have done them justice.[64]

That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must
be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the
moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist,
probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor
of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a
fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of
right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of
conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a
problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the
religious precepts against the violation of property were not
framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may
not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from
him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the
relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of
moral right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the color
of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so two thousand six hundred
years ago.[65]

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 submissions on the
other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in
him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he
sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his
philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance
of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient
one that his child is present. But, generally, it is not
sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of
smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a
prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execrations should the statesman be
loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on
the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these
into enemies, destroys the m