We have no fears whatever of the efect of this literary monstrosity,
which we have been considering upon the British colonies. Quashee, black
and ignorant as he may be, will not "get himself made a slave again."
The mission of the "beneficent whip" is there pretty well over; and it
may now find its place in museums and cabinets of ghastly curiosities,
with the racks, pillories, thumbscrews, and branding-irons of old days.
What we have feared, however, is, that the advocates and defenders of
slave-holding in this country might find in this discourse matter of
encouragement, and that our anti-christian prejudices against the colored
man might be strengthened and confirmed by its malignant vituperation and
sarcasm. On this point we have sympathized with the forebodings of an
eloquent writer in the London Enquirer:--
"We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people
than his [Carlyle's] last composition. Every cruel practice of social
exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom. The slave-holder,
of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but
enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European
celebrity.
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