But, whatever deductions may be made from the familiar stories of White Slavery in the Barbary States,--admitting that it was mitigated by the genial influence of Mohammedanism,--that the captives were well clad and well fed, much better than the free Christians there,--that they were allowed opportunities of Christian worship,--that they were often treated with lenity and affectionate care,--that they were sometimes advanced to posts of responsibility and honor,--and that they were known, in their contentment or stolidity, to become indifferent to freedom,--still the institution or custom is hardly less hateful in our eyes. Slavery in all its forms, even under the mildest influences, is a wrong and a curse. No accidental gentleness of the master can make it otherwise. Against it reason, experience, the heart of man, all cry out. "Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account." Algerine Slavery was a violation of the law of nature and of God. It was a usurpation of rights not granted to man. O execrable son, so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given! He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord, such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free.[152] Such a relation, in defiance of God, could not fail to accumulate disastrous consequences upon all in any way parties to it; for injustice and wrong are fatal alike to the doer and the sufferer. It is notorious that, in Algiers, it exerted a most pernicious influence on master as well as slave. The slave was crushed and degraded, his intelligence abased, even his love of freedom extinguished. The master, accustomed from childhood to revolting inequalities of condition, was exalted into a mood of unconscious arrogance and self-confidence, inconsistent with the virtues of a pure and upright character. Unlimited power is apt to stretch towards license; and the wives and daughters of Christian slaves were often pressed to be the concubines of their Algerine masters.[153] [Footnote 152: Paradise Lost, book xii. 64-71.] [Footnote 153: Noah's Travels, p. 248, 253; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 168. Among the concubines of a prince of Morocco were two slaves of the age of fifteen, one of English, and the other of French extraction. Lemprière's Tour, p. 147. There is an account of the fate of "one Mrs. Shaw, an Irish woman," in words hardly polite enough to be quoted. She was swept into the harem of Muley Ishmael, who "forced her to turn Moor;" "but soon after, having taken a dislike to her, he gave her to a soldier."--Braithwaite's Morocco, p. 191.] It is well, then, that it has passed away! The Barbary States seem less barbarous, when we no longer discern this cruel oppression!