Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/166

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152
A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

the firmest stronghold of slavery. It has been argued, and with much appearance of truth, that two distinct was. haw never been found to exist together for any considerable length of time, except in a state of subjection to one to the other. Put them on an equality, and they will contend with each other till one or the other is subjugated or exterminated. The following which or: this point are from the pen of an able writer:

"But even if we were to suppose the Legislature [of a slave holding state], and consequently a majority of the people who have chosen them, — to divest themselves of these feelings or prejudices, and venture on the great experiment [of emancipation], who can pretend to any that it would he a safe one? When, in every community, men are found splitting into parties, on point of difference often so minute as to be unintelligible to a stranger — who can foresee how much they would be aggravated where the line of separation has but drawn by nature herself: and where sensible impressions might impart their own peculiar vividness to the feelings of party animosity? This visible difference between the two mm tends now to preserve public tranquillity, operating on the minds both of master and slave. and confirms the authority of the master and slave, and confirms the authority of the one and the submission of the other. The master more easily persuades himself that he is naturally superior (an opinion which the most philosophical of the citizens of the South conscientiously and the slave can be more readily brought to believe that the inferiority of which he must necessarily be conscious, is the work of nature rather than of man; and he is,