e. The Europeans did imperfectly feel
this truth, but without acknowledging it even to themselves. Whenever
they have had to do with negroes, their conduct has either been dictated
by their interest and their pride, or by their compassion. They first
violated every right of humanity by their treatment of the negro
and they afterwards informed him that those rights were precious and
inviolable. They affected to open their ranks to the slaves, but the
negroes who attempted to penetrate into the community were driven back
with scorn; and they have incautiously and involuntarily been led to
admit of freedom instead of slavery, without having the courage to be
wholly iniquitous, or wholly just.

If it be impossible to anticipate a period at which the Americans of the
South will mingle their blood with that of the negroes, can they allow
their slaves to become free without compromising their own security? And
if they are obliged to keep that race in bondage in order to save their
own families, may they not be excused for availing themselves of the
means best adapted to that end? The events which are taking place in
the Southern States of the Union appear to me to be at once the most
horrible and the most natural results of slavery. When I see the order
of nature overthrown, and when I hear the cry of humanity in its vain
struggle against the laws, my indignation does not light upon the men of
our own time who are the instruments of these outrages; but I reserve
my execration for those who, after a thousand years of freedom, brought
back slavery into the world once more.

Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to maintain
slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which is now confined to
a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity
as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial; and which is now
contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age,
cannot survive. By the choice of the master, or by the will of the
slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be
expected to ensue. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the South,
they will in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given,
they will abuse it ere long. *x

[Footnote x: [This chapter is no longer applicable to the condition of
the negro race in the United States, since the abolition of slavery
was the result, though not the object, of the great Civil War, and the