age of ninety, was dragged through the streets, beaten, stoned, trampled upon by the soldiers, and left to perish. Tender virgins were put into nets, and thrown to infuriated wild bulls; others were fastened in red hot iron chairs; and venerable matrons were thrown to be devoured by dogs.
Constantine the Great has been the admiration of Christendom for his virtues. The early Christian writers adorn his justice, benevolence and piety with the most exalted eulogy. He was baptized, and admitted to the Christian church. He abrogated Paganism, and made Christianity the religion of his empire; he attended the councils of the early fathers of the church, consulted with the bishops, and devoted himself with the most untiring zeal to the propagation of Christianity, and to the promotion of peace and love among its professors; he convened the Council of Nice, to settle disputes which had long distracted the church, appeared in the a.s.sembly with admirable modesty and temper, moderated the heats of the contending parties, implored them to exercise mutual forbearance, and exhorted them to love unfeigned, to forgive one another, as they hoped to be forgiven by Christ. Who would not think it uncharitable to accuse such a man of barbarity in the exercise of power?--and yet he drove Arius and his a.s.sociates into banishment, for opinion"s sake, denounced death against all with whom his books should afterwards be found, and prohibited, on pain of death, the exercise, however peaceably, of the functions of any other religion than Christianity. In a fit of jealousy and rage, he ordered his innocent son, Crispus, to execution, without granting him a hearing; and upon finding him innocent, killed his own wife, who had falsely accused him.
To the preceding maybe added Theodosius the Great, the last Roman emperor before the division of the empire. He was a member of the Christian church, and in his zeal against paganism, and what he deemed heresy, surpa.s.sed all who were before him. The Christian writers of his time speak of him as a most ill.u.s.trious model of justice, generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, and every virtue. And yet Theodosius denounced capital punishments against those who held "heretical" opinions, and commanded inter-marriage between cousins to be punished by burning the parties alive. On hearing that the people of Antioch had demolished the statues set up in that city, in honor of himself, and had threatened the governor, he flew into a transport of fury, ordered the city to be laid in ashes, and all the inhabitants to be slaughtered; and upon hearing of a resistance to his authority in Thessalonica, in which one of his lieutenants was killed, he instantly ordered a _general ma.s.sacre_ of the inhabitants; and in obedience to his command, seven thousand men, women and children were butchered in the s.p.a.ce of three hours.
The foregoing are a few of many instances in the history of Rome, and of a countless mult.i.tude in the history of the world, ill.u.s.trating the truth, that the lodgement of arbitrary power, in the best human hands, is always a fearfully perilous experiment; that the mildest tempers, the most humane and benevolent dispositions, the most blameless and conscientious previous life, with the most rigorous habits of justice, are no security, that, in a moment of temptation, the possessors of such power will not make their subjects their victims; ill.u.s.trating also the truth, that, while men may exhibit nothing but honor, honesty, mildness, justice, and generosity, in their intercourse with those of their own grade, or language, or nation, or hue, they may practice towards others, for whom they have contempt and aversion, the most revolting meanness, perpetrate robbery unceasingly, and inflict the severest privations, and the most barbarous cruelties. But this is not all: history is full of examples, showing not only the effects of arbitrary power on its victims, but its terrible reaction on those who exercise it; blunting their sympathies, and hardening to adamant their hearts toward _them_, at least, if not toward the human race generally. This is shown in the fact, that almost every tyrant in the history of the world, has entered upon the exercise of absolute power with comparative moderation; mult.i.tudes of them with marked forbearance and mildness, and not a few with the most signal condescension, magnanimity, gentleness and compa.s.sion. Among these last are included those who afterwards became the bloodiest monsters that ever cursed the earth. Of the Roman Emperors, almost every one of whom perpetrated the most barbarous atrocities, Vitellius seems to have been the only one who cruelly exercised his power from the _outset_. Most of the other emperors, sprung up into fiends in the hot-bed of arbitrary power. If they had not been plied with its fiery stimulants, but had lived under the legal restraints of other men, instead of going to the grave under the curses of their generation, mult.i.tudes might have called them blessed.
The moderation which has generally distinguished absolute monarchs at the commencement of their reigns, was doubtless in some cases a.s.sumed from policy; in the greater number, however, as is manifest from their history, it has been the natural workings of minds held in check by previous a.s.sociations, and not yet hardened into habits of cruelty, by being accustomed to the exercise of power without restraint. But as those a.s.sociations have weakened, and the wielding of uncontrolled sway has become a habit, like other evil doers, they have, in the expressive language of Scripture, "waxed worse and worse."
For eighteen hundred years an involuntary shudder has run over the human race, at the mention of the name of Nero; yet, at the commencement of his reign, he burst into tears when called upon to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, and exclaimed, "Oh, that I had never learned to write!" His mildness and magnanimity won the affections of his subjects; and it was not till the poison of absolute power had worked within his nature for years, that it swelled him into a monster.
Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, began the exercise of their power with singular forbearance, and each grew into a prodigy of cruelty. So averse was Caligula to bloodshed, that he refused to look at a list of conspirators against his own life, which was handed to him; yet afterwards, a more cruel wretch never wielded a sceptre. In his thirst for slaughter, he wished all the necks in Rome _one_, that he might cut them off at a blow.
Domitian, at the commencement of his reign, carried his abhorrence of cruelty to such lengths, that he forbad the sacrificing of oxen, and would sit whole days on the judgment-seat, reversing the unjust decisions of corrupt judges; yet afterwards, he surpa.s.sed even Nero in cruelty. The latter was content to torture and kill by proxy, and without being a spectator; but Domitian could not be denied the luxury of seeing his victims writhe, and hearing them shriek; and often with his own hand directed the instrument of torture, especially when some ill.u.s.trious senator or patrician was to be killed by piece-meal.
Commodus began with gentleness and condescension, but soon became a terror and a scourge, outstripping in his atrocities most of his predecessors. Maximin too, was just and generous when first invested with power, but afterwards rioted in slaughter with the relish of a fiend. History has well said of this monarch, "the change in his disposition may readily serve to show how dangerous a thing is power, that could transform a person of such rigid virtues into such a monster."
Instances almost innumerable might be furnished in the history of every age, ill.u.s.trating the blunting of sympathies, and the total transformation of character wrought in individuals by the exercise of arbitrary power. Not to detain the reader with long details, let a single instance suffice.
Perhaps no man has lived in modern times, whose name excites such horror as that of Robespierre. Yet it is notorious that he was naturally of a benevolent disposition, and tender sympathies.
"Before the revolution, when as a judge in his native city of Arras he had to p.r.o.nounce judgment on an a.s.sa.s.sin, he took no food for two days afterwards, but was heard frequently exclaiming, "I am sure he was guilty; he is a villain; but yet, to put a human being to death!!" He could not support the idea; and that the same necessity might not recur, he relinquished his judicial office.--(See Laponneray"s Life of Robespierre, p. 8.) Afterwards, in the Convention of 1791, he urged strongly the abolition of the punishment of death; and yet, for sixteen months, in 1793 and 1794, till he perished himself by the same guillotine which he had so mercilessly used on others, no one at Paris consigned and caused so many fellow-creatures to be put to death by it, with more ruthless insensibility."--_Turner"s Sacred history of the World_, vol. 2 p. 119.
But it is time we had done with the objection, "such cruelties are INCREDIBLE." If the objector still reiterates it, he shall have the last word without farther molestation.
An objection kindred to the preceding now claims notice. It is the profound induction that slaves _must_ be well treated because _slaveholders say they are!_
OBJECTION. II.--"SLAVEHOLDERS PROTEST THAT THEY TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL."
Self-justification is human nature; self-condemnation is a sublime triumph over it, and as rare as sublime. What culprits would be convicted, if their own testimony were taken by juries as good evidence? Slaveholders are on trial, charged with cruel treatment to their slaves, and though in their own courts they can clear themselves _by their own oaths_,[21] they need not think to do it at the bar of the world. The denial of crimes, by men accused of them, goes for nothing as evidence in all _civilized_ courts; while the voluntary confession of them, is the best evidence possible, as it is testimony _against themselves_, and in the face of the strongest motives to conceal the truth. On the preceding pages, are hundreds of just such testimonies; the voluntary and explicit testimony of slaveholders against themselves, their families and ancestors, their const.i.tuents and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence. Now let candor decide between those two cla.s.ses of slaveholders, which is most ent.i.tled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to gain, but every thing to lose by such testimony, still utters it.
But if there were no counter testimony, if all slaveholders were unanimous in the declaration that the treatment of the slaves is _good_, such a declaration would not be ent.i.tled to a feather"s weight as testimony; it is not _testimony_ but _opinion_. Testimony respects matters of _fact_, not matters of opinion: it is the declaration of a witness as to _facts_, not the giving of an opinion as to the nature or qualities of actions, or the _character_ of a course of conduct.
Slaveholders organize themselves into a tribunal to adjudicate upon their own conduct, and give us in their decisions, their estimate of their own character; informing us with characteristic modesty, that they have a high opinion of themselves; that in their own judgment they are very mild, kind, and merciful gentlemen! In these conceptions of their own merits, and of the eminent propriety of their bearing towards their slaves, slaveholders remind us of the Spaniard, who always took off his hat whenever he spoke of himself, and of the Governor of Schiraz, who, from a sense of justice to his own character added to his other t.i.tles, those of, "Flower of Courtesy," "Nutmeg of Consolation," and "Rose of Delight."
[Footnote 21: The law of which the following is an extract, exists in South Carolina. "If any slave shall suffer in life, limb or member, when no white person shall be present, or being present, shall refuse to give evidence, the owner or other person, who shall have the care of such slave, and in whose power such slave shall be, shall be deemed guilty of such offence, _unless_ such owner or other person shall make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or shall BY HIS OWN OATH CLEAR AND EXCULPATE HIMSELF. Which oath every court where such offence shall be tried, is hereby compared to administer, and to _acquit the offender_, if clear proof of the offence be not made by _two_ witnesses at least."--2 Brevard"s Digest, 242. The state of Louisiana has a similar law.]
The _sincerity_ of those worthies, no one calls in question; their real notions of their own merits doubtless ascended into the sublime: but for aught that appears, they had not the arrogance to demand that their own notions of their personal excellence, should be taken as the _proof_ of it. Not so with our slaveholders. Not content with offering incense at the shrine of their own virtues, they have the effrontery to demand, that the rest of the world shall offer it, because _they_ do; and shall implicitly believe the presiding divinity to be a good Spirit rather than a Devil, because _they_ call him so! In other words, since slaveholders profoundly appreciate their own gentle dispositions toward their slaves, and their kind treatment of them, and everywhere protest that they do truly show forth these rare excellencies, they demand that the rest of the world shall not only believe that they _think_ so, but that they think _rightly_; that these notions of themselves are _true_, that their taking off their hats to themselves proves them worthy of homage, and that their a.s.sumption of the t.i.tles of, "Flower of Kindness," and "Nutmeg of Consolation," is conclusive evidence that they deserve such appellations!
Was there ever a more ridiculous doctrine, than that a man"s opinion of his own actions is the true standard for measuring them, and the certificate of their real qualities!--that his own estimate of his treatment of others; is to be taken as the true one, and such treatment be set down as _good_ treatment upon the strength of his judgment. He who argues the good treatment of the slave, from the slaveholder"s _good opinion_ of such treatment, not only argues against human nature and all history, his own common sense, and even the testimony of his senses, but refutes his own arguments by his daily practice. Every body acts on the presumption that men"s feelings will vary with their _practices_; that the light in which they view individuals and cla.s.ses, and their feelings towards them, will modify their opinions of the treatment which they receive. In any case of treatment that affects himself, his church, or his political party, no man so stultifies himself as to argue that such treatment must be good, because the _author_ of it thinks so.
Who would argue that the American Colonies were well treated by the mother country, because parliament thought so? Or that Poland was well treated by Russia, because Nicholas thought so? Or that the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia is proved good by Georgia notions of it?
Or that of the Greeks by the Turks, by Turkish opinions of it? Or that of the Jews by almost all nations, by the judgment of their persecutors? Or that of the victims of the Inquisition, by the opinions of the Inquisitor general, or of the Pope and his cardinals?
Or that of the Quakers and Baptists, at the hands of the Puritans,--to be judged of by the opinions of the legislatures that authorized, and the courts that carried it into effect. All those cla.s.ses of persons did not, in their own opinion, abuse their victims. If charged with perpetrating outrageous cruelty upon them, all those oppressors would have repelled the charge with indignation.
Our slaveholders chime l.u.s.tily the same song, and no man with human nature within him, and human history before him, and with sense enough to keep him out of the fire, will be gulled by such professions, unless his itch to be humbugged has put on the type of a downright chronic incurable. We repeat it--when men speak of the treatment of others as being either good or bad, their declarations are not generally to be taken as testimony to matters of _fact_, so much as expressions of _their own feelings_ towards those persons or cla.s.ses who are the subjects of such treatment. If those persons are their fellow citizens; if they are in the same cla.s.s of society with themselves; of the same language, creed, and color; similar in their habits, pursuits, and sympathies; they will keenly feel any wrong done to them, and denounce it as base, outrageous treatment; but let the same wrongs be done to persons of a condition in all respects the reverse, persons whom they habitually despise, and regard only in the light of mere conveniences, to be used for their pleasure, and the idea that such treatment is barbarous will be laughed at as ridiculous. When we hear slaveholders say that their slaves are _well treated_, we have only to remember that they are not speaking of _persons_, but of _property_; not of men and women, but of _chattels_ and _things_; not of friends but of _va.s.sals_ and _victims_; not of those whom they respect and honor, but of those whom they _scorn_ and trample on; not of those with whom they sympathize, and co-operate, and interchange courtesies, but of those whom they regard with contempt and aversion and disdainfully set with the dogs of their flock. Reader, keep this fact in your mind, and you will have a clue to the slaveholder"s definition of "_good treatment_." Remember also, that a part of this "good treatment" of which the slaveholders boast, is plundering the slaves of all their inalienable rights, of the ownership of their own bodies, of the use of their own limbs and muscles, of all their time, liberty, and earnings, of the free exercise of choice, of the rights of marriage and parental authority, of legal protection, of the right to be, to do, to go, to stay, to think, to feel, to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep, to learn, to teach, to earn money, and to expend it, to visit, and to be visited, to speak, to be silent, to worship according to conscience, in fine, their right to be protected by just and equal laws, and to be _amenable to such only_. Of _all these rights the slaves are plundered_; and this is a _part_ of that "good treatment" of which their plunderers boast! What then is the _rest_ of it? The above is enough for a sample, at least a specimen-brick from the kiln. Reader, we ask you no questions, but merely tell you what _you know_, when we say that men and women who can habitually do such things to human beings, _can do_ ANY THING _to them_.
The declarations of slaveholders, that they treat their slaves well, will put no man in a quandary, who keeps in mind this simple principle, that the state of mind towards others, which leads one to inflict cruelties on them _blinds the inflicter to the real nature of his own acts_. To him, they do not _seem_ to be cruelties; consequently, when speaking of such treatment toward such persons, he will protest that it is not cruelty; though if inflicted upon himself or his friends, he would indignantly stigmatize it as atrocious barbarity. The objector equally overlooks another every-day fact of human nature, which is this, that cruelties invariably cease to _seem_ cruelties when the _habit_ is formed though previously the mind regarded them as such, and shrunk from them with horror.
The following fact, related by the late lamented THOMAS PRINGLE, whose Life and Poems have published in England, is an appropriate ill.u.s.tration. Mr. Pringle states it on the authority of Captain W. F.
Owen, of the Royal Navy.
"When his Majesty"s ships, the Leven and the Barracouta, employed in surveying the coast of Africa, were at Mozambique, in 1823, the officers were introduced to the family of Senor Manuel Pedro d"Almeydra, a native of Portugal, who was a considerable merchant settled on that coast; and it was an opinion agreed in by all, that Donna Sophia d"Almeydra was the most superior woman they had seen since they left England, Captain Owen, the leader of the expedition, expressing to Senor d"Almeydra his detestation of slavery, the Senor replied, "You will not be long here before you change your sentiments.
Look at my Sophia there. Before she would marry me, she made me promise that I should give up the slave trade. When we first settled at Mozambique, she was continually interceding for the slaves, and she _constantly wept when I punished them_; and now she is among the slaves front morning to night; she regulates the whole of my slave establishment; she inquires into every offence committed by them, p.r.o.nounces sentence upon the offender, and _stands by and sees them punished_."
"To this, Mr. Pringle, who was himself for six years a resident of the English settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, adds, "The writer of this article has seen, in the course of five or six years, as great a change upon English ladies and gentleman of respectability, as that described to have taken place in Donna Sophia d"Almeydra; and one of the individuals whom he has in his eye, while he writes this pa.s.sage, lately confessed to him this melancholy change, remarking at the same time, "how altered I am in my feelings with regard to slavery. I do not appear to myself the same person I was on my arrival in this colony, and if I would give the world for the feelings I then had, I could not recall them.""
Slaveholders know full well that familiarity with slavery produces indifference to its cruelties and reconciles the mind to them. The late Judge Tucker, a Virginia slaveholder and professor of law in the University of William and Mary, in the appendix to his edition of Blackstone"s Commentaries, part 2, pp. 56, 57, commenting on the law of Virginia previous to 1792, which outlawed fugitive slaves, says:
"Such are the cruelties to which slavery gives rise, such the horrors to which the mind becomes _reconciled_ by its adoption."