s sure to be short; this does, I own,
excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade
which is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of
any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of
a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or
as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames.

There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish to
apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, that
slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me a
much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States.
In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget one
most important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as
it was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting
to slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the
antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it is
difficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers can
ever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts of
the Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy is
notoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils.
In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are not
excluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants,
physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted to
holy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Church
of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive the
important consequences which follow from this last circumstance. It
is by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the
spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving
absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro
dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the
House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would
excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I
do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if
I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the African
race on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should at
once answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbable
that in eighty or a hundred years the black population of B