364 SLAVERY. [CHAP. XXt 



knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I sus- 

 pected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that 

 this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived 

 opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her 

 female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household 

 mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough 

 to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six 

 or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could 

 interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water 

 not quite clean ; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his 

 master's eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a 

 Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are 

 better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European 

 nations. I have seen at Rio Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward 

 off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a 

 kind-hearted man was on the point of separating for ever the men, 

 women, and little children of a large number of families who had long 

 lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening 

 atrocities which I authentically heard of: norwould I have mentioned the 

 above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded 

 by the constitutional gaiety of the negro, as to speak of slavery as a 

 tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the houses of the 

 upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated ; and 

 they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such in- 

 quirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the 

 slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his 

 answer reaching his master's ears. 



It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if 

 self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely 

 than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. 

 It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, 

 and strikingly exemplified, by the ever illustrious Humboldt. It 

 is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves 

 with our poorer countrymen : if the misery of our poor be caused not 

 by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin ; but how 

 this bears on slavery, I cannot see ; as well might the use of the thumb- 

 screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land 

 suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the 

 slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put 

 themselves into the position of the latter ; what a cheerless prospect, 

 with not even a hope of change ! Picture to yourself the chance, ever 

 hanging over you, of your wife and your little children those objects 

 which nature urges even the slave to call his own being torn from you 

 and sold like beasts to the first bidder 1 And these deeds are done and 

 palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, 

 who believe in God, and pray that His will be done on earth ! It 

 makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen 

 and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have 

 been and are so guilty; but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at 



