“Certainly that is true,” returns America; “but you made such an outcry, we thought you saw some great cruelty going on.”
“And you profess to be a free country!” says indignant Europe.
“Certainly we are the freest and most enlightened country in the world,—what are you talking about?” says America.
“You send your missionaries to Christianize us,” says Turkey; “and our religion has abolished this horrible system.”
“You! you are all heathen over there,—what business have you to talk?” answers America.
Many people seem really to have thought that nothing but horrible exaggerations of the system of slavery could have produced the sensation which has recently been felt in all modern Europe. They do not know that the thing they have become accustomed to, and handled so freely in every discussion, seems to all other nations the sum and essence of villany. Modern Europe, opening her eyes and looking on the legal theory of the slave system, on the laws and interpretations of law which define it, says to America, in the language of the indignant Othello, If thou wilt justify a thing like this,
“Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On Horror’s head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add