natural incapacity for friendship? Surely not. Yet what is their general character? False--cruel--licentious---ungrateful. Many of them have performed single acts of splendid generosity and heroism; a few may be named whose general administration has been salutary; but scarcely one has passed through life without committing at least some one atrocious act, from the guilt and infamy of which restricting laws would have saved him and his victims. If Henry VIII. had been a private man, he might have torn his wife’s ruff, and kicked her lap-dog. He was a King, and he cutoff her head--not that his passions were more brutal than those of many other men, but that they were less restrained. How many of the West Indian overseers can boast of the piety and magnanimity of Theodosius? Yet, in a single moment of anger, that amiable prince destroyed more innocent people than all the ruffians in Europe stab in fifty years. Thus it is with a master in the Colonies. We will suppose him to be {317}a good natured man, but subject, like other men, to occasional fits of passion. He gives an order. It is slowly or negligently executed. In England he would grumble, perhaps swear a little. In the West Indies, the law empowers him to indict a severe flogging on the loiterer. Are we very uncharitable in supposing that he will sometimes exercise his privilege? It by no means follows that a person who is humane in England will be humane to his Negroes in the West Indies. Nothing is so capricious and inconsistent as the compassion of men. The Romans were people of the same flesh and blood with ourselves--they loved their friends--they cried at tragedies--they gave money to beggars;--yet we know their fondness for gladiatorial shows. When, by order of Pompey, some elephants were tortured in the amphitheatre, the audience was so shocked at the yells and contortions by which the poor creatures expressed their agony, that they burst forth into execrations against their favourite general. The same people, in the same place, had probably often given the fatal twirl of the thumb which condemned some gallant barbarian to receive the sword. In our own time, many a man shoots partridges in such numbers that he is compelled to bury them, who would chastise his son for amusing himself with the equally interesting, and not more cruel diversion, of catching flies and tearing them to pieces. The drover goads oxen--the fishmonger crimps cod--the dragoon sabres a Frenchman--the Spanish Inquisition burns a Jew--the Irish gentleman torments a Catholic. These persons are not necessarily destitute of feeling. Each of them would shrink from any cruel employment, except that to which his situation has familiarized him.