I believe we are better, for the American people
are a kind, a feeling, and a humane race. But avarice hardens the
heart, and distress, when it comes in a mass, overpowers pity for the
individual, while inability to aid a multitude induces a carelessness
to assist any. A whole community will rush to the rescue of a drowning
man, not because his purse can enrich them all (that is too dark a
view of human nature), but because he is the sole object of interest.
When there are hundreds struggling for life, few of whom can be saved,
and when some wretches are solely bent on booty, the rest, regardless
of duty, rush in for their share also, and the ship and her cargo
attract all. When the wreck is plundered, the transition to rifling
the dying and the dead is not difficult, and cupidity, when once
sharpened by success, brooks no resistance, for the remonstrance of
conscience is easily silenced where supplication is not even heard.
Avarice benumbs the feelings, and when the heart is hardened, man
becomes a mere beast of prey. Oh this scene afflicts me--let us move
on. These poor people have never yet been suspected of such
atrocities, and surely they were not perpetrated in the world before
the Flood."
1 This homely adage is far more expressive than the Latin one:--
"Parcit
Cognates maculis, similis fera."--Juv.
CHAPTER XVII.
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