526 



CHARLES DARWIN 



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 de 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 forever 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 ; — nor would I have 

 mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with sev- 

 eral 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 

 inquirers 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 cru- 

 elty ; 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 pro- 

 tested 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 



