Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Slavery
Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.
Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free.
Bodinus. Bk. I. Ch. V.
Lord Mansfield first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.
Lord Campbell—Lives of the Chief Justices. Vol. II. P. 418.
No more slave States and no more slave territory.
Salmon P. Chase—Resolutions Adopted at the Free-Soil National Convention. Aug. 9, 1848.
Cotton is king; or slavery in the Light of Political Economy.
David Christy—Title of Book, pub. 1855.
It [Chinese Labour in South Africa] could not, in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government, be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
Winston Churchill in the British House of Commons. Feb. 22, 1906.
Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.
Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.
Cicero—De Republica. I. 44.
Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus.
He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave.
Cicero—Oratio Pro Rege Deiotaro. XI.
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.
Cowper—Task. Bk. II. L. 29.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
Cowper—Task. Bk. II. L. 40.
I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.
Emerson—The Assault upon Mr. Sumner’s Speech. May 26, 1856.
Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
David Garrick—Prologue to Ed. Moore’s Gamesters.
Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell; involving both parties in atrocious criminality, and should be immediately annulled.
Wm. Lloyd Garrison—Adopted by the Mass. Anti-Slavery Society. Fanueil Hall. Jan. 27, 1843.
The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.
Henry George—Social Problems. Ch. V.
The very mudsills of society.***We call them slaves.***But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.
James H. Hammond—Speech in the U. S. Senate. March, 1858.
Cotton is King.
James H. Hammond. Phrase used in the Senate, March, 1858. Gov. Manning of South Carolina, Speech at Columbia, S. C. (1858).
Whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. XVII. L. 392. Pope’s trans.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
Abraham Lincoln—Speech. June 17, 1858.
In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free,—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Abraham Lincoln—Annual Message to Congress. Dec. 1, 1862.
[England] a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.
Lofft—Reports. P. 2. Margrave’s Argument. May 14, 1772.
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
****
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
Lowell—Stanzas on Freedom.
The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.
Lord Mansfield. Said in the case of a negro, James Somersett, carried from Africa to Jamaica and sold.
Execrable son! so to aspire
Above his brethren, to himself assuming
Authority usurp’d, from God not given.
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation; but man over men
He made not lord; such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. XII. L. 64.
Where bastard Freedom waves
Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
Moore—To the Lord Viscount Forbes. Written from the City of Washington.
And ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Robert Paine—Ode. Adams and Liberty. (1798).
Base is the slave that pays.
Henry V. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 100.
You have among you many a purchas’d slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them.
Merchant of Venice. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 90.
Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
Bernard Shaw—Man and Superman.
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still,
Slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught.
Sterne—Sentimental Journey. The Passport. The Hotel at Paris.
By the Law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel.
Chas. Sumner—The Anti-Slavery Enterprise. Address at New York. May 9, 1859.
Where Slavery is there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is there Slavery cannot be.
Chas. Sumner—Slavery and the Rebellion. Speech before the New York Young Men’s Republican Union. Nov. 5, 1864.
They [the blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
Roger B. Taney—The Dred Scot Case. See Howard’s Rep. Vol. XIX. P. 407.
Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
Voltaire—Philosophical Dictionary. Slaves.
I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to do it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
George Washington—Farewell Address.
That execrable sum of all villanies commonly called the Slave-trade.
John Wesley—Journal. Feb. 12, 1792.
A Christian! going, gone!
Who bids for God’s own image?—for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?
Whittier—Voices of Freedom. The Christian Slave.
Our fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves—in a land of light and law!
Slaves—crouching on the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom’s war!
Whittier—Voices of Freedom. Stanzas.
What! mothers from their children riven!
What! God’s own image bought and sold!
A
And bartered as the brute for gold!
Whittier—Voices of Freedom. Stanzas.