in a gloomy picture, only serve by contrast to exhibit the depth of the prevailing shades.  Like other exceptions, they only prove the general rule:  the unquestionable tendency of the system is to vitiate the best tempers, and to harden the most feeling hearts.  “Never be kind, nor speak kindly to a slave,” said an accomplished English lady in South Africa to my wife:  “I have now,” she added, “been for some time a slave-owner, and have found, from vexatious experience in my own household, that nothing but harshness and hauteur will do with slaves.”

[Footnote 23:  See Anti-Slavery Reporter, Nos. 5 and 16.]

[Footnote 24:  Ibid, No. 44.]

[Footnote 25:  Ibid, No. 47.]

[Footnote 26:  Ibid, No. 64, p. 345; No. 71, p. 481.]

[Footnote 27:  Ibid, No. 65, p. 356; No. 69, p. 431.]

[Footnote 28:  Anti-Slavery Reporter, Nos. 66, 69, and 76.]

I might perhaps not inappropriately illustrate this point more fully by stating many cases which fell under my own personal observation, or became known to me through authentic sources, at the Cape of Good Hope—­a colony where slavery assumes, as it is averred, a milder aspect than in any other dependency of the empire where it exists; and I could shew, from the judicial records of that colony, received by me within these few weeks, cases scarcely inferior in barbarity to the worst of those to which I have just specially referred; but to do so would lead me too far from the immediate purpose of this pamphlet, and extend it to an inconvenient length.  I shall therefore content myself with quoting a single short passage from the excellent work of my friend Dr. Walsh, entitled “Notices of Brazil,”—­a work which, besides its other merits, has vividly illustrated the true spirit of Negro Slavery, as it displays itself not merely in that country, but wherever it has been permitted to open its Pandora’s box of misery and crime.

Let the reader ponder on the following just remarks, and compare the facts stated by the Author in illustration of them, with the circumstances related at pages 6 and 7 of Mary’s narrative:—­

“If then we put out of the question the injury inflicted on others, and merely consider the deterioration of feeling and principle with which it operates on ourselves, ought it not to be a sufficient, and, indeed, unanswerable argument, against the permission of Slavery?

“The exemplary manner in which the paternal duties are performed at home, may mark people as the most fond and affectionate parents; but let them once go abroad, and come within the contagion of slavery, and it seems to alter the very nature of a man; and the father has sold, and still sells, the mother and his children, with as little compunction as he would a sow and her litter of pigs; and he often disposes of them together.

“This deterioration of feeling is conspicuous in many ways among the Brazilians.