On the record
Under such circumstances, is it frivolous or captious to ask for something more than a dogmatic assertion that slavery cannot impregnate these new regions, and cause them to breed monsters forever?
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann critiques the lack of evidence supporting the claim that slavery would not spread to new territories.
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This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.
Mere knowledge, without the moral sense, can take no cognizance of the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong; and so the blind instinct, unguided by knowledge, will be forever at fault in its conclusions.
They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
And yet, infinitely flagrant as the anomaly is, the slave is amenable to the laws of the land for all offences which he may commit against others, though he is powerless to protect himself by the same law from offences which others may…
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