ing keystone, we read, traced by
Jehovah in imperishable letters, radiant with love, "Do unto others as
you would that they should do unto you;" "Love thy neighbour as
thyself." Surely it needs no words of mine to show, that a faithful
history of the most Christian country in the most Christian times the
world ever witnessed, would contain, fearful evidence of the cruelty of
man setting at nought the above blessed precept. Nay, more--I question
if, viewed in its entire fulness, there is any one single command in
Scripture more habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed
to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes "Every one
for himself, and God for us all"? or, the more vulgar one, "Go ahead,
and the d----l take the hindmost?" What are they but concentrations of
the fact that selfishness is man's ruling passion? What are most laws
made for, but to restrain men by human penalties from a broach of the
law of love? and, if these laws be needful in communities, all the
members of which are equal in the eyes of the law, and even then be
found inefficient for their purpose, as may be daily witnessed in every
country, who will say that the influence of Christianity is sufficient
protection to the poor slave?

There is only one other influence that I shall mention--that is habit;
it acts for and against the slave. Thus, the kind and good, brought up
among slaves, very often nursed by them, and grown up in the continual
presence of their gentleness and faithfulness, repay them with
unmeasured kindness, and a sympathy in all their sickness and their
sorrows, to a degree which I feel quite certain the most tender-hearted
Christian breathing could never equal, if landed among slaves, for the
first time, at years of maturity. The Christian planter's wife or
daughter may be seen sitting up at night, cooking, nursing, tending an
old sick and helpless slave, with nearly, if not quite, the same
affectionate care she would bestow upon a sick relation, the very
friendlessness of the negro stimulating the benevolent heart. This is,
indeed, the bright side of the influence of habit.--But the other side
is not less true; and there the effect is, that a coarse, brutal mind,
trained up among those it can bully with impunity, acquires a
heartlessness and indifference to the negro's wants and sufferings, that
grow with the wretched possessor's growth. This is the dark side of the
influence of habit.

Let two examples