“But if Slavery degrades the slave, it degrades the master more. This is an old adage, and long observation has proved to me that this adage is not a paradox. In fact, how can that man respect his own dignity, his own rights, who has not learned to respect either the rights or the dignity of his fellow-man? What control can the moral and religious sentiments have over a person who sees himself invested with a power so eminently contrary to morality and religion? The continual exercise of an unjust claim, even when moderated, ends in corrupting the character of the man, and perverting his judgment.… The possession of a slave being the result of injustice, the relations of the master with the slave cannot be otherwise than a succession of wrongs. Among good masters (and it is agreed so to call those who do not abuse their power as much as they might) these relations are invested with forms less repugnant than among other masters; but here the difference ends. Who can remain always pure, when, induced by disposition, excited by temper, influenced by caprice, he may with impunity oppress, insult, humiliate his fellow-men? And be it remarked, that enlightenment, civilization, do not avail here. The enlightened man, the civilized man, is nevertheless a man; that he may not oppress, it is necessary that it should be impossible for him to oppress. All men cannot, like Louis the Fourteenth, throw the cane out of the window, when they feel an inclination to strike.”[122] Another authority, unimpeachable at all points, whose fortune it has been, from extensive travels, to see Slavery in the most various forms, and Slave-Masters under the most various conditions,--I refer to the great African traveller, Dr. Livingstone,--thus touches the character of Slave-Masters:-- “I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, _but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered_, would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them as ‘paying one’s way’ is to the rest of mankind.”[123] And so does the experience of Slavery in other countries confirm the sad experience among us. SECOND ASSUMPTION OF SLAVE-MASTERS.