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 and wrong is neither new,
nor peculiar to the color of the blacks."

Here Jefferson puts forth that very idea for which Gerrit Smith, a few
years ago, was threatened with the penalties of treason.

But to quote further from the same source:--

"Notwithstanding these considerations, which must weaken their
respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous
instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their
instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken
fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of
reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence."

The old hot thought blazes forth again in the chapter on "Particular
Manners and Customs." Can men speak against the proclamations of Abolition
Conventions after such fiery words from Jefferson?

"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; for man is an
imitative animal. If a parent could find no motive either in his
philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of
passion toward 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 rein to the worst of passions, and thus nursed,
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by
its odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain
his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances." (Here
fire begins to flicker up around the words.) "And with what
execration should a statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half
the _citizens_" (note the word) "to trample on the _rights_" (note
the word) "of the other, transforms th