Manchurian Books

The institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery
ideas had entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a
century had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and
applied them. That freedom was a right, that the very first of the
natural rights of man was to be free and to belong only to himself,
would seem to be self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass
before the glorious thought was generally accepted, and the nations
of the earth had the courage to proclaim it.
In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves
in Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to
pursue them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of
general emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date
the right to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were
born free. The day was not far distant when the magnificent country,
into which could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe,
would no longer count a single slave among its ten millions of
inhabitants.


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