De l’influence qu’exercent les peuples possesseurs d’esclaves, sur les mœurs et sur la liberté des p

CHAP. 17: > On the influence that slave-owning peoples exercise on the morals and liberty of peoples among whom slavery is abolished or has never been admitted.

The subject of this chapter is so vast that whoever wished to treat it completely would have to write a very large work. The history of the human race, indeed, is composed almost entirely of the action of nations upon one another; and when one closely considers the nature, causes, and effects of this action, one constantly discerns in it the errors, passions, or vices engendered by slavery. But I do not wish to embrace here, in its full extent, so vast a subject; I propose only to indicate some of the effects that servitude produces on the very peoples who have rejected it, when they find themselves in contact with nations where it still exists. In the preceding chapter, I described the dangers and evils to which slavery exposes slave-owners from foreign nations; in this one, I want to explain the evils and dangers that free nations experience or have to fear from slave-owning peoples.

The nations among which it is no longer admitted that one man can be the property of another are today numerous and powerful; and it is permissible to hope that in the future their influence will be stronger than that of peoples among whom contrary principles and practices still reign. However, when one compares the peoples among whom slavery is abolished to the peoples among whom the population is divided into slaves and masters; when one compares above all the extent of territory occupied by the former to the extent of territory occupied by the latter, one finds that slave-owners exercise, and will for a long time be able to exercise, an immense influence on the fate of the human race.

Nearly two-thirds of European territory is occupied by populations that admit, without restriction, the principle and practice of slavery. Russia, Austria, Poland, Turkey, and a part of Germany admit, in practice as in theory, that men can be possessed by others as property; and, in almost all these States, the number of slaves is immense compared to that of the masters. Even in the countries where domestic slavery is proscribed, governments admit that one man can possess others, and that he can dispose of them in a nearly arbitrary manner, provided he does not hold possessions of this kind on European territory.

In America, the territory occupied by populations that are divided into masters and slaves is at least equal to that which is occupied by peoples among whom slavery is proscribed. In North America, ten States out of twenty-two are under the absolute domination of slave-owners; in South America, the nations where the population is divided into masters and slaves are scarcely less numerous. The colonies that the English, Dutch, and French possess on this part of the American continent, the vast empire of Brazil, and a part of the States that were formed from the former Spanish colonies, are exploited by slaves. Finally, in all the islands to the east of America, with the exception of Haiti, the mass of the population is composed of slaves possessed by a small number of masters.

In Asia, we likewise find the population divided into two classes, that of the possessed men and that of their possessors. The entire north of this vast continent is part of the Russian empire, and consequently the principle of slavery reigns there no less than in European Russia. In the other parts of Asia, slavery is admitted almost everywhere, although the number of slaves there is very small compared to the other classes of the population.

Finally, in Africa, no nation is known where slavery does not exist, unless it be a few tribes that are still nomadic.

To determine the causes, nature, and effects of the action that peoples where slavery exists exercise upon the nations that have proscribed it, it is necessary to recall the influence that slavery exercises on the ideas and morals of masters and slaves, and on the individuals who are placed between the one and the other, whether they have been freed, or whether they have lost their possessions.The first effect that slavery produces on the morals and ideas of all classes of the population is to debase human labor, whenever that labor has as its object to increase utility. We have seen that, in all countries where numerous slaves exist, as soon as a man possesses another, he instantly ceases to work. Were he born in the most miserable and debased state, had he practiced the crudest trade for half his life, he would believe he was demeaning himself if he worked. The same pride manifests itself even in men who possess no slaves; if they cannot emigrate, they beg.

The second effect of slavery is to give men of the master class a passion for physical enjoyments, a love of ostentation and dissipation. We see that, in all countries and at all times, the possessors of men have combined ostentation with misery, and that the richest have always ended up overwhelmed with debt. At the origin of the colonies formed by the Europeans, it is true, some possessors of men were seen to make a fortune, for the reason that these possessors, born and raised among free peoples, had acquired the habits of order and economy that arise from industry; but the descendants of these same men were not long in being ruined.

The third effect of slavery, which is a consequence of the two preceding ones, is to prevent the development of knowledge that does not have for its object to extend man's empire over his fellow men, and thereby to place an obstacle to the development of the industrial arts and of commerce. Wherever the labors required by industry are given over to slaves, they must be reduced to the simplest mechanical operations, so that they are not beyond the reach of the intelligence of these miserable workers [348].

A fourth effect of slavery is to make the slave and master classes stationary or even cause them to decline. We have seen, in fact, that wherever masters can derive an advantageous return from the labors of slaves, they leave them only what is strictly necessary for them to subsist, and they extract by punishments the labors they do not wish to excite by rewards. From this it results that the slaves cannot multiply, or that they decline, and as it is from their labor that the masters derive all their revenues, they themselves cannot grow in number when the number of their slaves diminishes.

Finally, a fifth effect of slavery is to oblige the masters who wish to preserve their empire to devote themselves to all the exercises suitable for ensuring the domination of man over his fellow men, and particularly the exercises that befit the military art. The devotion of slave-owners to their country is but devotion to the maintenance of their possessions, including under this last word the men they exploit, and on whose labors they base their revenues. This is what determines them all to throw themselves into a military career.

These effects of slavery being known, it is easy to see what kind of action the peoples who possess men exercise or tend to exercise on the industrious nations that have abolished slavery.

All men, of whatever kind they may be, tend, by their own nature, to multiply and to increase their means of existence; but, when a population considers labor unworthy of it, it cannot increase its means of existence, nor consequently multiply, unless it seizes the wealth produced by others. Thus, men who possess slaves are, by that fact alone, driven to subjugate industrious peoples; they are driven to it first by the desire to appropriate wealth they can obtain only by seizing it, then by the desire to reduce to the number of their slaves the individuals who produced it, and finally, by the kind of exercises to which they have devoted themselves in their capacity as masters.

The Roman senators, the richest possessors of men in antiquity, in order to prevent or stop seditions, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, always had a war prepared [349]. Plutarch made a similar observation: “The Romans,” he said, “made wise use of that remedy, turning outward, like good physicians, the humors that were likely to trouble the republic [350].” To have a very clear idea of how these slave-owners turned things outward, one must recall that the Roman aristocracy had appropriated for itself the monopoly on all labors through the hands of the men it held in servitude; that there thus existed within Rome a numerous population without industry and without fortune, and that the patricians who had ruined themselves could amass wealth only by plunder. In times of peace, this idle and needy populace, pushed by need and by the members of the aristocracy who had to restore their fortunes, became restless, and threatened the possessions of the rich senators. The latter, in Plutarch's expression, then turned the humors outward; that is to say, they directed against industrious nations armies animated by the desire for plunder and by the hope of returning to their country with booty and especially with numerous slaves.

The Roman aristocracy treated its slaves no better than the planters of the modern colonies treat theirs; it was therefore necessary, so that its lands did not become deserted, for it to reduce new peoples to slavery. On the other hand, the conquests it made to procure slaves, and the lands it was in the habit of taking from the vanquished, increased the extent or the number of its possessions, and, to have these new domains cultivated, it needed new slaves, which it could acquire only by new wars. The trade in human creatures that took place in the markets of Rome was immense; the trade was done by armed force, and it was the generals and the legions who were its agents. If the nations were not sold individually under the spear of the praetor, as frequently happened, they were subjected to a methodical exploitation, the result of which was likewise to make their wealth pass into the hands of the Roman slave-owners.

Among the moderns, as among the ancients, the possessors of slaves consider any industrial profession unworthy of them. They see honor only in the military life, because it gives them the means to keep their slaves in obedience, and because it can lead them to seize the wealth of other nations. However, as they are themselves enslaved to masters, and as industrious peoples are more powerful than they were in former times, the practices of the glory days of the Roman republic are no longer used against them. One is limited, when one can conquer them, to subjecting them en masse to a more or less regular exploitation, analogous to that which existed in the time of the Roman emperors. This is a progress that we owe to the enslavement of the possessors of slaves, a progress that can only lead to others [351].

The evils and dangers to which the industrious peoples of Europe are exposed from nations among which the population is divided into masters and slaves are less great than those to which they were formerly exposed; however, one must be careful not to think that none exist. The master class, by its position, its prejudices, and its habits, is pushed entirely into a military career, and it needs at once activity and wealth. The slave class, from whose midst the soldiers come, must be naturally drawn toward the same career, because it finds itself less debased there, and because, in the alternative of being oppressed as slaves or of becoming agents of oppression, the latter path is the one that all men prefer. The quality of a soldier in a way elevates a slave to the rank of his master, or at least it leaves between them only the distances established by military grades, distances that are not very considerable when compared to that which exists between a master and the individuals he possesses as property. A despot who had the passions of a conqueror could therefore recruit an army nowhere with more facility than among a nation composed of masters and slaves. There is, to prevent the dangers with which civilized peoples are threatened in this regard, only the misery that follows everywhere in the wake of slavery.

We have seen previously that the possessors of slaves, to maintain their domination, generally tend with all their power to brutify the part of the population over which they dominate. They have two means for this: one is to make their slaves so stupid that they are incapable of receiving any of the enlightenment that is spread around them; the other is to stifle the enlightenment that exists around them, so that no ray of it can reach the enslaved population. The first means, which we have seen employed by the Anglo-Americans, is rarely judged sufficient: a slave, however stupid he may be, has eyes and ears; one can well prevent him from learning to read, but, unless one renders him useless to his master, one cannot prevent him from seeing and hearing. Hence, that suspicious and meticulous tyranny, which in countries exploited by slaves, prevents any free manifestation of thought, and which prevents the circulation of writings and persons with the same care that is taken in other States to prevent the circulation of merchandise infected with the plague.

This surveillance is not confined to the States in the midst of which enslaved populations exist; it extends into countries where no slaves exist, and which can make their influence felt beyond their territory. Men who consider the industrious population of their country as their property would like to keep it ignorant of the fact that there exist, in other parts of the world, industrious and free peoples. They try first to remove from its knowledge everything that could reveal their existence; and, as they cannot be certain of succeeding, they then seek to realize what they want to make it believe. It is thus from the need that masters feel to preserve their domination that the influence they exercise through their governments on the governments of peoples among whom one finds neither slaves nor masters is born. Equilibrium tends to be established in moral forces as in physical forces wherever one finds nations; when possessors of men exist on one point, they carry their prejudices and their vices to all the points that surround them. Let us not complain of this tendency; it is the power that links the interests of free peoples to the interests of enslaved peoples: for nations, as for individuals, egoism is the greatest miscalculation.

The influence exercised, in America, by the States in which the population is divided into masters and slaves, on the States where slavery is abolished, is a little less powerful than that which we observe in Europe, for the reason that the mass of the industrious population is comparatively more numerous, better organized, stronger, and more enlightened than it is in many other countries. But one must not doubt, however, that the possessors of men, or rather the men possessed by the system, in the southern States, exercise a fatal influence on their ideas, their morals, and their laws. Even if this influence had not been observed by travelers, it would be enough to have some knowledge of the nature of men to be convinced that it exists.

Out of twenty-two States of which the federation is composed, there are ten that have maintained slavery. Thus, in the various branches of which the federal government is composed, one must always count ten possessors of slaves for every twenty-two men, assuming that each State furnishes an equal number. But the equality must often be broken, since the possessors of men are drawn toward government employments by a much stronger tendency than that felt by industrious men, and since the Northern Americans complain of the influence of the Southern Americans. If, out of five presidents, the State of Virginia alone has furnished four, it is impossible that it has not furnished a greater number of employees than any other State. A man who enjoys great influence rarely moves without bringing with him the atmosphere in which he is placed. The persons with whom he has had some community of opinion follow in his wake, then the brothers, the cousins, the flatterers. Whatever his firmness and his impartiality, it is very difficult for him to rid himself of all these people, as long as he has some means of placing them.

Even assuming that each State furnishes an equal number of representatives or functionaries to the federal government, one must count that, out of twenty-two representatives and twenty-two members of the senate, there are usually ten possessors of slaves, and that one finds them in an equal proportion among the agents of the executive power, from the minister down to the second lieutenant. Now, is it possible that, in assemblies or in bodies thus constituted, there always exist just ideas and a very delicate moral sentiment? If, with a view to securing their possessions, the possessors of slaves solicit general measures against blacks or against men of color, does one think that the representatives of the free States will be indifferent enough to the fate of their southern confederates not to lend themselves to their desires? Will they be able to refuse them the right to pursue fugitive slaves even onto their territory? It will therefore be necessary for a kind of coalition against an entire race to be established among all the States. This coalition will be all the more formidable as it will be formed, not against malefactors, not against enemies of the country or the government, but against innocent beings whose crime will be to have a slightly dark complexion, or not to have a slightly aquiline nose. However, as a consequence of the liaisons that masters have with enslaved women, the slaves end up having the features and color of their possessors; one cannot refuse the masters the faculty to pursue their white slaves in the States where slavery is abolished, and from that moment what will become of the security of free men?

The possessors of men from the south, being obliged to make frequent journeys to the north, either for their personal interests or as members of the government, could not be refused the right to be followed there by some of their slaves, of one sex or the other; but what is, in the States where slavery is, they say, abolished, the power that a master can, without violating the laws of the country, exercise over his slave? Do insults, outrages, violence, and even murder remain unpunished in the free States, when it is a possessor of men who is guilty of them against his slave? If, in one of these States, an individual mistreats another, if he arbitrarily confines him in any place, if he is guilty of mutilation or rape, will it be enough for him, to suspend the action of criminal justice, to claim that he is the legitimate owner of the offended person? Will it be necessary first to refer the case to civil magistrates, so that they may judge whether the plaintiff is a person or a thing?

The mere effect of the presence of masters and their slaves would be enough to warp the judgment and deprave the morals of a free people. If the simple quality of man or woman is not sufficient to guarantee an individual from any arbitrary pain or punishment, there is no other rule of morality than force. What can a child, a woman, or any person of ordinary instruction think, in Philadelphia, upon seeing an American from Carolina or Virginia dragging in his wake men or women whom he calls his properties, and disposing of them as he sees fit? What can they think when they read, or are told, that in the confederated States, a trade is carried on in men, women, or children? When they see that these possessors of men are received, honored by their fellow citizens or by their relatives, and that it is even from among them that the principal members of their government are chosen?A child, I suppose, sees an American leading men or women whom he calls his master, and whom he commands or mistreats, without the magistrates paying it any mind. He turns to his mother: why, he asks her, can that man command that other one? — It is because the individual he commands is his slave. — Why is that individual his slave? — Because the laws will it so. — So a thing is just whenever the law wills it? — Without a doubt, my son. — And who made the law? — The landowners did. — So the landowners made justice? — I think so. — Why did they make a law to make slavery just? — Because it was in their interest. — So what one does is just, when one follows one's interest? — Sometimes. — Why haven't the enslaved men made a law to make their liberty just? — It is because they were not the strongest. — So one is always right when one is the strongest? Is my papa a proprietor? — Yes, my child. — Why doesn't he make a law to make our servants slaves? That would be very convenient; for they could not leave us, and they would do everything I wanted. — Because that would not be right. — So we are not the strongest? — No, my child. — Why isn't that man punished when he beats his slave, like men here are punished for beating others? — Because that would not be just. — And what is the reason for that? — The man who was beaten is his slave. — If the gardener's child were my slave, could I beat him too, and that would be just?

This is the sublime morality that the possessors of men bring, even among peoples who have claimed to proscribe slavery. The interest and force that exist at a given moment become the only rules of morality that any individual consults. The mass of the population may not always follow the series of ideas I have just laid out; but it is impossible for it not to arrive at the same conclusions when it sees what is practiced before its eyes, and what is professed in the legislative assemblies and in the judicial courts. Thus, when English travelers assure us that the existence of slavery in some States brutalizes all minds and weakens the sentiments of humanity throughout the entire United States, not only do we feel disposed to believe their testimony, but we cannot conceive how the contrary could happen.

Few questions of legislation can be well resolved without the aid of the principles of morality; but how would these principles be understood in assemblies where nearly half the members are possessors of men? Will such individuals be permitted to speak of the respect owed to persons, to labor, to industry? In what code of morality will they find the line of separation between the human being who is a person, and the human being who is a thing? In all questions where the interest of citizens' liberty is in opposition to the interest of the possessors of men, can one think it will not be the former that is sacrificed? If the possession of the masters is threatened, they will have to justify it; they will have to reduce what happens in practice to general maxims; they will have to establish that their possession is just, for the sole reason that the law has sanctioned it. Now, once one arrives at such maxims, it is only a matter of having sufficient force to make the law; for, from that moment, all tyrannies are justified. It is said that the possessors of slaves are very zealous defenders of democratic government, and that they speak of liberty only with enthusiasm. That may be; but if the inhabitants of free countries can then hear them without disgust or without pity, the contagion of servitude must have singularly blinded their minds or depraved their sentiments.

The distance that separates the English nation from its colonies weakens the effects that the contact of a population of masters and slaves produces on a free population; but, despite the distance, these effects are still quite extensive. In the House of Commons that was recently dissolved, the number of slave-owners amounted to forty-six; and there is no reason to presume that this number is any less considerable in the current House. Several possessors of men also sit in the House of Lords, and it is probable that they are there in at least as great a proportion as in the House of Commons. Thus, here are two branches of the legislative power that recognize no other justice than their own force and interest; it is clear that slavery can be just in their eyes only because it conforms to the laws of their countries, and as they are the ones who make the laws, it is clear that they are also the ones who make justice.

The influence of slavery on the mindset of the other members of government is the same as that which is felt in the two houses. The ministers and their agents must constantly deliberate on the relations between masters and slaves; but in these relations, one never perceives anything but the action of a brutal force and the grossest interest. Let us add that the government of the mother country sends numerous agents to the colonies, who go to form their morals and habits near the masters and slaves. These agents return sooner or later to their country; they are rewarded for their services with employments in their native land, and they are quite disposed to believe that England is but a great plantation belonging to a single master, which need only be exploited with more prudence for the reason that the men possessed are a little less patient than those of the colonies.

The speeches and writings spread by the possessors of slaves, and the various interests connected to theirs, contribute to corrupting public morality: in these writings or speeches, it is continually professed that slavery is just, and must be maintained, for the sole reason that laws have established it; but as slavery necessarily implies in one individual the faculty to dispose arbitrarily of another, to mistreat him, to do him violence, to compel him to work, and to wrest from him the products of his labor, it follows that the desires and the force of the government are the only rules by which one must judge the justice and morality of actions: mistreatment, extortions, rape, adultery, and even murder become moral and legitimate actions as soon as the will of a prince and the majority of two assemblies have guaranteed the impunity of these crimes to individuals they have called masters.

One can legitimately execute what one can legitimately permit: if, to render moral the violence and cruelties that certain individuals exercise on men or women in the colonies, it is sufficient for a government to leave their actions unpunished or to protect them, one does not see why it cannot legitimize at home what it can well legitimize among others. If, therefore, it considers as its property the men and women who are subject to it, if it behaves toward them as planters do toward their slaves, what objection could be raised against it that a slave could not also raise against his master? Does possession not exist in one case as in the other? Is it not legitimized by the same desires and by the same force? Thus, any people that recognizes that its government can legitimize slavery, recognizes by that very fact that it can be legitimately enslaved, and that violence and extortions need only the express or tacit authorization of the heads of its government to be in conformity with justice and morality. The English do not go so far as this consequence with respect to themselves; but the men in whom resides the faculty to render legitimate the vices and crimes of slavery are led to it by the very nature of things; when principles are universally recognized, the consequences flow from them on their own, and without one needing to think about them.

France experiences the influence of the slavery established in its colonies a little less than England: first, because with a more considerable population, it possesses fewer colonies; second, because the communications, and the interests connected to those of the planters, are less numerous or less strong; finally, because the planters reside in their possessions, and it is less easy for them to propagate their doctrines among us. Let us not believe, however, that this influence is null. The government has two peoples under its dominion: that of the colonies, and that of the mother country. The power it has over the first is nearly without limits: this power is sufficient for it to legitimize slavery and the consequences that result from it. The power it has over the second is restricted by laws, by maxims, by certain authorities, and by the power of opinion.

This combination of two powers in the same persons necessarily influences the exercise of both. If, for example, ministers have to make a deliberation, they must begin by determining whether the people on whose interests they are deliberating is the people composed of slaves and masters, or whether it is the people among whom no individual is either master or slave. The principal agents of authority find themselves, in a way, in the position of Maître Jacques; if they wish to speak to the enslaved people, they must don the habit and arm themselves with the coachman's whip; if they wish to speak to the people among whom no man is the property of another, they must resume the cook's costume, that is to say, they must consult its taste a little. But is it as easy to change one's mindset, maxims, and morals as it is to change one's coat? Will the man who has just arbitrarily settled certain interests, having had to consult only his will and his power, not be carried away by the spirit that directed him, if he has to deliberate on interests of the same nature? If, in one case, he can think that his will is sufficient to make a fact or an action conform to justice and morality, will he not have the same thought in all? Does one think, for example, that a man who passed alternately from the government of an enslaved people to the government of a free people would not carry into the one the habits he had acquired in the other?

The laws of justice and morality do not bend according to our interests or our caprices; one must admit them for all men and for all nations, or renounce them for oneself. The moment that justice and morality cease to be universal, there is no longer either morality or justice for men; there is only a brutal force that one can sometimes be made to suffer, but which can also turn in an instant against those who have made it the rule of their judgments and their conduct.