“Useful thing a warrant. Murder and theft change their names if you have one.”

“At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owing to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mating and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet… He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom.”

“No latitude makes any difference to what men will do to other men, whether for gain or in the name of justice.”

“Money is sacred as everyone knows... So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.”

“It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.”

“The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the former . . .”

“Justice is a mighty fine thing.”