These are, however, rare occurrences, and, when
they do happen, are usually confined to men of sterling religious
principles, who, like that great exception, the respectable class of
people called Quakers, in America, refuse, from a conviction of the
enormity of the evil, to recognize as members those who hold or traffic
in slaves.
It is through the influence of such men that the iniquities of the
system become exposed to public view, and remedies are sometimes, in
flagrant cases of cruelty, applied. The legislatures of the several
slave states, however, have given such absolute dominion, by a rigorous
code of laws, to the owner, that the greatest enormities may be
committed almost with impunity, or at least with but a remote chance of
justice having its legitimate sway.
The mass of slave-owners are interested in concealing enormities
committed by their fellows, and are backed by a venal press, which,
whether bribed or not (and there is every reason to suspect that this is
often the case), puts such a construction on _outrage_, by garbled
_reports_, as to turn the tide of sympathy from the victim to the
perpetrator.
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