"On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank
God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.
To this day, if I hear a
distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when
passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and
could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew
that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that
these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was
the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an
old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I
have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and
hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit
of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old,
struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked
head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his
father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye.
These latter
cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has
always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese,
English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a
powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his
face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of
separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number
of families who had long lived together.
I will not even allude to the
many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of;—nor
would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with
several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as
to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally
visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves
are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself, lived amongst
the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their condition;
they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate
on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears. It is argued
that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest
protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded
slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters.
It is an argument
long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly
exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to
palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer
countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of
nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on
slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be
defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from
some dreadful disease.
Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and
with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the
position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope
of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of
your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even
the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to
the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who
profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and
pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet
heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants,
with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it
is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater
sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin." (from "The
Voyage of the Beagle" by Charles Darwin)"
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