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PLANTERS AND SLAVES.
of whom in. England no one would dare to whisper a reproach, should, one and all, as soon as they have landed in Carlisle Bay or St. John's Harbour, be transformed at once into such monsters of avarice and bloodthirstiness that the once glorious Wilberforce could not find any pity for them, if they were all stabbed at night by black men on their pillows of slumber? CĹ“lum, non currant,
animum, mutant qui
trans
mare
says Horace; but Horace, as Mr. Stephen knows, had slaves himself, and, upon one occasion, argued that he had worthily rewarded one of them for an honest and industrious course of life by not crucifying him for crow's meat. So we will give up little Horace. But slavery creates the change: slavery infects the air which they breathe and the soil which they tread; slavery hardens their hearts and darkens their understandings! True; slavery did all this formerly, does so sometimes now, and has a natural tendency to do as much always. Then slavery is a bad system? To be sure—a very bad system; who says it is a good one ? Certainly none of the planters with whom I am acquainted, and most certainly not the author of this book. But are temptations never resisted, nay sometimes dared and conquered, and made the vantage ground of virtue ? Is not this the