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COLONIZATION

confessed or communicated since they entered the country; the ordinances of the church were neglected for want of a clergy to celebrate them, and the moral precepts had been forgotten with the ceremonies. Crimes which might easily at first have been prevented, had become habitual, and the habit was now too strong to be overcome. There were indeed individuals in whom the moral sense could be discovered, but in the majority it had been utterly destroyed. They were of that description of men over whom the fear of the gallows may have some effect; the fear of God has none. A system of concubinage was practised among them, worse than the loose polygamy of the savages. The savage had as many women as consented to become his wives—the colonist as many as he could enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma upon the Europeans in their intercourse with those whom they treat as inferior races—there is a perpe-tual contradiction between their lust and their avarice. The planter will one day take a slave for his harlot, and sell her the next as a being of some lower species—a beast of labour. If she be indeed an inferior animal, what shall be said of the one action? If she be equally with himself an human being and an immortal soul, what shall be said of the other? Either way there is a crime committed against human nature. Nobrega and his companions refused to administer the sacraments of the church to those persons who retained native women as concubines, or men as slaves. Many were reclaimed by this resolute and Christian conduct; some, because their consciences had not been dead, but sleeping; others, for worldly fear, because they believed the Jesuits were armed with