wn misery, and can hardly conceive otherwise, than that
there is some injustice in the institutions of society to occasion
these. They regard the apparently more fortunate class as oppressors,
and it adds bitterness that they should be of the same name and race.
They feel indignity more acutely, and more of discontent and evil
passion is excited; they feel that it is mockery that calls them free.
Men do not so much hate and envy those who are separated from them by a
wide distance, and some apparently impassable barrier, as those who
approach nearer to their own condition, and with whom they habitually
bring themselves into comparison. The slave with us is not tantalized
with the name of freedom, to which his whole condition gives the lie,
and would do so if he were emancipated to-morrow. The African slave sees
that nature herself has marked him as a separate--and if left to
himself, I have no doubt he would feel it to be an inferior--race, and
interposed a barrier almost insuperable to his becoming a member of the
same society, standing on the same footing of right and privilege with
his master.

That the African negro is an inferior variety of the human race, is, I
think, now generally admitted, and his distinguishing characteristics
are such as peculiarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies
among us. And these are no less marked in their original country, than
as we have daily occasion to observe them. The most remarkable is their
indifference to personal liberty. In this they have followed their
instincts since we have any knowledge of their continent, by enslaving
each other; but contrary to the experience of every race, the possession
of slaves has no material effect in raising the character, and promoting
the civilization of the master. Another trait is the want of domestic
affections, and insensibility to the ties of kindred. In the travels of
the Landers, after speaking of a single exception, in the person of a
woman who betrayed some transient emotion in passing by the country from
which she had been torn as a slave, the authors add: "that Africans,
generally speaking, betray the most perfect indifference on losing their
liberty, and being deprived of their relatives, while love of country is
equally a stranger to their breasts, as social tenderness or domestic
affection." "Marriage is celebrated by the natives as unconcernedly as
possible; a man thinks as little of taking a wife, as of cutting an