nicest rules of equity—­his integrity, honor, and incorruptible faith—­his jealous watchfulness over the rights of his fellow citizens, and his generous devotion to their interest, procured for him the sublime appellation of “The Just.”  Towards freemen his life was a model of every thing just and noble:  but to his slaves he was a monster.  At his meals, when the dishes were not done to his liking, or when his slaves were careless or inattentive in serving, he would seize a thong and violently beat them, in presence of his guests.—­When they grew old or diseased, and were no longer serviceable, however long and faithfully they might have served him, he either turned them adrift and left them to perish, or starved them to death in his own family.  No facts in his history are better authenticated than these.

No people were ever more hospitable and munificent than the Romans, and none more touched with the sufferings of others.  Their public theatres often rung with loud weeping, thousands sobbing convulsively at once over fictitious woes and imaginary sufferers:  and yet these same multitudes would shout amidst the groans of a thousand dying gladiators, forced by their conquerors to kill each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement of the public.[22]

[Footnote 22:  Dr. Leland, in his “Necessity of a Divine Revelation,” thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans:—­“They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators, knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state, as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows.  Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude.  Such was the frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were killed on those occasions, that Lipsius says, no war caused such slaughter of mankind, as did these sports of pleasure, throughout the several provinces of the vast Roman empire.”—­Leland’s Neces. of Div.  Rev. vol. ii. p. 51.]

Alexander, the tyrant of Phaeres, sobbed like a child over the misfortunes of the Trojan queens, when the tragedy of Andromache and Hecuba was played before him; yet he used to murder his subjects every day for no crime, and without even setting up the pretence of any, but merely to make himself sport.

The fact that slaveholders may be full of benevolence and kindness toward their equals and toward whites generally, even so much so as to attract the esteem and admiration of all, while they treat with the most inhuman neglect their own slaves, is well illustrated by a circumstance mentioned by the Rev. Dr. CHANNING, of Boston, (who once lived in Virginia,) is his work on slavery, p. 162, 1st edition:—­