The conduct of that sovereign who was denounced before earth and heaven as having committed all the atrocities that could “define a tyrant,” was mercy and loving-kindness compared with the wrongs and privations of three millions of our fellow-beings, now existing among us.
Mann contrasts the perceived tyranny of the British king with the actual suffering of enslaved individuals in America.
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Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence.
But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge.
This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection.
So far as legal rights against his oppressors are concerned, the slave lives in such a world of darkness.
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