To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes,
history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed
its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its
accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration.
At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the
implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us,
as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they
project.
Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the
soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed,
there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining
the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the
illusions of the imagination.
The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural
feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to
the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of
Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.
When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the
guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct
ideas and principles of civilization,--when they arrogated to themselves
the appearance of the wisdom of Lacedaemon with the politeness of
Athens,--they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society,
"justice and truth--these are the first duties of man; humanity,
country--these his first affections."