Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

Stowe likens corporal punishment and cruelty to laudanum (an opium-based drug widely used in the 19th century): both produce diminishing returns. As a person’s moral “sensibilities” dull through repeated violence, the same act no longer satisfies the desire for control or the numbing of conscience, so harsher measures are required. The comparison underscores how systems built on coercion—especially slavery, Stowe’s central subject—tend to escalate: cruelty becomes habitual, empathy erodes, and ever-greater brutality is needed to maintain dominance. The line is also a warning about moral addiction: once violence is normalized, it reshapes the perpetrator as much as the victim, making restraint increasingly difficult.