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Show 144 DESPOTISl\1 a double-barrelled gun. The fear of the law does not restrain him. In the southern states, a gentleman is never hung. The most cold-blooded and deliberate murderers, in the upper classes of society, escape with a fme or a short imprisonment. 'rhc gallows is reserved for abolitionists, negro-stealers, and poor white folks. 1. The condition of society in the southern stales, even among the most refined and best educated portion of the people, exhibits frightfnl evidences of FEROCITY OF TEJ\IPER, such as a state of everlas ting war might be expected to produce. Thucidides remarks, that from the time the Athenians laid aside the custom of going armed, civility and refinement began to make a steady progress among them. This is a point to which the people of the southern states have not yet attained. 'l'hey generally carry arms ; but the pistols, knives and dirks, their favorite weapons, are of a kind more fit for foot-pads and assassins, than for well-intentioned citizens. In several of the states it has been attempted to suppress by penal enactments, this barbarous practice of carryin~ deadly weapons. These laws are never enforced, and it is scarcely possible they should be. To carry arms in the state of things existing at the south, seems absolutely necessary. If his slaves resist, how else shall the maslet maintain his authority 1 Those who have been subdued by force, must be kept under by force; and if the armed conquerors, in moments of anger, sometimes turn their weapons against earh other, that is what is liable to happen among all collections of armed men. '.Yhat wonder if that inhuman and blood-thirsty spirit, which the tyrannical rule they exercise keeps more or less alive in the bosom of all slave' 1nasters, often bursts out in full fury in their quarrels with each other? The familiarity with which, under the influence of exctted passwn, they talk of murder is only to be equalled, by the savage ferocity ,vith which, under the same influence, they oftcJl commit it. The atrocity of southern duels has long been IN AMERICA. 145 notorious,-but what duel can be compared with those "rencontres" of which we so often read accounts in the southern papcrs,-accounts which among the people of those states seem to carry with them all the interest of a bull-baiting or a cock-fight,-in which two men or more, armed to the teeth, meet in the streets, at a court-lwuse or a tavern, shoot at each other with pistols, then draw their knives, close, and roll upon the ground, covered with dust and blood, struggling and stabbing till death, wounds, or the submission of one of the parties, put an end to the contest 1 'l'hese scenes, which if they take place at the north at all, appear but once an age, and then only among the lowest and most depraved oftheemigrantpopulation, are of frequent and almost daily occurrence at the south, among those who consider themselves the most respectable people. Andrew Jackson, late president of the United States, and regarded as a most illustrious citizen, had been engaged in several such affrays. II. IMPROVIDENCE is a vice of the most dangerous character. The ancients were so impressed with the multitudinous evils and miseries to which it gives occasion, that they raised prudence to the dignity of one of the four cardinal virtues. _Improvidence is however a failing, which is apt to prevail to a great extent in a slave-holding community. The careless, headlong rapidity with which a planter spends his money, is proverbial. 'rhis childish profuswn has even been raised among them to the rank of a VIrtue; it is described as the mark of a noble mmded man; while economy is decried and stigmatized as mean and little. This sort of profusion may dazzle and delight the weak-minded and the thoughtless. It is very clear however that it seldom implies any of that benevolence or magnanimity which it has bee11 supposed to indicate. It generally originates in the desire to gratify some whnn of the moment or what is oftener the case, m the desire to be admired' as 'a person of wealth and liberality. It is one way of gratifying the universal de· 13 |