POWER OF THE PLANTERS. 



358 



mitted meetings, the schemes are formed. 

 Then the slave-owner who is aware of such 

 secret practices, and reflects, must feel of how 

 little avail are all his regulations, all his good 

 management. Restraint creates the wish to 

 act contrary to given rules. The slave has a 

 natural bias to deceive him who holds him in 

 subjection. A man may love the master whom 

 he may at pleasure leave ; but to be tied down, 

 and as a duty enjoined to esteem, fails not in 

 most instances to rouse contrary feelings, to 

 awaken a sense of pleasure rather than of pain, 

 in counteracting the wishes, and in rendering 

 nugatory the determinations of him who com- 

 mands. 



At other times far different ideas from these 

 have occupied my mind ; I have thought of the 

 strange life I was leading; a remembrance of 

 feudal times in Europe has crossed me, and I 

 could not forbear comparing with them the 

 present state of the interior of Brazil. The 

 great power of the planter, not only over his 

 slaves, but his authority over the free persons 

 of lower rank ; the respect which is required 

 by these barons from the free inhabitants of 

 their lands # ; the assistance which they expect 



* On Saturdays only, throughout the country, are cattle 

 slaughtered ; and thus weekly many persons of each neigh- 

 bourhood assemble, as much to converse and hear the news 

 as to purchase their portion of meat. On one of these occa- 



VOL. I. A A 



