Primary Source Document Name: Notes on the State of Virginia Query XVIII
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried,
whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard
the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an
unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery
among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of
the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it;
for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his
cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find
no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of
passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But
generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments
of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst
of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should
the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights
of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals
of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for
another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends
on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own
miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals
of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour
for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors
of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties
of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction
in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to
be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and
natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among
possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty
has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.—But it is impossible to
be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of
morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way
into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present
revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his
condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total
emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of
the masters, rather than by their extirpation.