CERVANTES A SLAVE.
Here we may refer again to Cervantes, whose pen was dipped in his own dark experience. His "Life in Algiers" exhibits the horrors of the slave-market as it might be exhibited now. The public crier exposes for sale a father and mother with two children. They are to be sold separately, or, according to the language of our day, "in lots to suit purchasers." The father is resigned, confiding in God; the mother sobs; while the children, ignorant of the inhumanity of men, show an instinctive trust in the constant and wakeful protection of their parents,—now, alas! impotent to shield them from dire calamity. A merchant, inclining to purchase one of the children, and wishing to ascertain his bodily condition, makes him open his mouth. The child, ignorant of the destiny which awaits him, imagines that the purchaser is about to extract a tooth, and, assuring him that it does not ache, begs him to desist. The merchant, in other respects estimable enough, pays one hundred and thirty dollars for the youngest child, and the sale is completed. Thus a human being—one of those "little ones" who inspired the Saviour to say, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven"—is profanely treated as an article of merchandise, and torn from a mother's arms and a father's support. The hardening influence of custom has steeled the merchant into criminal insensibility to this violation of humanity and justice, this laceration of sacred ties, this degradation of God's image. The unconscious heartlessness of the slave-dealer and the anguish of his victims are depicted in the dialogue which ensues after the sale.
Merchant.
Come hither, child, 't is time to go to rest.
Juan.
Signor, I will not leave my mother here,
To go with any one.Mother.
Alas! my child, thou art no longer mine,
But his who bought thee.Juan.
What! then, have you, mother,
Forsaken me?Mother.
O Heavens! how cruel are ye!
Merchant.
Come, hasten, boy.
Juan.
Will you go with me, brother?
Francisco.
I cannot, Juan; 't is not in my power;
May Heaven protect you, Juan!Mother.
Oh, my child,
My joy and my delight, God won't forget thee!Juan.
O father! mother! whither will they bear me
Away from you?Mother.
Permit me, worthy Signor,
To speak a moment in my infant's ear?
Grant me this small contentment; very soon
I shall know nought but grief.Merchant.
What you would say
Say now; to-night is the last time.Mother.
To-night
Is the first time my heart e'er felt such grief.Juan.
Pray keep me with you, mother, for I know not
Whither he'd carry me.Mother.
Alas! poor child,
Fortune forsook thee even at thy birth.The heavens are overcast, the elements
Are turbid, and the very sea and winds
Are all combined against me. Thou, my child,
Know'st not the dark misfortunes into which
Thou art so early plunged, but happily
Lackest the power to comprehend thy fate.
What I would crave of thee, my life, since I
Must never more be blessed with seeing thee,
Is that thou never, never wilt forget
To say, as thou wert wont, thy Ave Mary;
For that bright queen of goodness, grace, and virtue
Can loosen all thy bonds and give thee freedom.Aydar.
Behold the wicked Christian, how she counsels
Her innocent child! You wish, then, that your child
Should, like yourself, continue still in error.Juan.
O mother, mother, may I not remain?
And must these Moors, then, carry me away?Mother.
With thee, my child, they rob me of my treasures.
Juan.
Oh, I am much afraid!
Mother.
'Tis I, my child,
Who ought to fear at seeing thee depart.
Thou wilt forget thy God, me, and thyself.
What else can I expect from thee, abandoned
At such a tender age amongst a people
Full of deceit and all iniquity?Crier.
Silence, you villanous woman! if you would not
Have your head pay for what your tongue has done.[151]
From such a scene we gladly turn away, while, in the sincerity of our hearts, we give our sympathies to the unhappy sufferers. Fain would we avert their fate; fain would we destroy the system of bondage that has made them wretched and their masters cruel. And yet we must not judge with harshness the Algerine slave-owner, who, reared in a religion of slavery, learned to regard Christians "guilty of a skin not colored like his own" as lawful prey, and found sanctions for his conduct in the injunctions of the Koran, the custom of his country, and the instinctive dictates of an imagined self-interest. It is, then, the "peculiar institution" which we are aroused to execrate, rather than the Algerine slave-masters glorying in its influence, nor perceiving their foul disfigurement.