Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/36

18 As to the master, the exercise of uncontrolled power can scarcely fail to render a man overbearing and tyrannical. The very sight of a number of beings wholly subservient to his will and pleasure, will foster the pride and selfishness of the human heart. The man will imagine himself a very elevated being, and forget the claims of his fellow-creatures upon him. His will being law, he will, in all probability, acquire a habit of governing them by force, and will cease to deal with them by moral means. He will forget their responsibility and his own, when either would come in competition with his interest or his gratification. By the habitual sight of human beings in a state of degradation and misery, (and such must be a state of slavery at the best,) his heart will insensibly become hardened, and he will cease to feel compassion for the sufferings of his fellow man: his temper will become irritable and turbulent, and his passions will rage without controul. It is impossible to exercise an improper dominion over a fellow-creature, without sustaining a correspondent reaction of evil,—a weakening of moral principle, and a strengthening every corrupt passion and propensity. These results have been strikingly seen in individuals, who before their connexion with slavery, were manly, generous, and humane; but who, under the influence of that wretched system, have gradually sunk into callousness and cruelty, of which, if a few years before, the horrid picture had been presented to them, they would have indignantly exclaimed, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do these things?"

As to the slave, the natural tendency of the oppression he endures, is to degrade and debase