Do you not hear every day how they upbraid each
other with infamy of life, below the wildest savages? And shall we
render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have no one human
virtue left, to distinguish them from the vilest creatures? Will
you, I say, suffer the lash from such hands?" They all replied with
one accord, "No, no, no; Caesar has spoke like a great captain, like a
great king."
After this he would have proceeded, but was interrupted by a tall
negro of some more quality than the rest, his name was Tuscan; who
bowing at the feet of Caesar, cried, "My Lord, we have listened with
joy and attention to what you have said; and, were we only men,
would follow so great a leader through the world. But oh! consider
we are husbands, and parents too, and have things more dear to us than
life; our wives and children, unfit for travel in those unpassable
woods, mountains, and bogs. We have not only difficult lands to
overcome, but rivers to wade, and mountains to encounter; ravenous
beasts of prey."- To this Caesar replied that honor was the first
principle in Nature, that was to be obeyed; but as no man would
pretend to that, without all the acts of virtue, compassion,
charity, love, justice, and reason, he found it not inconsistent
with that to take equal care of their wives and children as they would
of themselves; and that he did not design, when he led them to freedom
and glorious liberty, that they should leave that better part of
themselves to perish by the hand of the tyrant's whip: but if there
were a woman among them so degenerate from love and virtue, to
choose slavery before the pursuit of her husband, and with the
hazard of her life to share with him in his fortunes that such a one
ought to be abandoned, and left as a prey to the common enemy.
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