.

Although the Americans have, in a manner, reduced egotism to a social
and philosophical theory, they are nevertheless extremely open to
compassion. In no country is criminal justice administered with more
mildness than in the United States. Whilst the English seem disposed
carefully to retain the bloody traces of the dark ages in their penal
legislation, the Americans have almost expunged capital punishment from
their codes. North America is, I think, the only one country upon earth
in which the life of no one citizen has been taken for a political
offence in the course of the last fifty years. The circumstance which
conclusively shows that this singular mildness of the Americans arises
chiefly from their social condition, is the manner in which they treat
their slaves. Perhaps there is not, upon the whole, a single European
colony in the New World in which the physical condition of the blacks
is less severe than in the United States; yet the slaves still endure
horrid sufferings there, and are constantly exposed to barbarous
punishments. It is easy to perceive that the lot of these unhappy beings
inspires their masters with but little compassion, and that they look
upon slavery, not only as an institution which is profitable to them,
but as an evil which does not affect them. Thus the same man who is full
of humanity towards his fellow-creatures when they are at the same time
his equals, becomes insensible to their afflictions as soon as that
equality ceases. His mildness should therefore be attributed to the
equality of conditions, rather than to civilization and education.

What I have here remarked of individuals is, to a certain extent,
applicable to nations. When each nation has its distinct opinions,
belief, laws, and customs, it looks upon itself as the whole of mankind,
and is moved by no sorrows but its own. Should war break out between
two nations animated by this feeling, it is sure to be waged with great
cruelty. At the time of their highest culture, the Romans slaughtered
the generals of their enemies, after having dragged them in triumph
behind a car; and they flung their prisoners to the beasts of the Circus
for the amusement of the people. Cicero, who declaimed so vehemently at
the notion of crucifying a Roman citizen, had not a word to say against
these horrible abuses of victory. It is evident that in his eyes a
barbarian did not belong to the same human race as a Roman. On the
contrary, in propor