if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if
not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one
sufficiently glorious for itself?

Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we think that
we are justified when we say, looking over the facts in the case,
that when they have removed from them the incubus of slavery,
and start forth on a career of freedom, that their rise will be
extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the elements of progress which
they possess into consideration, it is simply impossible that it
should be otherwise.

While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be understood
as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are the legitimate
results of slavery. Nothing could be farther from our intention. To
substitute a cause for an occasion is a very common error: indeed
some minds seem incapable of fully apprehending the world-wide
difference. The legitimate effect of slavery is to thrust the victim
as far down in the scale of being as is possible. The nearer the
brute, the better the slave , is the true law of slavery. Slavery
is the cause of ignorance, degradation, and crime. It, by a dreadful
necessity, strips the slave of every attribute of manhood; neither
soul nor body is his own; the one is kept in darkness as the
other is sold in the shambles. What can a system that locks up all
human knowledge, stalks through the soul trampling down all that
constitutes the man, not accidentally, but by the necessity of its
existence, what can such a system do for its victim?

There may be benefits such as we are now speaking of, coming to
the slave in his slavery, but slavery does not give them. The laws