Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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“You are wrong. The dinner is good–let us rejoice over that. Damocles fares well. It is a pity that the hungry, dirty, rascally, riotous Celts cannot have just such a dinner every day at the table of Dionysius. Now we will examine the sword a little–but let us handle it gingerly.”

If slavery causes an “absence of mobs,” let slavery have all due credit on that score. Give it joy that it prevented the destruction of Cassius M. Clay’s press, the murder of Lovejoy, the expulsion of Judge Hoar, the lynching of Amos Dresser, and the thousand and one acts of violence and outrage which have caused some unreflecting men to deny that the South is tenanted by a civilized people: more recently that it prevented a mob of armed Missourians from interfering in the Kansas election, and spared the office of the Parkville Luminary. We presume that the absence of mobs of colored persons must have been intended.

A strong police must watch the motions of the oppressed–prevent them from meeting together unless some of the oppressors are present–keep them in their quarters at night, etc. This system of police usually answers its atrocious purpose very well. It wields the lash against offenders, and instils into the oppressed the fear requisite to suppress any overt act toward gaining their rights as human beings. Incidentally, it hinders the commission of crimes, prevents mobs [of colored persons], and keeps the streets quiet, and is so far beneficent in its action. Yet it cannot be denied that the cause of liberty in the world has been much indebted to mobs.