Journal of a residence among the negroes in the West Indies by Mathew Gregory Lewis, author of “The Monk”, “Tales of Wonder” etc. London 1861(written in 1816), p 33: [It] is a general complaint that “she has no massa”…By this universal complaint, it appears that, which Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, their greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that “they belong to no massa” is one of the most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them.”
Isn’t it wonderful. The logic of it. In the land of the master, where freedom is in the mind, and where the master is imprisoned by his curious desires do not confuse the cruelty of being chattle with the cruelty of being left at the mercy of those who do not even have a direct economic interest in your well-being, who do not own you and yet who lord it over you. That was the problem of the absentee landlord. And yet Monk Lewis, an intelligent man, could twist himself to fit hairpin arguments.
“The Békés had reduced this earth to a frightful circus whose laws they guarded.” Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco, 1997 (1992) p. 50.