Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Direct Influence Of The Authorities Is
Indispensable; And It Is A Fatal Error To Believe That We May Leave It
To Time To Act.
Time will act simultaneously on the slaves, on the
relations between the islands and the inhabitants of the continent,
and on events which cannot be controlled, when they have been waited
for with the inaction of apathy.
Wherever slavery is long established,
the increase of civilization solely has less influence on the
treatment of slaves than many are disposed to admit. The civilization
of a nation seldom extends to a great number of individuals; and does
not reach those who in the plantations are in immediate contact with
the blacks. I have known very humane proprietors shrink from the
difficulties that arise in the great plantations; they hesitate to
disturb established order, to make innovations, which, if not
simultaneous, not supported by the legislation, or (which would be
more powerful) by public feeling, would fail in their end, and perhaps
aggravate the wretchedness of those whose sufferings they were meant
to alleviate. These considerations retard the good that might be
effected by men animated by the most benevolent intentions, and who
deplore the barbarous institutions which have devolved to them by
inheritance. They well know that to produce an essential change in the
state of the slaves, to lead them progressively to the enjoyment of
liberty, requires a firm will on the part of the local authorities,
the concurrence of wealthy and enlightened citizens, and a general
plan in which all chances of disorder and means of repression are
wisely calculated. Without this community of action and effort
slavery, with its miseries and excesses, will survive as it did in
ancient Rome,* along with elegance of manners, progressive
intelligence, and all the charms of the civilization which its
presence accuses, and which it threatens to destroy, whenever the hour
of vengeance shall arrive. (* The argument deduced from the
civilization of Rome and Greece in favour of slavery is much in vogue
in the West Indies, where sometimes we find it adorned with all the
graces of erudition. Thus, in speeches delivered in 1795, in the
Legislative Assembly of Jamaica, it was alleged that from the example
of elephants having been employed in the wars of Pyrrhus and Hannibal,
it could not be blamable to have brought a hundred dogs and forty
hunters from the island of Cuba to hunt the maroon negroes. Bryan
Edwards volume 1 page 570.) Civilization, or slow national
demoralization, merely prepare the way for future events; but to
produce great changes in the social state there must be a coincidence
of certain events, the period of the occurrence of which cannot be
calculated. Such is the complication of human destiny, that the same
cruelties which tarnished the conquest of America have been re-enacted
before our own eyes in times which we suppose to be characterized by
vast progress, information and general refinement of manners. Within
the interval embraced by the span of one life we have seen the reign
of terror in France, the expedition to St. Domingo,* (* The North
American Review for 1821 Number 30 contains the following passage:
Conflicts with slaves fighting for their freedom are not only dreadful
on account of the atrocities to which they give rise on both sides;
but even after freedom has been gained they help to confound every
sentiment of justice and injustice.
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