I experience a similar
feeling, and roaming "around" the lordly parks of England, I see them
through an enclosure of wretchedness and rags, till their loveliness
seems an illusion!

Here alone, upon the banks of this majestic river, do I behold wealth
widely diffused, intelligence broadcast, and comfort for all. Here, in
almost every house, do I meet the refined taste of high civilisation--
the hospitality of generous hearts combined with the power to dispense
it. Here can I converse with men by thousands, whose souls are free--
not politically alone, but free from vulgar error and fanatic
superstition; here, in short, have I witnessed, not the perfectedness--
for that belongs to a far future time--but the most advanced stage of
civilisation yet reached upon the globe.

A dark shadow crosses my eye-glance, and my heart is stung with sudden
pain. It is the shadow of a human being with a black skin. _He is a
slave_!

For a moment or two the scene looks black! What is there to admire
here--in these fields of golden sugar-cane, of waving maize, of
snow-white cotton? What to admire in those grand mansions, with their
orangeries, their flowery gardens, their drooping shade-trees, and their
soft arbours? All this is but the sweat of the slave!

For a while I behold without admiring. The scene has lost its _couleur
de rose_; and a gloomy wilderness is before me! I reflect. Slowly and
gradually the cloud passes away, and the brightness returns. I reflect
and compare.

True, he with the black skin is a slave--but not a _voluntary_ slave.
That is a difference in his favour at least.

In other lands--mine own among them--I see around me slaves as well, and
far more numerous. Not the slaves of an individual, but of an
association of individuals--a class--an oligarchy. Not slaves of the
corvee--serfs of the feud--but victims of its modern representative the
tax, which is simply its commutation, and equally baneful in its
effects.

On my soul, I hold that the slavery of the Louisiana black is less
degrading than that of the white pleb of England. The poor,
woolly-headed helot is the victim of conquest, and may claim to place
himself in the honourable category of a prisoner of war. He has not
willed his own bondage; while you, my grocer, and butcher, and baker--
ay, and you, my fine city merchant, who fondly fancy yourself a
freeman--ye are voluntary in your serfdom; ye are loyal to a political
juggle that annu