That Senators should seriously declare Slavery “ennobling,” at least to the master, and “the black marble keystone of our national arch,” would excite wonder, if it were not explained by examples of history. There are men who, in the spirit of paradox, make themselves partisans of a bad cause, as Jerome Cardan wrote an Encomium on Nero. But where there is no disposition to paradox, it is natural that a cherished practice should blind those under its influence; nor is there any end to these exaggerations. According to Thucydides, piracy in the early ages of Greece was alike wide-spread and honorable; and so much was this the case, that Telemachus and Mentor, on landing at Pylos, were asked by Nestor if they were “pirates,”[118]--precisely as in South Carolina the stranger might be asked if he were a Slave-Master. Kidnapping, too, a kindred indulgence, was openly avowed, and I doubt not held to be “ennobling.” Next to the unconsciousness of childhood is the unconsciousness of Barbarism. The real Barbarian is unconscious as an infant; and the Slave-Master shows much of the same character. No New-Zealander exults in his tattoo, no savage of the Northwest Coast exults in his flat head, more than the Slave-Master of these latter days--always, of course, with honorable exceptions--exults in his unfortunate condition. The Slave-Master hugs his disgusting practice as the Carib of the Gulf hugged Cannibalism, and as Brigham Young now hugs Polygamy. The delusion of the Goitre is repeated. This prodigious swelling of the neck, nothing less than a loathsome wallet of flesh pendulous upon the breast, and sometimes so enormous, that the victim, unable to support the burden, crawls along the ground, is common to the population on the slopes of the Alps;[119] but, accustomed to this deformity, the sufferer comes to regard it with pride,--as Slave-Masters with us, unable to support their burden, and crawling along the ground, regard Slavery,--and it is said that those who have no swelling are laughed at and called “goose-necked.”[120] With knowledge comes distrust and the modest consciousness of imperfection; but the pride of Barbarism has no such limitation. It dilates in the thin air of ignorance, and makes boasts. Surely, if the illustrations which I have presented to-day are not entirely inapplicable, then must we find in the boasts of Slave-Masters new occasion to regret that baleful influence under which even love of country is lost in love of Slavery, and the great motto of Franklin is reversed, so as to read, _Ubi Servitudo, ibi Patria_.