Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1860-09-07


they have the brand, the cropped ear,
the eli, nose the extinguished eye or
broken ;ooth,--all marks of the caprice
aud malice Of irresponsible masters.
The slave pens and auction blocks Of
Virginia show as hear,less contempt
for parental and social ties, and the plead
ing asonies Of men and women. rs did
those as Delos. II slaves in this coun-
try are net ernci6ed, or thrown from a
precipice, they are hunted with rifles and
torn oy dogs, far deseriion. II under the
Roman law the master had the power Of
life ard death over his slave, Ia some of
the Southern States the murder Of
slave Is punished only with n fae, and
IL a slave die under moderate correction,
The master Is fully acquitted. For in
humanity, for barbarous enactments, for
she indietion of wrong and suffering and
death upon slaves, whether men or wo-
men, the slave codes of at least many of
the Southern States have nothing to
boast over those of pagan Greece and
Rome.
Even the philosophers and authors of
ancient Greece denounced a system so
against reason and conscience. Alcidi-
mas wrote, All come from the hands Of
God; nature has made no man slave
Philemon says, Though he is a slave,
yet be has the same nature with our
selves. No one was ever born a slave,
though his body by misfortune may be
brought into subjection" Aristotle
makes slavery depend on the superiority
Of character in one man over another.
BY this rule, tens Of thousands of slaves
and masters in Greece would have chang
ed places for noble Greeks, not few
were among the oppressed-Athenians,
Spartians. Lacedemonians, Cretans as
well as Seythians, Thracians, &c. Esop,
Alcman, Epietetus, Terence, Plato, and
Diogenes, took their turn in slavery,
while free men figured rs brainIess dem
agogues, haranguing in the forum, and
squandering the hard-earned money of
their superiors ia bondage. We doubt
not that this reckoning will suit the lati-
tude Of many a Southern plantation at
the present day.
Was there ever such monstrous alb
surdity on earth as slavery? Il was a
remark Of Homer, that, in the dag
wher Jupiter makes slaves Of men, he
depriyes them of half their reason"
Homer should have applied this to slave
holders, for Of all men, pagan or Chris
tian, they most belle reason aud swallow
contradictions. At the very time when
Demosthenes was uttering his words Of
glowing eloquence to few thousand free
Athenians, and stimulating them to re-
sist the aggressions Of the Northern ty-
rant, Phillip, there we're 100000 hu-
man beings in slavery around him, at
the mercy Of a most cruel, heartless and
despoiic democracy. This is simply an
illustration Of what exists in our own
country, on a much broader scale, and
thus it turns out, that those who have
been most jealous Of liberty in their own
persons, have been most ready 10 take it
! from others.
But Greece was corrupted, euervated
and subdued by her social evils, Of which
slavery was the principal, and was final
/ ly swallowed up ia the Roman empire.
Rome perpetuated this gigantic evil,
among others, till, in being exercised by
Christianity, she e suffered prostration
from which it was impossible to recover.
Whether il Is to be thus with our own
republic, few short years will deter
mine