itimate results of a
system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not
descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the
masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their
unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of
slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be
individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity,
whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies,
nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly
abused.

Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise, of
the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one
part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot fail to be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."--(Notes on
Virginia, p. 241.)

"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais
traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
holder, in his late work on the United States.

Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?

You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
slave decided to be only a trespass!--(Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
Harris versus Nichols.)

It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is cha