An Englishman may further ask how it is that a wretch guilty of such
cruelties to men who never wronged him, to innocent and unoffending
females and children, can find, in a society where slavery is
unknown, men to assist him in inflicting them, and landholders of
high rank and large possessions to screen and shelter him when
pursued by his Government. He must, for the solution of this
question, also go back to the MIDDLE AGES, in England and the other
nations of Europe, when the baronial proprietors of the soil, too
strong for their sovereigns, committed the same cruelties, found the
same willing instruments in their retainers, and members of the same
class of landed proprietors, to screen, shelter, and encourage them
in their iniquities.
They acquiesce in the atrocities committed by one who is in armed
resistance to the Government to-day, and aid him in his enterprises
openly or secretly, because they know that they may be in the same
condition, and require the same aid from him to-morrow--that the more
sturdy the resistance made by one, the less likely will the
Government officers be to rouse the resistance of others. They do not
sympathise with those who suffer from his depredations, or aid the
Government officers in protecting them, because they know that they
could not support the means required to enable them to contend
successfully with their Sovereign, and reduce him to terms, without
plundering and occasionally murdering the innocent of all ages and
both sexes, and that they may have to raise the same means in a
similar contest to-morrow.
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