Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily, in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime.
This passage describes how the morally corrupt environment of the plantation system led to the degeneration of a religion of submission into a philosophy of indulgence and crime among some enslaved individuals.
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Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
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