The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I
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The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I
Literature -- Collections
But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks
on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs, in the
circle of smaller slaves gives a loose to the worst of passions, and
thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who
can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.
And with what execrations should the statesman be loaded who,
permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the
other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys
the morals of the one part and the _amor patriae_ of the other! For if
a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in
preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another;
in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as
far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the
human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless
generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their
industry is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for
himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true that of
the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen
to labor.
IV
HIS ACCOUNT OF LOGAN'S FAMOUS SPEECH[36]
The principles of their society forbidding all compulsion, they are to
be led to duty and to enterprise by personal influence and persuasion.
Hence eloquence in council, bravery and success in war become the
foundations of all consequence with them. To these acquirements all
their faculties are directed. Of their bravery and address in war we
have multiplied proofs, because we have been the subjects on which
they were exercised. Of their eminence in oratory we have fewer
examples, because it is displayed chiefly in their own councils. Some,
however, we have of very superior luster. I may challenge the whole
orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if
Europe has furnished any more eminent, to produce a single passage
superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when
governor of this State. And, as a testimony of their talents in this
line, I beg leave to introduce it, first stating the incidents
necessary for understanding it.
[Footnote 36: From Query VI of the "Notes on Virginia."]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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