Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/72

 is winning lustre, not only for his own country, but for our age, is M. Tourgueneff. Originally a Slave-master himself, with numerous slaves, and residing where Slavery prevailed, he saw, with the instincts of a noble character, the essential Barbarism of this relation, and in an elaborate work on Russia, which is now before me, he exposed it with rare ability and courage. Thus he speaks of its influence on Slave-masters:

"But if Slavery degrades the slave, it degrades more the master. This is an old adage, and long observations have proved to me that this adage is not a paradox. In fact, how can that man respect his own dignity, his own rights, who has learned not to respect either the rights or the dignity of his fellow-man? What control can the moral and religious sentiments have over a man who sees himself invested with a power so eminently contrary to morals and religion? The continual exercise of an unjust claim, even when it is moderated, finishes by corrupting the character of the man, and spoiling his judgment..... The possession of a slave being the result of injustice, the relations of the master with the slave can not be otherwise than a succession of injustices. Among good masters, (and it is agreed to call so those who do not abuse their power as much as they might,) these relations are clothed with forms less repugnant than among others; but here the difference stops. Who could remain always pure, when, carried away by his disposition, excited by his temper, drawn by caprice, he can with impunity oppress, insult, humiliate his fellows? And, let it be carefully remarked, that intelligence, civilization, do not avail. The enlightened man, the civilized man, is none the less a man; that he should not oppress, it is necessary that it should be impossible for him to oppress. All men can not, like Louis XIV., throw their stick from the window, when they feel a desire to strike." — La Russie et Les Russes, Vol. I. pp. 157-58.

Another authority, unimpeachable at all points, whose fortune it has been, from extensive travels, to see Slavery in the most various forms, and Slave-masters under the most various conditions — I refer to the great African traveler, Dr. Livingstone — thus touches the character of Slave-masters:

"I can never cease to be unfeignedly thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would he equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them ‘as paying one's way' is to the rest of mankind." Livingstone's Travels, Chap. II., p. 33.

Thus does the experience of Slavery in other countries confirm the sad experience among us.

. — Discarding now all the presumptuous boasts for Slavery, and bearing in mind its essential Barbarism, I come to consider that second assumption of Senators on the other side, which is, of course, inspired by the first, even if not its immediate consequence, that, under the Constitution, Slave-masters may take their slaves into the national Territories, and there continue to hold them, as at home in the Slave States;