I 



. ■ 



; r>-l«"' 



240 



SLAVERY. 



the stigma for which he is upbraided will be 

 removed by it ; and therefore he is desirous of 

 being made equal to his companions. The 

 .Africans who have been long imported, imbibe 

 a Catholic feeling, and appear to forget that 

 they were once in the same situation themselves. 

 The slaves are not asked whether they will be 

 baptized or not ; their entrance into the Catholic 

 church is treated as a thing of course ; and 

 indeed they are not considered as members of 

 society, but rather as brute animals, until they 

 can lawfully go to mass, confess their sins, and 

 receive the sacrament. 



The slaves have their religious brotherhoods 

 as well as the free persons ; and the ambition of 

 a slave very generally aims at being admitted 

 into one of these, and at being made one of the 

 officers and directors of the concerns of the 

 brotherhood ; even some of the money which 

 the industrious slave is collecting for the pur- 

 pose of purchasing his freedom will oftentimes 

 be brought out of its concealment for the deco- 

 ration of a saint, that the donor may become 

 of importance in the society to which he be- 

 longs. The negroes have one invocation of the 

 Virgin (or I might almost say one virgin) which 

 is peculiarly their own. Our Lady of the llosary 

 is even sometimes painted with a black face and 

 hands. It is in this manner that the slaves are 

 led to place their attention upon an object in 



