"
Again, when the man of position shoots down his victim in the
streets of a city, he is esteemed brave; but a singular reversion
takes place if the rencontre be between poor men. It is then a
diabolical act, a murder, which nothing short of the gallows can
serve for punishment. The creatures whom he had made mere objects to
serve his sensuality were before him; he traced the gloomy history
of their unfortunate sires; he knew that Ellen and Clotilda were
born free. The cordon that had bound his feelings to the system of
slavery relaxed. For the first time, he saw that which he could not
recognise in his better nature-himself the medium of keeping human
beings in slavery who were the rightful heirs of freedom. The
blackness of the crime-its cruelty, its injustice-haunted him; they
were at that very moment held by Graspum's caprice. He might doom
the poor wretches to irretrievable slavery, to torture and death!
Then his mind wandered to Annette and Nicholas; he saw them of his
own flesh and blood; his natural affections bounded forth; how could
he disown them? The creations of love and right were upon him,
misfortune had unbound his sensations; his own offspring stood
before him clothed in trouble thick and dangerous. His follies have
entailed a life-rent of misery upon others; the fathomless depth of
the future opens its yawning jaws to swallow up those upon whom the
fondness of a father should have been bestowed for their moral and
physical good.
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