Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/237

Rh the manners of our people produced by the exiſtence of ſlavery among us. The whole commerce between maſter and ſlave is a perpetual exerciſe of the moſt boiſterous paſſions, the moſt unremitting deſpotiſm on the one part, and degrading ſubmiſſions on the other. Our children ſee this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he ſees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his ſelf-love, for reſtraining the intemperance of paſſion towards his ſlave, it ſhould always be a ſufficient one that his child is preſent. But generally it is not ſufficient. The parent ſtorms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the ſame airs in the circle of ſmaller ſlaves, gives a looſe to his word paſſions, and thus nurſed, educated, and daily exerciſed in tyranny, cannot but be ſtamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man muſt be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by ſuch circumſtances. And with, what execution ſhould the ſtateſman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of other, transforms thoſe into deſpots, and theſe into enemies, deſtroyeds the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a ſlave can have a country in this world, it muſt be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another: in which he muſt look up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evaniſhment of the human race, or entail his own miſerable condition on the endleſs generations proceeding from