Kindle Notes & Highlights
Slavery, as we shall afterwards show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man. The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the social condition of the Southern States.
Its vigor, and not its impotence, will probably be the cause of its ultimate destruction.
The political parties which I style great are those which cling to principles rather than to their consequences; to general, and not to special cases; to ideas, and not to men. These parties are usually distinguished by nobler features, more generous passions, more genuine convictions, and a more bold and open conduct, than the others.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion. God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice are always equal to his power.
The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.
As long as a religion rests only upon those sentiments which are the consolation of all affliction, it may attract the affections of all mankind. But if it be mixed up with the bitter passions of the world, it may be constrained to defend allies whom its interests, and not the principle of love, have given to it; or to repel as antagonists men who are still attached to it, however opposed they may be to the powers with which it is allied. The church cannot share the temporal power of the state, without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the latter excites.
There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he is become their equal;
In the South, the master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the dust, at pleasure. In the North, the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns the Negro with the more pertinacity, since he fears lest they should some day be confounded together.
