Through this combination of snares-all having their life-springs in
slavery-Lorenzo brought ruin upon his father, and involved his
uncle. With an excellent education, a fine person, frank and gentle
demeanour, he made his way into the city, and soon attracted the
attention of those who affect to grace polished society. Had society
laid its restraints upon character and personal worth, it would have
been well for Lorenzo; but the neglect to found this moral
conservator only serves to increase the avenues to vice, and to
bring men from high places into the lowest moral scale. This is the
lamentable fault of southern society; and through the want of that
moral bulwark, so protective of society in the New England
States-personal worth-estates are squandered, families brought to
poverty, young men degraded, and persons once happy driven from
those homes they can only look back upon with pain and regret. The
associations of birth, education, and polished society-so much
valued by the southerner-all become as nothing when poverty sets its
seal upon the victim.
And yet, among some classes in the south there exists a religious
sentiment apparently grateful; but what credit for sincerity shall
we accord to it when the result proves that no part of the
organisation itself works for the elevation of a degraded class? How
much this is to be regretted we leave to the reader's
discrimination. The want of a greater effort to make religious
influence predominant has been, and yet is, a source of great evil.
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