“All absolute power has a direct tendency, not only to detract from the happiness of the persons who are subject to it, but to DEPRAVE THE GOOD QUALITIES of those who possess it..... the whole history of human nature, in the present and every former age, will justify me in saying that such is the tendency of power on the one hand and slavery on the other.”

A South Carolina slaveholder, whose name is with the executive committee of the Am.  A.S.  Society, says, in a letter, dated April 4, 1838:—­

“I think it (slavery) ruinous to the temper and to our spiritual life; it is a thorn in the flesh, for ever and for ever goading us on to say and to do what the Eternal God cannot but be displeased with.  I speak from experience, and oh! my desire is to be delivered from it.”

Monsieur C.C.  ROBIN, who was a resident of Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, published a work on that country; in which, speaking of the effect of slaveholding on masters and their children, he says:—­

“The young creoles make the negroes who surround them the play-things of their whims:  they flog, for pastime, those of their own age, just as their fathers flog others at their will.  These young creoles, arrived at the age in which the passions are impetuous, do not know how to bear contradiction; they will have every thing done which they command, possible or not; and in default of this, they avenge their offended pride by multiplied punishments.”

Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791, said:—­

“For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it destroys every humane principle, vitiates the mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of government.”—­Buchanan’s Oration, p. 12.

President EDWARDS the younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, in 1791, page 8, says:—­

“Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness, and a domineering spirit and conduct in the proprietors of the slaves, in their children, and in all who have the control of them.  A man who has been bred up in domineering over negroes, can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or in any office, civil or military, with which he may be invested.”

The celebrated MONTESQUIEU, in his “Spirit of the Laws,” thus describes the effect of slaveholding upon the master:—­

“The master contracts all sorts of bad habits; and becomes haughty, passionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel.”

WILBERFORCE, in his speech at the anniversary of the London Anti-Slavery Society, in March, 1828, said:—­

“It is utterly impossible that they who live in the administration of the petty despotism of a slave community, whose minds have been warped and polluted by that contamination, should not lose that respect for their fellow creatures over whom they tyrannize, which is essential in the nature and moral being of man, to rescue them from the abuse of power over their prostrate fellow creatures.”