(3.) From this dreary picture of Slave-Masters with their slaves and their triumvirate of vulgar instruments, I pass to another more dreary still, and more completely exposing the influence of Slavery: I mean the _relations of Slave-Masters with each other_, also _with Society_ and _Government_,--or, in other words, the Character of Slave-Masters, as displayed in the general relations of life. Here again I need your indulgence. Not in triumph or in taunt do I approach this branch of the subject. Yielding only to the irresistible exigency of the discussion, and in direct reply to the assumptions on this floor, especially by the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON], I proceed. If I touch Slavery to the quick, and make Slave-Masters see themselves as others see them, I shall do nothing beyond the strictest line of duty in this debate. One of the choicest passages of the master Italian poet, Dante, is where we are permitted to behold a passage of transcendent virtue sculptured in “visible speech” on the long gallery leading to the Heavenly Gate. The poet felt the inspiration of the scene, and placed it on the wayside, where it could charm and encourage. This was natural. Nobody can look upon virtue and justice, if only in images and pictures, without feeling a kindred sentiment. Nobody can be surrounded by vice and wrong, by violence and brutality, if only in images and pictures, without coming under their degrading influence. Nobody can live with the one without advantage; nobody can live with the other without loss. Who could pass life in the secret chamber where are gathered the impure relics of Pompeii, without becoming indifferent to loathsome things? But if these loathsome things are not merely sculptured and painted,--if they exist in living reality,--if they enact their hideous, open indecencies, as in the criminal pretensions of Slavery,--while the lash plays and the blood spurts,--while women are whipped and children are sold,--while marriage is polluted and annulled,--while the parental tie is rudely torn,--while honest gains are filched or robbed,--while the soul itself is shut down in all the darkness of ignorance, and God himself is defied in the pretension that man can have property in his fellow-man,--if all these things are “visible,” not merely in images and pictures, but in reality, the influence on character must be incalculably deplorable.