ve, was at
the same time rendered far more difficult of cure.

It is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself
and its consequences. The immediate evils which are produced by slavery
were very nearly the same in antiquity as they are amongst the moderns;
but the consequences of these evils were different. The slave, amongst
the ancients, belonged to the same race as his master, and he was often
the superior of the two in education *d and instruction. Freedom was the
only distinction between them; and when freedom was conferred they were
easily confounded together. The ancients, then, had a very simple
means of avoiding slavery and its evil consequences, which was that of
affranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as they adopted this
measure generally. Not but, in ancient States, the vestiges of servitude
subsisted for some time after servitude itself was abolished. There is a
natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their
inferior long after he is become their equal; and the real inequality
which is produced by fortune or by law is always succeeded by an
imaginary inequality which is implanted in the manners of the people.
Nevertheless, this secondary consequence of slavery was limited to a
certain term amongst the ancients, for the freedman bore so entire
a resemblance to those born free, that it soon became impossible to
distinguish him from amongst them.

[Footnote d: It is well known that several of the most distinguished
authors of antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and Terence, were, or had
been slaves. Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and
the chances of war reduced highly civilized men to servitude.]

The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law;
amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners; and, as far as
we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients
left off. This arises from the circumstance that, amongst the moderns,
the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the
physical and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery dishonors
the race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of
slavery. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the
New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now
to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. Thus the
negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy