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Show 162 DESPOTISM at all events in a form far more pregnant with mischief than among the slaves. Slavery it would seem is but the foster-mother of vice; tyranny is the real parent,-for the privileged class at the south have not yet reached that point of refinement indicated by Burke, at which vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. 'l'he ferocity of the slaves is a mild thing compared with the ferocity of,the masters. It is rare to hear of a slave murdered by a slave, while the murder of white men by white men, is an every day occurrence. The instrument of vengeance which the slave most commonly employs, is his fist, or at most a club. The mas ter uses pistols, dirk~, knives, and double barrelled guns. With all the bad reputation of Spain and Italy, assassinations were never a quarter so common in those countries as they now are in the south-western states of the American Union. The chance or rather I might say, the probability of dying a violent death st·cms t.o be far greater in the states of Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, than in any other part of the known world, not even the most barbarous countries excepted. Idleness we must consider, presents itself to the slaves under the aspect of a pure good. In them it cannot be regarded as a vice. Is it a crime to evade as far as possible, the violence of robbery? The privileged class on the contrary, are able to view idleness in its true light. It is not only the cause, and to the privileged class perceptibly the cause of all those evils traced to it above, but the love of idleness is in fact, the real foundation of slavery. 'l'he masters wish to enjoy without working; to reap where they have no~ sowed, to gather where they have not strawed. 'I his is the whole secret of the social system of the south. This unjust desire, which in the nature of things never can be fully gratified--for the enjoyment thus obtained is poisoned and corrupted by a certain secret inherent flavor of b1tter· ness- IN AMERICA. 163 -Medin de fontc leporum, Surgit amnri aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat,- this unjust desire to possess without labor, may be looked upon as the fruitful source of all the evils which the system of slavery involves. Under such c ircumstances, idleness ceases to be merely a vice, it becomes a crime, and a crime too of the very blackest die; for it is the immediate cause of all kinds of crimes which men have agreed most to stigmatize, and those crimes too not perpetrated one by one, and in defiance of law, hut perpetrated wholesale and systcmaticall y, not by individual upon individual, but by one half the community upon the other half, and that too with the sanction of legislatures and tribunals. As regards improvidence, drunkenness and gambling, on the part of the slaves they arc comparative! y venal offences. 'l'he harm they can do is limited, and is confined almost entirely to the person of the ot!cnder himself. There is no danger that by giving way to them, he will precipitate a whole family into poverty and distress. 'rhere is no danger that his example will have a pern ic ions influence upon society at large. What is the example of a slave? Nor is there any likelihood that by giving way to these temptations he may render useless gifts which properly exercised might have redounded to the benefit of the community. The only talent proper to a slave is the talent of handling a hoe. With him, these vices termiuate for the most part in themselves. rrhc secondary evils which they produce are comparatively speaking, inconsiderable. Among the priv ileged class these indulgences give rise to a train of secondary evils of which the mere catalogue would fill a volume; evils, which instead of confining themselves to the person of the offender, overflow, spread abroad, sweep away :vhole families, and inundate society. No language IS too strong to describe the dangerous and fatal character, which when practised by the privileged class, these vices assume. |