42 of themselves, discoloring their very souls, blotting their characters, and breaking forth in moral leprosy. This language is strong
but the evidence
of happy natures
is
and not be harmed.
Some
even stronger.
—like honorable
Senators
Mithridates fed on poison, and lived
may
be that there is a moral Mithridates, without bane the poison of Slavery. it
may be
there
—who can thus feed
and
who can swallow
Instead of "ennobling" the master, nothing can be clearer than that the slave drags his master down, and this process begins in childhood,
and
is
continued through
Living
life.
much
association with his slave, the master finds nothing to
him of
in
remind
own
deficiencies, to prompt his ambition or excite Without these provocations to virtue, and without an elevating example, he naturally shares the Barbarism of the society which he keeps. Thus the very inferiority which the
his
his shame.
Slave -master attributes to the African race, explains the melancholy condition of the communities in which his degradation declared
by
A single
is
law. false principle or vicious
character otherwise blameless
and
thought
may
degrade a
this is practically true of the
Accustomed to regard men as property, his sensibilities are blunted and his moral sense is obscured. He consents to acts from which Civilization recoils. The early Church sold its property, and even its sacred vessels, for the redemption of captives. This was done on a remarkable occasion by St. Ambrose, and successive canons confirmed the example. But Slave-master.
in the Slave States this is all reversed.
Slaves there are often
sold as the property of the Church, and an instance
a slave sold in South-Carolina in order to
munion-table.
Who can
buy
is
related of
plate for the com-
calculate the effect of such an
exam-
ple?
Surrounded by pernicious influences of all kinds, both posiand negative, the first making him do that which he ought not to do, and the second making him leave undone that which he ought to have done through childhood, youth, and manhood, even unto age unable while at home to escape these influences, overshadowed constantly by the portentous Barbarism tive
—
—
about him, the Slave-master naturally adopts the bludgeon, Through these he governs
the revolver and the bowie-knife. his plantation,
and
secretly
armed with
these,
he enters the
