Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/40

 same day, all his worth is taken away, might seem inconsistent with exceptions which we gladly recognize; but alas! it is too clear, both from reason and from evidence, that, bad as Slavery is for the Slave, it is worse for the Master.

In making this exposure I am fortified, at the outset, by two classes of authorities, whose testimony it will be difficult to question; the first is American, and founded on personal experience; the second is philosophical, and founded on everlasting truth.

First, American Authority; and here I adduce words often quoted, which dropped from the lips of Slave-masters in those better days, when, seeing the wrong of Slavery, they escaped from its injurious influence. Of these, none expressed themselves with more vigor than Colonel Mason, a Slave-master from Virginia, in debate on the adoption of the National Constitution. These are his words:

Thus, with a few touches, does this Slave-master portray his class, putting them in that hateful list which, according to every principle of liberty, must be resisted so long as we obey God. And this same testimony also found expression from the fiery soul of Jefferson. Here are some of his words:

“There must be an unhappy influence on 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, On the one part, and degrading submissions on the other; our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . . The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other! . . . With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed."

Next comes the Philosophic Authority; and here the language which I quote may be less familiar, but it is hardly less commanding. Among names of such weight I shall not discriminate, but shall simply follow the order of time in which they appeared. First is John Locke, the great author of the English system of Intellectual Philosophy, who, though once unhappily conceding indulgence to American Slavery, in another