III. It is by a natural transition that I am now conducted to the inquiry into the _true character_ of the evil whose history has been traced. And here I shall be brief. The slavery of Christians by the Barbary States is regarded as an unquestionable outrage upon humanity and justice. Nobody hesitates in this judgment. Our liveliest sympathies attend these white brethren--torn from their homes, the ties of family and friendship rudely severed, parent separated from child and husband from wife, exposed at public sale like cattle, and dependent, like cattle, upon the uncertain will of an arbitrary taskmaster. We read of a "gentleman" who was compelled to be the valet of the barbarian Emperor of Morocco;[129] and Calderon, the pride of the Spanish stage, has depicted the miserable fate of a Portuguese prince, condemned by infidel Moors to carry water in a garden. But the lowly in condition had their unrecorded sorrows also, whose sum total must swell to a fearful amount. Who can tell how many hearts have been wrung by the pangs of separation, how many crushed by the comfortless despair of interminable bondage? "Speaking as a Christian," says the good Catholic father who has chronicled much of this misery, "if on the earth there can be any condition which, in its character and evils, may represent in any manner the dolorous passion of the Son of God, (which exceeded all evils and torments, because by it the Lord suffered every kind of evil and affliction,) it is, beyond question and doubt, none other than slavery and captivity in Algiers and Barbary, whose infinite evils, terrible torments, miseries without number, afflictions without mitigation, it is impossible to comprehend in a brief span of time."[130] When we consider the author's character, as a father of the Catholic Church, it will be felt that language can no further go. [Footnote 129: Braithwaite's Revolutions of Morocco, p. 233; Noah's Travels, p. 367.] [Footnote 130: Haedo, _Historia_, pp. 139, 140. Besides the illustrations of the hardships of White Slavery already introduced, I refer briefly to the following: Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi. pp. 452-454; Croker's Letter, pp. 11-13; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 145; Eaton's Life, p. 100; Noah's Travels, p. 366.] [Illustration]