Note 40 — Chapter V · CONCLUSION.
Reading edition
See Ingram, pp. 9–11. All this applies much less to early slavery than to slavery in its more advanced stages. Yet even the patriarchal slave system of primitive societies sometimes has a bad influence on the slaves. Polack, speaking of the New Zealand slaves, remarks: “Debarred from the sight of their relatives, they become reckless of moral feeling.… Obscenity and lying are among the practices most persisted in by the slaves, and to their demoralized state may be attributed the greater part of the wars and dissensions of this irritable people; they may be justly regarded as the greatest drawback to the prosperity and civilization hitherto of the New Zealanders” (Polack, II pp. 58, 59). ↑