170 



ting despotism on the one part, and degradinsf submis- 

 sions oil the other. Our children see this, and learn to 

 imitate it ; for man is an imitative animal. This quali- 

 ty is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle 

 to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. 

 If a parent could find no motive either in his philan- 

 thropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance 

 of passion towards his slave, it should always be a suf- 

 ficient one that his child is present. But generally it is 

 not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, 

 catches tlie lineaments of wratli, puts on the same airs 

 in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst 

 of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exer- 

 cised in tyranny, cannot but he stamped by it with 

 odious [leculiarities. 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 citi- 

 zens thus to trample on the rights of the other, trans- 

 forms those into despots, and these into enemies, des- 

 troys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae 

 of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this 

 world, it must be any other in preference to that in 

 which he is born to li;e and labour for another; in 

 which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, con- 

 tribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours 

 to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his 

 own miserable condition on the endless generations 

 proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, 

 their industry also is destroyed. F'or in a warm cli- 

 mate, no man ivill labour for himself who can make 

 another labour for him. This is so true, that of the 

 })roprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are 

 ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation 

 be thought secure when we have removed their only 

 firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that 

 these liberties are of the gift of God ? That they are 

 not to be violated but with his wrath ? Indeed I trem- 

 ble for my country when I reflect that God >c just: that 

 his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering uum- 



