To Rev. Convers Francis.
Boston, November 22, 1833.
That most agreeable of all agreeable men, Mr. Crawford of London, was here last night.
He tells harrowing stories of what he has seen at the South during his inspection of prisons there.
Slaves kept in readiness to join their coffle were shut
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up in places too loathsome and horrid for the worst of criminals.
He says had any one told him such things as he has seen and heard, he should have considered it excessive exaggeration.
Yet we talk of mild epithets, and tenderness toward our Southern brethren.
Curse on the “smooth barbarity of courts.”
Of the various cants now in fashion, the cant of charity is to me the most disagreeable.
Charity, which thinks to make wrong right by baptizing it with a sonorous name ; that covers selfishness with the decent mantle of prudence; that glosses over iniquity with the shining varnish of virtuous professions; that makes a garland bridge over the bottomless pit, and calls the devil an “Archangel ruined.”
If evil would manifest itself as it really is, how easy it would be to overcome it; but this it cannot do, simply because it is evil. 