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Qass 
 Book 
 
 ^44^ 
 
LECTURES 
 
 a^ 
 
 OF 
 
 SLAVERY, 
 
 AS EXHIBITED IN THE 
 
 INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES: 
 
 WITH THE 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM A. SMITH, D.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF RA.NDOLPn-MACON COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND 
 INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 EDITED BY THOMAS 0. SUMMERS, D.D. 
 
 STEVENSON AND EVANS. 
 
 1856. 
 

 I 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 
 
 WILLIAM A. SMITH, 
 
 In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court for the Middle District of Tennessea 
 
 I ^ t 'STERKOTYPF.D AND PRINTED BY A. A. STITT, 
 SOUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, NASHVILLE, TENN. 
 
Ccnttitts. 
 
 PREFACE Page vii 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTEODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE SUBJECT OF AFRICAN SLAVERY IN 
 TDE UNITED STATES. 
 
 General subject enunciated — Why this discussion may be regarded aR 
 humiliating by Southern people — Other stand-points, however, 
 disclose an urgent necessity, at this time, for a thorough investiga- 
 tion of the whole subject — The results to which it is the object of 
 these lectures to conduct the mind 11 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 THE ABSTRACT PRINCIPLE OF THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 
 If the system be sinful, per se, the sin of it must be found in the 
 " principle — Is the principle sinful? — The principle defined — Objec- 
 tions to the term "submission" answered — The effects of Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's doctrine upon many conscientious persons in the Southern 
 States 31 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 Objections classified — Popular views discussed — "All men are born 
 free and equal " — "All men are created equal" — "All men in a state 
 of nature are free and equal" — And the particular form in which 
 Dr. Wayland expresses the popular idea, viz., "The relation in 
 ■which men stand to each other is the relation of equality ; not 
 equality of condition, but equality of right" — Remarks on Dr. 
 Wayland's course — His treatise on Moral Science as a text-book. 60 
 
 (iii) 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF EIGHTS DISCUSSED. 
 
 Why it is necessary to define the term rights — The right in itself 
 defined to be the good— The doctrine that the will of God is the 
 origin of the right considered— The will of God not the origin of 
 the right, but an expression of the right which is the good — Natu- 
 ral rights and acqmr&i rights, each defined 77 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF RIGHTS APPLIED TO GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Government, human as well as Divine, is a necessity of man's fallen 
 condition — All men concur in this — Man did not originate govern- 
 ment: he has only modified the form — The legitimate objects of 
 government, and the means which it employs to effect these objects 
 — The logical inferences: 1. Although he has the power, he has no 
 right to do wrong ; 2. As a fallen being, he is, without a government 
 over him, liable to lose the power of self-control — "What are the 
 rights of man, 1. In a state of infancy, 2. In a state of maturity, 
 and, 3. In a savage or uncivilized state — Civil government is not 
 founded on a concession of rights 104 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 
 THE ABSTRACT PRINCIPLE OP SLAVERY DISCUSSED ON SCRIPTURE 
 GROUNDS, AND MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE EXAMINED, 
 
 The true subjective right of self-control defined according to the 
 Scriptures — The abstract principle of slavei-y sanctioned by the 
 Scriptures — The Roman government — Dr. Wayland's Scripture ar- 
 gument examined and refuted — The positions of Dr. Channing and 
 Professor Whewell examined and refuted 132 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 
 THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 
 The question stated — The conduct of masters a separate question — 
 The institution defined — The position of the abolitionists, and that 
 of the Southern people — The jyresimption is in favor of the latter 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 Those who claim freedom for the blacks of this country failed to 
 secure it to those on whom they professed to confer it — The doc- 
 trine by which they seek to "vindicate the claim set up for them, 
 together with the/aci of history assumed to be true, is false... 153 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY, AS A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE AFRICANS 
 IN AMERICA, EXAMINED AND DEFENDED ON THE GROUND OF ITS 
 ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE RACE. 
 
 There should be a separate and subordinate government for our Afri- 
 can population — Objection answered — Africans are not competent 
 to that measure of self-government which entitles a man to political 
 sovereignty — They were not prepared for freedom when first brought 
 into the country ; hence they were placed under the domestic form 
 of government — The humanity of this policy — In the opinion of 
 Southern people, they are still unprepared — The fanaticism and 
 rashness of some, and the inexcusable wickedness of others, who 
 oppose the South 176 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE NECESSITY FOR THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY EXEM- 
 PLIFIED BY FACTS. 
 
 The attempts made at domestic colonization — The result of the ex- 
 periment in the case of our free colored population — The coloniza- 
 tion experiment on the coast of Africa — The example of the Canaan- 
 itish nations — Summary of the argument on the general point, and 
 inferences 192 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 EMANCIPATION DOCTRINES DISCUSSED. 
 
 Gradual emancipation the popular plan — It would operate to collect 
 the slaves into a few States, cut them off from contact with civiliza- 
 tion, and reduce them to barbarism — It would make an opening for 
 Northern farmers and their menials to come into those States 
 from which they retired — The modifications which the system of 
 slavery has undergone within late years — A comparison of the 
 menials of the free and of the slave States, and the only plan of 
 emancipation admissible — The gospel the only remedy for the evils 
 of slavery — Paul's philosophy and practice, 1 Tim. vi. 1-5 .... 210 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 TEACHING THE SLAVES TO BEAD AND "WRITE. 
 
 Superiors frequently neglect inferiors — The policy of the South vin- 
 dicated by necessity — The results that "would follo"W an attempt to 
 establish a system for instructing the blacks in letters, and those 
 •which "would follo"w the establishment of such a sj'^stem — The do- 
 mestic element of the system of slavery in the Southern States 
 affords the means for their improvement adapted to their condition 
 and the circumstances of the country — It affords the natural, safe, 
 and the effectual means of the intellectual and moral elevation of 
 the race — The prospects of the Africans in this country, and their 
 final removal to Africa — The country never "will be entirely rid of 
 them — The Southern policy "wise and humane 228 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE OF THE AFRICAN POPULATION OF THE 
 SOUTH. 
 
 Preliminary remarks — American party — The present and prospective 
 condition of our country — The large number of voters in the free-soil 
 States "who will be under a foreign influence, political and religious, 
 inducing them to discard the Bible and the right of private judg- 
 ment — The freedom of the Southern States from this anti-Christian 
 and anti-republican influence — The presence of the African race in 
 the Southern States secures them this advantage — The unpatriotic 
 policy of freesoilism 257 
 
 LECTURE XIIL 
 
 THE DUTY OF MASTERS TO SLAVES. 
 
 " Masters, give unto j'our servants (Sov?,oir, slaves) that -which is just and equal, 
 knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." — Col. iv. 1. 
 
 The duty of masters and the rights of slaves reciprocal — 1. The duty 
 of masters to their slaves considered as "their money:" in regard 
 to working, resting, feeding, clothing, housing, and the employment 
 of persons over them ; also to the sick and the aged. 2. Their duty 
 to their slaves considered as social beings — Punishments and the 
 social principle discussed. 3, Their duty to their slaves considered 
 as religious beings — Public insti'uction on the Sabbath and at other 
 times, and the opportunity of attending — The employment of preach- 
 ers, and the religious instruction of children 276 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages contain the substance of 
 Lectures on the subject of Domestic Slavery in 
 the United States, which for several years have 
 been delivered to the classes in Moral Science in 
 Randolph Macon College. 
 
 Since the year 1844, I have been frequently 
 called on to discuss this subject on various popular 
 occasions in Virginia and North Carolina. My 
 classes in college were compelled to deal with the 
 subject of domestic slavery. Not only the popular 
 ideas in regard to African slavery in this country, 
 but the specific treatment of this topic by numer- 
 ous text authors in Moral Science, rendered this 
 unavoidable. A deep conviction that the minds 
 of young men were receiving a wa^ong, and, in 
 the present state of the country, a fatal direction. 
 
Till PREFACE. 
 
 both as regards the principles of the mstitution, 
 and the institution itself, induced me to substitute 
 the text authorities on the subject by a course of 
 lectures. These lectures, therefore, were origin- 
 ally drawn up with a view to oral delivery. They 
 were modified by the circumstances of their origin. 
 In preparing them for the press, however, I was 
 led to consider the class of persons for whose use 
 they were cliiefly designed, and at the same time 
 to adapt them as far as possible to the general 
 reader. I was aware of the difficulty of fixing 
 definitely on the mind of the student the nature and 
 limits of abstract truths, and that this dif&culty 
 is, if any thing, gi'eatly increased when we pass 
 to those whose reading is not characterized by 
 habits of thought, — as would be the case with 
 many of those whose interest in the general 
 subject of slavery might induce them to read 
 these lectures. The task of meeting these diffi- 
 culties was encountered with a measure of painful 
 distrust. 
 
 My Adews on the subject of slavery, as a prac- 
 tical question, will be found very generally to 
 accord with the popular ideas of those communities 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 in which the African population chiefly resides. 
 But, as a question of Moral Science, I will be 
 found to differ, and in some aspects very mate- 
 rially, from those who have spoken and written on 
 the subject. 
 
 The closing lecture is on the duties of masters 
 to slaves. On this point it may also appear that 
 my views do not accord with those of some others. 
 There are men whose views I judge to be en- 
 tirely too loose on the whole subject. But I 
 should consider any treatise on the subject of 
 slavery as inexcusably defective that did not 
 embrace the duties of masters to slaves ; and I 
 persuade myself that the number, if any, who 
 take a different view of the subject will be found 
 to be exceedingly small. 
 
 Whether I have acted w^isely in endeavoring to 
 combine in one performance a treatise adapted to 
 the habits of the student, and at the same time to 
 the habits of the general reader; and w^hether I 
 have succeeded to any desirable extent in so diffi- 
 cult an undertaking, it is not for me to determine. 
 I can only say, that in giving these lectures to the 
 public, I have yielded to the earnest desn-e, often 
 1* 
 
X * PREFACE. 
 
 expressed, of a large number of friends whose 
 judgment is entitled to my highest respect and 
 confidence. In meeting their wishes, I have en- 
 deavored to do justice to the subject. I have 
 written honestly, and with a sincere desire to do 
 good. 
 
 For the many imperfections of this volume, the 
 author persuades himself that the assurance that 
 it has been written and prepared for the press 
 under the pressure of other important and fre- 
 quently distracting avocations, will be received 
 as some apology. In the humble hope that it 
 may, nevertheless, shed some light on the difficul- 
 ties of the general subject, and thereby contribute 
 to diffuse sounder views on the principles in- 
 volved, quiet the irritation of the pubhc mind, 
 and give more stability to our pohtical union, and, 
 at the same time, impress masters more deeply 
 with the importance and obhgations of their provi- 
 dential position, it is with diffidence submitted to 
 the judgment of the public. 
 
 Randolph Macon College, Va., 
 August ISth, 1856. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ^IjH0so|Ijn anb ^radia of Sladtrg. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE SUBJECT OF AFRICAN 
 SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 General subject enunciated — Why this discussion may be regarded 
 as humiliating by Southern people — Other stand-points, how- 
 ever, disclose an urgent necessity, at this time, for a thorough 
 investigation of the whole subject — The results to which it is 
 the object of these lectures to conduct the mind. 
 
 The great question Avhich arises in discussing 
 the slavery of the African population of this 
 country — correctly known as " Domestic Slavery" 
 — is this : Is the institution of domestic slavery 
 sinful ? 
 
 The position I propose to maintain in these 
 lectures is^ that slavery, jt?^ se, is right; or that 
 
12 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the gi'eat abstract principle of slavery is right, 
 because it is a fundamental principle of the social 
 state ; and that domestic slavery, as an institutioyi, 
 is fully justified by the condition and circum- 
 stances (essential and relative) of the African race 
 in this country, and therefore equally right. 
 
 I confess that it is somewhat humiliating to dis- 
 cuss the question enunciated — Is the institution 
 of domestic slavery sinful? The affirmative as- 
 sumes that an immense community of Southern 
 people, of undoubted piety, are, nevertheless, in- 
 volved in great moral delinquency on the subject 
 of slavery. This is a palpable absurdity in regard 
 to a great many. For nothing is more certain 
 than this, that if it be sinful, they either know it, 
 or are competent to know it, and hence are respon- 
 sible. And as no plea of necessity can justify an 
 enlightened man in committing know^n sin, it fol- 
 lows that all such Southern people are highly 
 culpable, which is utterly inconsistent with the 
 admission that they are pious. To say, as some 
 are accustomed to do, that " slavery is certainly 
 wrong in the abstract,'' that is, in plain terms, in 
 itself sinful, but that they cannot help themselves, 
 appears to me to be wholly unfounded. It 
 assumes that a man may be absolutely compelled 
 to commit sin. This certainly cannot be true. 
 All candid minds wdU readily allow, that so far as 
 
OP SLAVERY. 13 
 
 Deity has yet explained himself, he has in no 
 instance enjoined upon man the observance of any 
 principle as his duty, which he may be compelled, 
 in the order of Ms providence, to violate. It is 
 equally false in fact, for it is not true that we are 
 absolutely compelled to be slaveholders. If gov- 
 ernment be, as it undoubtedly is, the agent of the 
 people, and the people choose, they are certainly 
 competent by this agent to free themselves from 
 this institution. True, the immense cost of such 
 an enterprise would be the least in the catalogue 
 of evils resulting from it ; for the total ruin of the 
 African race in this country may be put down 
 among the rest. But what of all this ? Nothing 
 can justify an enlightened and civilized people in 
 committing sin. No ; not even the sacrifice of 
 life itself. Withal, if the civil society refuse to 
 make so costly a sacrifice to avoid sin, there is 
 nothing that can compel any individual citizen to 
 remain a slaveholder. He can live in the com- 
 munity, as some do, without even hiring or own- 
 ing a slave ; or he can remove to one of the 
 so-called free States. We should give no counte- 
 nance, therefore, to any such mere attempts to 
 apologize for domestic slavery. The conduct of 
 bad men may sometimes find apologists. The 
 conduct of good men always admits of defence. 
 Hence, with many others, I have often been 
 
14 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 grieved by the repeated attempts of certain 
 pseudo-friends to pass off this flims}'' and ridicu- 
 lous apology as an able defence of the South. 
 
 In maintaining the institution of domestic sla- 
 very, we are either right or wrong, in a moral 
 point of view. We ask no mere apology on the 
 score of necessity, and we can certainly claim 
 none on the ground of ignorance. Those who 
 affirm that we are wrong, directly^ attack our 
 morals. In doing this, they arraign the character 
 of many thousands, who are among the most civil- 
 ized and pious people now living. This fact 
 alone is a sufficient refutation of so foul an asper- 
 sion ; and in this view, it may be readily admitted 
 that any attempt at a more formal refutation is a 
 humiliating condescension, to which few Southern 
 men can willingly submit. 
 
 But there is another stand-point from which 
 this subject is to be viewed, and which reflects it 
 in a very different light, and clearly indicates the 
 duty of submitting it to the test of the soundest 
 principles of philosophy and religion. It is this : 
 the ascendency tvhich certain popular errors on the 
 subject of African slavery have acquired^ and the 
 extent to which they peril the peace of the country^ 
 if not the very liberties of the ivhole republic. I 
 allude to the fact that there are many in the 
 country — and not a few of this number spread 
 
OF SLAVERY. 15 
 
 through our Southern States — who would not 
 intentionally arraign the piety of their fellow-citi- 
 zens, but whose minds (it is painfully humiliat- 
 ing to know) are in a state of great embarrass- 
 ment on this subject; so much so, that they are 
 constantly liable to be made the victims of any 
 fanatical influences abroad in the land, no less than 
 the dupes of that large class of political aspirants 
 who, reckless of both truth and morals, would 
 secure their elevation at any price. 
 
 Nor need we Avonder at the ascendency of erro- 
 neous opinions on the subject of slavery, any mor-" 
 than at the results which they threaten. 
 
 At an early period in our history, Thomas Jef- 
 ferson denounced domestic slavery as sinful, 'per 
 se, and declared that " there was no attribute in 
 the Divine mind which could take sides with the 
 wdiites in a controversy between the races :" thus 
 assuming in this remark, that the providences as 
 well as the attributes of the Deity are against the 
 slaveholder. Owing to the prominence given by 
 our Puritan fathers to the higher institutions of 
 learning, together with the fact that the soil and 
 the climate of New England w^ere unfavorable to 
 agricidtural pursuits, citizens of these States have, 
 from an early period in the history of the repub- 
 lic, supplied the most of the text-books for the 
 schools and colleges of the whole country. This 
 
1^ PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 grossly offensive error of Mr. Jefferson has been 
 more or less diffused through the whole of these 
 text-books. It has been among the first of specu- 
 lations upon abstract truth presented to the minds 
 of the American people. It has been studiously 
 inculcated from professors' chairs in colleges and 
 universities in the Northern States, while South- 
 ern literary institutions have been for the most 
 part silent. The pulpits of the South have also 
 lent their aid, and in some instances have been 
 zealous and active in propagating this error. 
 
 As early as 1780, the Methodists declared, in 
 a general convention of preachers, that " slavery 
 is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, 
 and hurtful to society ; contrary to the dictates 
 of conscience and pure religion ; doing that which 
 we would not that others should do to us and 
 ours ; and that we pass our disapprobation upon 
 all our friends who keep slaves, and advise their 
 freedom." This doctrine was reasserted after the 
 organization of the Church in 1784, and, with 
 short intervals of time, and unimportant variations 
 of phraseology, the essential features of this doc- 
 trine have been adhered to until the present time, 
 by this most numerous body of professing Christ- 
 ians in this country. At an early day, Bishop 
 Coke, of the M. E. Church, openly advocated this 
 doctrine in the pulpits of the country, until 
 
OF SLAVERY. IT 
 
 silenced by the force of public opinion ; yet he did 
 not cease, while he remained in the country, to 
 exert the full amount of his personal influence in 
 private and social circles against the institution of 
 domestic slavery. His example was followed by 
 a large number of his preachers, and many minis- 
 ters of other Christian denominations, who imbibed 
 the same doctrine and were animated by the same 
 spirit of hostihty to the institution ; and who, like 
 himself, were only held in abeyance by the same 
 force of public opinion. Many politicians, also, 
 there were, from time to time, who did not scruple 
 to avow Mr. Jefferson's doctrine, and like him 
 affect to foresee dreadful calamities overhanging 
 the country as a consequence of domestic slavery. 
 In view of these facts, it cannot be a matter of 
 surprise that abolition opinions and sentiments 
 should pervade the non-slaveholding sections of 
 the country ; and that at least a private but pain- 
 ful impression or suspicion that there must be 
 something wrong in the principle of domestic 
 slavery, should be found to pervade a portion even 
 of the Southern mind. Pteluctant as we may be 
 to admit the truth, necessity compels us to do so. 
 Let the following facts bear witness. 
 
 No communities on earth are so free from domes- 
 tic insurrections, and the disturbing influences 
 which come up from the lower orders of society. 
 
 i^ 
 
18 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 as those of the Southern States of this Union. 
 The social condition of England and Ireland, and 
 the states of the continent of Europe, are per- 
 ]3etualiy subject to the disturbing and ruinous 
 influence of local, and often widely spread, insur- 
 rectionary movements against the social order, 
 and even the safety of the governments. Nor are 
 the Northern States of this Union any more free 
 from these agrarian movements, than may be ac- 
 counted for by the relative sparseness of their 
 population. Yet a general feeling of security 
 pervades all these people, whilst it is notorious 
 that there are a great many in Southern commun- 
 ities who are in a constant state of feverish ex- 
 citement on the subject of domestic insurrections. 
 Any announcement of that kind is sufficient to 
 convulse a whole community. The trifling affair 
 of Nat. Turner (trifling compared w^ith the fre- 
 quent disturbances and loss of life common in the 
 communities just referred to) painfully agitated 
 the whole State of Virginia; and occupied her 
 Legislature through a wdiole winter in grave dis- 
 cussio'is as to the " best means of freeing the State 
 from the incubus of slavery." These results have 
 all followed from the causes at wdiich we have 
 glanced. 
 
 In this state of things, it is in vain to appeal 
 to the fact that Mr. Jefferson, though a profound 
 
 ^« 
 
OF SLAVERY. 19 
 
 statesman, and to some extent a logician, was 
 neither a divine nor a metaphysician ; and that no 
 people on the globe have shared more largely in 
 the blessings of a bountiful Providence than those 
 of the Southern States of this Union. In the 
 progress of civilization and religion, they have 
 advanced more rapidly than any communities in 
 the country. Still, Mr. Jefferson's name does not 
 lose its enchantment; and having already learned 
 to despise the unexampled blessings of Providence, 
 many of the Southern people actually believed — 
 until railroad communications began to dispel the 
 illusion — that their own happy States were really 
 falling back in civilization to the darkness of the 
 middle ages. Add to all this, the halls of legisla- 
 tion continue to echo the opinion that " domestic 
 slavery is a great moral, political, and social evil." 
 Ifi this connection, the phrase, moral evil, is re- 
 stricted to its appropriate meaning, sin. No 
 doubt, Messrs. Doddridge, Rives, Clay, Webster, 
 and many others — illustrious names ! — who have 
 substantially used this language in various con- 
 nections, only meant to deprecate the evils of^ 
 slavery in strong terms, that they might propiti- 
 ate a more favorable consideration of what they 
 had to say in its defence. But if we be correct 
 in the position already postulated, it is quite time 
 our politicians, no less than our ecclesiastics, had 
 
20 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 learned to chasten their language on this subject: 
 The fountains of public thought and feeling have, 
 to a great extent, been poisoned : that is, the ab- 
 stract opinions and religious sentiments of the 
 people have been corrupted and perverted. 
 
 The three great Protestant denominations* of 
 the country have been torn asunder. The flags 
 of their time-honored unions are traihng in the 
 dust; and they have ceased to operate as bonds 
 to our political union. A secret suspicion of the 
 morality of African slavery in the South, occupies 
 the minds of many of our best citizens — citizens 
 who are at a vast remove from the fanaticism 
 which stigmatizes those who are known as the 
 ultra abolitionists of the country. The great 
 family of Methodists in the District of Columbia, 
 the slave States of Delaware and Maryland, in 
 Western Virginia, and a part of Missouri, retain 
 their connection with the abolition division of the 
 M. E. Church. All along the line of division be- 
 tween the M. E. Church, North, and the M. E. 
 Church, South, — running through Virginia, Ken- 
 tucky, and Missouri, — the evils resulting from the 
 
 * The Methodists and Baptists, it is well known, divided di- 
 rectly upon the subject of slavery; and the Presbyterians medi- 
 ately upon a question of constitutional law ; but there is reason 
 to believe that the slavery agitation in the Presbyterian Church 
 precipitated a division, which otherwise would probably have 
 been averted. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 21 
 
 conflict and strife of opinions on this subject are 
 daily multiplying. The experiment of abolition 
 fanaticism is progressing ; and the souls as well as 
 the bodies of men are in the crucible. It is clear 
 that " whilst we have slept, an enemy hath sown 
 these tares," in our literature, our politics, and 
 our theology. 
 
 Two striking phenomena remain to be noticed 
 and accounted for. Amid all the conflict of opinion 
 and feeling upon this subject, — wdiich was insepa- 
 rable from doctrines so utterly at war with the 
 practices of the country — a conflict which at an 
 early period found its way into the halls of legis- 
 lation, civil and ecclesiastical, and has not ceased 
 to the present time to modify the federal politics 
 of the country, — the African population has yielded 
 only to certain physical and moral laws as to the 
 place of its location ; whilst the institution of 
 slavery, which embodies the great mass of that 
 popidation in the country, has held on the even 
 tenor of its way, unchecked in the shghtest de- 
 gree by the antagonistic doctrines and sentiments 
 w^hich have warred so fiercely against it, and 
 which at so many periods have threatened the 
 country with a legion of disastrous consequences. 
 In the first place, the African population has gra- 
 dually receded to those sections of the Union 
 which, from their climate and soil, were better 
 
22 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 adapted to slave labor. Why did not tlie abstract 
 opinions and sentiments set forth by Mr. Jefferson 
 and the M. E. Church, and which are supposed to 
 have given birth to the emancipation laws of the 
 Northern States, operate to retain wnthin those 
 States the large portion of slave population then 
 held, and secure their practical freedom? Why 
 did they escape the supposed charity of these 
 doctrines, and find their way, not as freemen, but 
 as slaves, to a chmate and soil more congenial to 
 their nature and destiny ? Are these doctrines 
 real abstract truths, as their advocates profess to 
 believe them to be ? Then they are fundamental 
 — they are vital — they are life-giving, and can 
 never fail to impress their own essential character 
 upon every system to w^iich they are applied. 
 The citizens of the Northern States adopted these 
 doctrines. Then it was an affair of conscience. 
 Emancipation laws were said to be the result. 
 But that these laws, supposed to be founded in 
 the belief of certain great abstract truths, which 
 secured to the African his civil freedom, should 
 operate only to transfer him to a climate and soil 
 better suited to his condition as a slave, is a phe- 
 nomenon for which the hypothesis does not ac- 
 count. And again, the institution itself, of 
 domestic slavery, by reason of causes Avhich are 
 evidently, though mysteriously, at work, is this 
 
OF SLAYERT. 23 
 
 day more firmly grounded in the confidence of 
 the great mass of the Southern people, and more 
 extensively ramified and interlocked with other 
 civil institutions of the whole country, than at 
 any former period of its history ! How is this ? 
 The abstract opinions and sentiments in question, 
 pervading our literature, our politics, and our theo- 
 logy, have been adopted by so many of our citi- 
 zens as to entitle the doctrine to be regarded as a 
 kind of national belief — the sentiment a kind of 
 national feeling. We are told that all men believe 
 slavery to be wrong in principle ; that is, wrong 
 in itself! and that all men feel that it is wrong! 
 And certain it is, there is more truth than fiction 
 in all this ! It is strictly true, as to the citizens 
 of the so-called fi'ee States. The same doctrine is 
 not without advocates at the South ; whilst many 
 more, as we have before stated, who may not be 
 said to believe it, are nevertheless often the sub- 
 jects of painful misgivings. ThQj fear it may be 
 true. The causes to which we have traced this, 
 fully account for it ; and we need not fear to state 
 the truth. But then again, the question recurs — 
 How is this, that the institution itself, a great 
 practical truth, should daily, for a long series of 
 years, become more and more practical — a fixed 
 fact in the country ? Truly, this is a phenome- 
 non for which the philosophy of the day will not 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 account. If those who beHeved this doctrine 
 were ruthless fanatics — ultra abolitionists in the 
 strictest sense — if those who oppose it were really 
 " pro-slavery" men, in the bad sense in which cer- 
 tain persons understand this phrase, that is, men 
 who, on the subject of slavery, wickedly do what 
 they know and feel to be wrong : on either hypo- 
 thesis we could account for the phenomenon in 
 question. But these are not the men with whom 
 I deal in these lectures. I lay all such out of the 
 account. They are men not to be reasoned with. 
 No : the men of whom I speak, both North and 
 South, are candid, honest men. I personally 
 know many of them at the North. I have met 
 them on great battle-fields, where more than blood 
 was shed ! I know them to be good men and 
 true, and I believe the same of the large class 
 they represent. With many of those at the 
 South who affiliate with them in opinion as firm 
 believers in Jefferson's doctrine, or whose embryo 
 opinions excite painful misgivings of mind, I have 
 often communed freely, and have equal confidence 
 in their integrity and honesty. The whole taken 
 together form a very numerous class, and may be 
 safely regarded as embodying the national belief 
 and feehng on the subject of slavery. And yet 
 we find that slavery is a great practical truth, a 
 fixed fact in the country. Now, can it be true 
 
OF SLAVERY. 25 
 
 that this opinion and feeling embodies a great 
 abstract truth — a fundamental, vital, immutable 
 principle, which never did and never can fail to 
 hold practical error in check, because it takes hold 
 of the conscience of an honest people — and whose 
 tendency, therefore, is always to an ultimate prac- 
 tical triumph, with all those who honestly receive 
 it ? We dare not affirm this. 
 
 It is not mere belief, nor is it mere honesty, 
 that produces results in practice ; but it is the 
 reception of the truth in an honed heart, which can 
 never fail to result in practice. Now in this case 
 the people are honest, and the people believe ; and 
 if it be essential truth which they thus beheve, 
 then, we say, the fact that in all those States of 
 this republic in which climate and soil are adapted 
 to African labor — -that precisely there the institu- 
 tion of domestic slavery should be rooted in the 
 practice of a large portion of this believing and 
 honest people, and that it should strike its roots 
 into the federal constitution, and penetrate deeper 
 and deeper every year into the legislation of the 
 whole country, and thus imphcate more and more 
 the whole mass of this believing people in the sin 
 of it, is a phenomenon, for which the postulate, that 
 it is the truth they beheve, does not account — nor 
 can it be made to account. 
 
 A false principle may be beheved to be the truth. 
 2 
 
26 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 And a false principle believed, has its results, be 
 cause it is bebeved; and they very much resemble 
 the results of truth believed. But we dare not 
 admit that error can take hold of the conscience as 
 pure principle, essential truth will do it. But^ 
 again, there is another great psychological fact, 
 which is often overlooked. A false principle may 
 be honestly believed by minds which, at the same 
 time, adopt antagonistic principles that are essen- 
 tial truths ; but, owing to various causes calculated 
 to confuse the ideas, the inconsistency is not per- 
 ceived. Now, in such a case as this, the principle 
 of essential truth is really brought into practical 
 antagonism with essential error, and that in the 
 same minds and upon the same subject. And as 
 truth is more powerful than error in the minds of 
 all honest people, the truth holds its way in prac- 
 tical results, in defiance of false princi|)le, which is 
 relatively powerless in the presence of truth. 
 The antagonism between the false principle and 
 the practical results of things may be perceived 
 and acknowledged ; whilst the antagonism of the 
 false principle with the true principle, which 
 underlies and produces these practical results by a 
 law of its own operation, is not only not perceived, 
 but actually denied to exist. Now so long as this 
 false principle is honestly believed to be true, and 
 clearly perceived to be in conflict with the joracticey 
 
OF SLAVERY. 27 
 
 but not perceived to be in conflict with other and 
 more latent principles, which are in themselves 
 truths, and admitted to be truths, and which pro- 
 duce this practice, just so long will this false prin- 
 ciple wage war, by the simple law of belief, against 
 this idractice. But as this w^ar is not sufliciently 
 potent to overturn this practice, because it is 
 founded on the behef of principles tynie in them- 
 selves, the practice will remain; and so long as 
 this false belief remains, the strife with the practice 
 must remain. Hence, if this be the state of the 
 pubhc "mind in this country on the subject of 
 African slavery, and it find no efficient remedy, 
 w^e can see notliing awaiting us but intermin- 
 able strife — men against themselves — the country 
 against the country ! We forbear to sketch the 
 future. 
 
 But, young gentlemen, I submit if this psy- 
 chology may not furnish a solution of the pheno- 
 mena I have brought to your notice, and also a 
 remedy against that otherwise interminable strif3 
 which has already done so much to impair the 
 moral power and bhght the fairest hopes of the 
 country. May it not be that in admittmg the 
 great abstract doctrine of Mr. Jefferson, that the 
 principle of African slavery is, per se, sinful, and 
 that, as such, the attributes and providence of Deity 
 are opposed to all who practice it, we have most 
 
28 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 unwisely admitted a false doctrine ? And as this 
 false doctrine, though honestly believed by a 
 number sufficiently large to designate it as the 
 national belief and the national feelino:, has 
 utterly failed to aboHsh or even to modify the 
 institution of African slavery, does it not afford a 
 strong and clear presumption, to say the least, 
 that this system which has held unbroken domi- 
 nion over the African race in this country for over 
 two centuries, and which continues to strike its 
 roots deeper and deeper into all the relations of 
 society, North and South — that this system, so 
 potent in practical results, and so heedless of the 
 fierce war that is waged against it, is, after all, 
 iindey^laid somewhere by a vad mine of principles — 
 pure essential truths — which are firmly rooted in the 
 belief of all civilized and honest men, and which, 
 all along, have imparted a spontaneous being and 
 activity to the system, and will continue to do so 
 perhajDS as long as any considerable portion of the 
 race shall remain in the country ? 
 
 If this hypothesis shall prove true, the sovereign 
 remedy for the otherwise interminable strife, so 
 jnotent for mischief, is at hand. Let us then free 
 ourselves, let us free the country, of the dominion 
 of Mr. Jefferson's philosophy, because it is false. 
 In doing this, we shall terminate the conflict which 
 now rages with so much violence. We shall be 
 
OFSLAVERY. 29 
 
 free to address ourselves to any modifications in 
 the system of African slavery which may be de- 
 manded to adapt it to the progress of civilization. 
 
 Regarding the whole subject in this hght, the 
 duty of thoroughly investigating it seems to me 
 to be laid upon the country as a moral necessity. 
 It is useless to talk of " deUcacy and humiliation," 
 in the presence of such fruits as a false philosophy 
 has already borne plentifully throughout the land. 
 
 As your chosen instructor, I owe you a service. 
 I dare not give up your minds to the dominion of 
 Wayland's Philosophy, (your text,) nor to any 
 other text on this subject, now known to the 
 country. I propose to lead your way in exploring 
 the mine of truth which we may assume to under- 
 lie the system of African slavery. We may look 
 with confidence to reach these results : 
 
 1. That the philosophy of Jefferson is false, and 
 that the opposite is true, namely, that the great 
 abstract principle of domestic slavery is, i^er se^ 
 RIGHT ; and therefore it is not in the use but in 
 the abuse of this principle that we are liable to 
 sin, and thereby incur the Divine displeasure. 
 
 2. That we should have a Southern literature. 
 Our schools must be supplied with correct text- 
 books on this subject. The poison which our 
 texts now contain must be distilled from them by 
 the learned of the land. The Church should not 
 
30 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 only right herself as she has done in the South, 
 but her voice should be heard in the pulpit 
 enforcing rigid principles, as well as right duties, 
 upon this subject. Truth is at all times intoler- 
 ant of any abuse. Her voice should certainly be 
 heard under circumstances so urgent as the pre- 
 sent. It is due to many in Southern communities 
 whose minds are, more or less, disturbed by the 
 long-continued abuse of the pulpit, and the social 
 influence of mistaken ministers of religion in pri- 
 vate life. It is due to the interests of our common 
 country. We have lost much already in suppress- 
 ing the truth. We have much to gain by boldly 
 asserting her claims — for '' truth is great, and wiU 
 prevail." 
 
 " Truth crushed to earth -will rise again : 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
 And dies amid her worshippers.'' 
 
OF SLAVERY. 31 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE ABSTRACT PRINCIPLE OF THE INSTITUTION OF 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 
 If the system be sinful, per se, the sin of it must be found in the 
 principle — Is the principle sinful ? — The principle defined — 
 Objections to the term submission answered — The effect of Mr. 
 Jefferson's doctrine upon many conscientious persons in the 
 Southern States. 
 
 I NOW propose to enter directly upon the in- 
 quiry, Is the institution of domestic slavery sinful ? 
 My plan will make it necessary, in this lecture, 
 to hmit the inquiry to the jjrinciple of the institu- 
 tion. If the institution be sinful, it must be so 
 either in the abstract principle it involves, or in 
 the specific form under which it embodies that 
 principle, or in both. In either case, Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's doctrine is verified ; for if the abstract prin- 
 ciple be wrong, then the institution Avhich envel- 
 ops the principle, and from which it derives its 
 character, is of course wrong. It certainly is 
 never right to act upon a wrong principle. Injus- 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 tice, as a principle, is confessedly wrong in itself, 
 according to the ideas of all mankind. No form 
 which an action can take will make it right, if it 
 proceed upon an unjust principle. Hence, no cir- 
 cumstances can justify any man in knowingly 
 doing an act of injustice. If the institution of 
 domestic slavery envelops the idea of injustice, 
 or any similar element, as its generic or abstract 
 principle, in such case it would certainly be wrong 
 both in principle and in practice ; that is, wrong 
 in itself; and we should, without scruple, abandon 
 the controversy. But a similar conclusion will 
 not follow from a contrary proposition ; that is, it 
 W'ill not follow, that if the abstract principle of 
 the institution be right, the institution itself is 
 right ; because the truth of a conditional proposi- 
 tion does not turn on the hypothesis, but on the 
 conBeqiienty as both true in itself and dependent 
 upon the antecedent condition. That this is not 
 the case in this instance is developed by the fact 
 that the affirmative proposition involved in this 
 conditional is, in itself, an absurdity, viz., "An ah- 
 dract iwinci])le of action being right, the action 
 itself is right." This is absurd. For instance, 
 justice, in itself, is a right lorinciidle of action, ac- 
 cording to the ideas of all mankind ; but it does 
 not follow that all actions which proceed upon the 
 principle oi justice are right actions. A. justly 
 
OFSLAVERY. , 83 
 
 owes B. one hundred dollars : now, to enforce the 
 payment of this money would be in itself a just 
 act, because the money is honestly owed by A. ; 
 but if, in doing this, B. should take the last bed 
 from under the wife and children of A., and de- 
 prive them of the last morsel of bread, the act 
 itself would be a very wicked one, and he would 
 be judged by mankind as but little less guilty 
 than a highway robber, because this is a case in 
 which the claims of benevolence march before the 
 claims of mere justice. Not to respect the claims 
 of benevolence in such a case is to act upon the 
 pinciiole of pure selfishness. This act, then, would 
 envelop also a wrong principle — selfishness ; and 
 it is the nature of a wrong principle to spread the 
 hue and poison of guilt over every act into which 
 it enters. Truth, and its opposite, as principles, 
 are striking examples. If we speak at all, we 
 should speak the truth. Every utterance into 
 which, in its proper, generic sense, the lie enters, 
 even in the least degree, is a poisoned act ; and 
 he who does this, is to that extent a basely wicked 
 man, however smooth his tongue or winning his 
 manners. Guilt has poisoned his utterance ; and 
 if this vice be not speedily arrested in its progress, 
 it will spread itself through the whole mass, and 
 break down his entire moral constitution. But it 
 does not certainly follow that all utterances which 
 
 9* 
 
34 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 are in themselves truths , are right utterances. 
 There are many facts, to which, if we were to 
 give utterance, we should only speak the truth, 
 but at the same time we all know that they should 
 lie buried (perhaps for ever) in the depths of our 
 own hearts. To injure our neighbor by speaking 
 the truth when no claim of paramount justice de- 
 manded it, and the claims of charity or kindness 
 forbade it, would be a wicked act. For a child in 
 a similar way to injure a parent would be the con- 
 duct of a demon. All such acts, though they 
 envelop a right principle — truth — do at the same 
 time envelop a wrong principle — malevolence; and 
 it is the nature of wrong principle to stamp every 
 act into which it enters with the character of 
 guilt — it is ivrong. 
 
 The conclusion we reach is this : If the abstract 
 or generic principle of an action be tvrong^ the 
 action itself is therefore ivrong; but that, if the 
 abstract principle be right, it does not follow that 
 the action is therefore right, but that the action 
 itself is either right or ivrong, as may be determined 
 by the presence or absence of certain other coinci- 
 dent principles ; or, as we usually say, as may be 
 determined by the circumstances. 
 
 If, then, the abstract principle of the institu- 
 tion of domestic slavery be wrong, the institution 
 itself is wrong, and ought to be abolished ; but if 
 
OFSLAVERY. 35 
 
 the principle be correct, the institution itself is or 
 is not right, just as the circumstances of the case 
 may or may not require that it be maintained ; as 
 in the case of any other act involving correct prin- 
 ciple. The points to be settled, then, are — 
 
 I. Is the abstract or generic principle of do- 
 metic slavery right or ivrong ? And if it be right, 
 then, 
 
 II. Is the system (so far as it is a system, 
 simply) of domestic slavery, enveloping this ab- 
 stract principle, justified by the circumstances of 
 the case ? If so, the system itself is also right. 
 Whether many slaveholders or few, or any at all, 
 are themselves doing right in the exercise of the 
 legal functions of that relation, are questions 
 foreign from the present inquiries, even on the 
 hypothesis that the system itself is right. Their 
 conduct, be it right or wrong, (and in many cases 
 it is right, and in many others it is no doubt 
 wrong,) does not at all affect the truth or error of 
 the questions now before us. It is not with the 
 conduct of individual men that we now deal ; but 
 with the act of that great being, the State — the 
 system of African slavery established by law in 
 the country — and with that profound principle of 
 truth or error which not only makes it a system^ 
 but makes it a right system or a wrong system, 
 as the case may be. 
 
36 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 The philosojoliy which prevails on the question 
 before us has originated two schools — the abo- 
 Utionist and the anti-slaver?/. The abolitionist 
 maintain that the abstract 'princ{])le of the system 
 is ivro7ig, and that therefore the system itself is 
 wrong under all circumstances. The anti-slavery 
 school agree with the aboHtionist that the princi' 
 pie is ivrong^ but divide among themselves as to 
 the conclusion they draw. Some hold that the 
 institution itself is not wrong under all cii'cum- 
 stances, and that therefore slaves may be held 
 under it in given cases without guilt ; and others, 
 that the institution is vjrong in itself^ and should be 
 abolished by the State, but that the holding of 
 slaves under this vjvong system is not an act m 
 itself wrong in all cases. 
 
 A strict analysis of the subject will show that 
 here is a strange medley of principles and conclu- 
 sions. I shall be found to agree with each, and 
 to disagree with each. I disagree with both on 
 the abstract principle. Hence, I disagree with the 
 abolitionists on the whole proposition. But I 
 agree with the abolitionists that if the abstract 
 principle be zvrong, the institution is wrong in all 
 cases. I say wdth them that all who grant the 
 antecedent of this conditional are bound to admit 
 the consequent. Hence I disagree with the anti- 
 slavery school in admitting that the principle is 
 
OF SLAVERY, 37 
 
 wrong ; but in so far as they admit that the sys- 
 tem may be right under given circumstances, or 
 that slaves may be held under it without guilt, we 
 agree. I stand, therefore, committed to the affirm- 
 ative of the question, both in regard to the prin- 
 ciple and to the institution, and hence proceed to 
 discuss the question : 
 
 I. Is the abstract principle of domestic slavery 
 right or wrong ? 
 
 I have already noticed that the pubhc mind 
 has been so long abused on this subject, that it is 
 usual for highly inteUigent persons, who have no 
 idea of affirming that the slaveholder is necessarily 
 a sinner, to allow that slaveholding is wrong in 
 ][)rinciple. But this, to say the least, is a strange 
 abuse of terms. The right or wrong of an action, 
 in itself considered, is determined by the principle 
 which it envelops, and the moral character of the 
 actor is determined by his intention in the per- 
 formance, or by his voluntary or involuntary 
 ignorance of the principle. It is reasonable, there- 
 fore, to infer that the pubhc attach no well-defined 
 meaning to the phrase, the abstract principle of 
 slavery. Its definite meaning, however, is indis- 
 pensable in this investigation ; and, indeed, on all 
 occasions, if we would speak correctly, and avoid 
 a misapplication of this term. 
 
38 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 What, then, is the principle of the system of 
 domestic slavery ? 
 
 Observe that it is the principle for which we 
 inquire. What, then, is the system itself? For 
 (to speak with strict philosophical propriety) our 
 idea of the system is the chronological condition 
 of our idea of the principle, as our idea of the 
 principle is the logical condition of our idea of 
 the system. We must perceive an action before 
 we can determine what is the principle of it, 
 although we must have an antecedent knowledge 
 of the principle before we can determine what 
 character that principle gives to the action. 
 
 The system is made up of two correlative rela- 
 tions — master and slave. Here there are but two 
 ideas — the idea of master and the idea of slave, as 
 correlatives. These are all the ideas that enter 
 into the system, as a S3^stem merely. Whatever 
 abstract principle, therefore, this system envel- 
 ops, is to be found in these two terms. It need 
 not and should not be sought for anywhere else ; 
 for these two relations make the whole system. 
 Without these it could not be a system of slavery; 
 and with these, it is therein, and in virtue of that 
 fact alone, a system of slavery. The answer to 
 the question depends upon the meaning of these 
 terms alone. What, then, is the correlative 
 meaning of these terms ? 
 
OFSLAVERY. 39 
 
 ^^ Master. The Latin is magister, compounded 
 of the root of magis, major, greater ; and the Teu- 
 tonic, ster, Saxon, deoran, to deerT The word, 
 then, signifies a chief director — one ivlio governs or 
 directs either men or business. The leading idea is 
 that of governor by his own will. 
 
 Slave. The deinvation of this word is not a 
 settled question. There is no difficulty, how- 
 ever, in fixing the meaning — one who is subject 
 to the tuill or direction of another. 
 
 As a concrete, master means one who is govern- 
 ing in some particidar instance or form by his own 
 will ; and slave, one who is so governed in some 
 particular instance. But these are abstract terms. 
 The ideas they convey may be conceived and held 
 in the mind, apart from any particular application 
 of the one or the other. And whether they are 
 considered as abstract or concrete terms, they are 
 correlatives — the one impHes the other. 
 
 A system of slavery is a state or order of things 
 estabhshed by law or custom, in which one set of 
 men are the masters to a given extent, and another 
 are the slaves to that extent. 
 
 Domestic slavery is an instance in which the 
 order or state of things constituting the system 
 itself, is made a part of the family relation. The 
 head of the family is the master, and the slave is 
 subject, as to the use of his time and labor, to the 
 
40 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 control of the master, as the other members of the 
 family. Domestic slavery, therefore, is one of the 
 forms of the general system of slavery. The sys- 
 tem has existed under various forms. The ancient 
 system of villanage in England, of serfdom in 
 Russia, the peon system of Mexico, as well as 
 domestic slavery in the United States, are all ex- 
 amples of slavery proper. This leads us to re- 
 mark that the terms master and slave are not only 
 abstract but general abstract terms : general^ be- 
 cause the abstract ideas they convey are common 
 to each of these conditions. Each of these sys- 
 tems is pervaded by generic principles or ideas, 
 which classify the whole as belonging to the same 
 genus — system of slavery. The abstract principle 
 of slavery is therefore the general idea, which is 
 enveloped ahke in each and every form or system 
 of slavery. Hence, as the abstract idea of master 
 is governing by one's own will, and that of slave 
 is submission or subjection to such control; and 
 as a system of slavery is a condition into which 
 these ideas enter in correlation — it follows that 
 the ahstract principle of slavery is the general prin- 
 ciple of submission or subjection to control hy the ivill 
 of another. This is the fundamental idea which 
 is common to every form of slavery. No condi- 
 tion into which this does not enter as a funda- 
 mental idea is a state of slavery. Every condition 
 
OF SLAVERY. 41 
 
 into which it enters is a state of slavery to the 
 extent in which it does so enter. 
 
 Submission or subjection to control hj the luill of 
 another being our definition of the abstract princi- 
 ple of the system of slavery, tw^o questions arise : 
 First — Is this a correct definition ? and second — 
 If it be correct, is it a sound, legitimate principle, 
 which may and ought to be adopted in practice, 
 whenever it may be wise to do so ? 
 
 First — Is the definition correct? 
 
 Subjection is the being put under the control of 
 another. Submission is the delivery of one's self to 
 the control of another. The one imphes the con- 
 sent of the will, and the other does not. That 
 subjection is an idea which fulfils the condition of 
 slavery will not be disputed by any. Hence our 
 definition is sufficiently wide to embrace that 
 which is conceded by aU. But our definition 
 gives much greater breadth to the principle. It 
 takes in suhnission as weU as subjection. It as- 
 sumes that the willing or the nilling of the sub- 
 ject of this form of control does not necessarily 
 enter into the principle w^hich logically defines it. 
 He who is subjected to such control is a slave ; 
 and he who submits to such control is not the less 
 so. This principle might therefore be still further 
 generalized — control by the tvill of another, with its 
 correlative idea submission or subjection only im- 
 
42 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 plied. But we prefer to define it in the terms 
 employed, as being more likely to be appreciated 
 in the sense intended. Are we correct in giving 
 this wide compass of meaning to the principle in 
 question ? Do we assume too much when we say 
 that a man is not the less a captive, and subject 
 to the control of the captor, because he volunta- 
 rily gives himself up as such ? Is a man then the 
 less a slave who voluntarily consents to be con- 
 trolled by the will of another ? The popular use 
 of terms in all languages shows that mankind have 
 conceded this point. They all apply the idea of 
 slave to such a case. Nay, more, they furnish a 
 constructive meaning of the term based upon this 
 meaning. They call a man a " slave to his pas- 
 sions," who has voluntarily given himself up to be 
 controlled in his future volitions by his passions 
 as the subjective motive of his actions. " No 
 bondage is more grievous than that which is vol- 
 untary," says Seneca. " To be a slave to the 
 passions is more grievous than to be a slave to a 
 tyrant," says Pythagoras. "No one can be free 
 who is intent on the indulgence of evil passions," 
 says Plato. And Cicero says, "All wicked men 
 are slaves." St. Paul, Rom. vi. 16, uses the term 
 in the same sense, and with the greatest propri- 
 ety : " Know ye not that to whom ye yield 
 yourselves servants \^ovXov(;, slaves] to obey, his 
 
OPSLAVERY. * 43 
 
 servants [slaves] ye are to whom ye obey; 
 whether of sin unto death, or obedience unto right- 
 eousness ?" (See Dr. A. Clarke, in he.) And 
 again, Ephesians vi. 5-7 : " Servants, [cJovAo^,] 
 be obedient to them that are your masters accord- 
 ing to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in single- 
 ness of your hearts as unto Christ : not with eye- 
 service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of 
 Christ, doing the will of God from the heart ; with 
 good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to 
 men." Doing the will of God — tvith good tvill. We 
 must certainly understand that it was the duty of 
 those slaves to give both assent and consent to 
 their condition, as a thing coming to them in the 
 order of God's providence, and pleasing to him; 
 and therefore serve their masters with the same 
 willing obedience, because therein they were serv- 
 ing the Lord. For these persons, we may sup- 
 pose, were originally made slaves by subjection. 
 They are exhorted to submit themselves not only 
 to the particular commands of their masters, but 
 also to their providential condition. The com- 
 mands of their masters might be obeyed from 
 mere prudential considerations. In this case, 
 their obedience would be without the rehgious 
 element. Paul exhorts them to religious obedi- 
 ence. Many, no doubt, obeyed : gave the consent 
 of their wills, as they gave the assent of their 
 
44 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 understandings ; and hence, cheerfully submitting 
 to their providential condition as from the Lord, 
 they obeyed their masters " in singleness of heart, 
 as unto Christ." They submitted, as any other 
 good man submits, with consent as well as assent 
 to his providential condition, and goes forth to the 
 duties of that condition with a cheerful heart. 
 Their condition was therefore changed from that 
 of subjection to one of submission, and for as long a 
 time as God might be pleased to continue it. Did 
 they, by reason of such submission, cease to be 
 slaves ? Certainly not. They were slaves when 
 in a state of subjection. They were not the less 
 so when, from the high Christian motives com- 
 manded by the apostle, their condition was 
 changed to one of submission. Be this, however, 
 as it may, the following case is decisive of the 
 whole question. The ancient Jew, who gave him- 
 self into slavery, was not the less a slave because 
 he did it voluntarily; and the Mosaic law pro- 
 vided that such should be held and treated as 
 slaves in perpetuity. See Exodus xxi. 5, 6 : "And 
 if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, 
 my wife, and my children : / will not go out free ; 
 then his master shall bring him unto the judges : 
 he shall also bring him unto the door, or to the 
 door-post; and his master shall bore his ear 
 through with an awl ; and he shall serve him for 
 
OF SLAVERY. 4# 
 
 evo-r Thus the law of God made a man a slave 
 who became so by his own voluntary act. A state 
 of submission, therefore, to control hy the ivill of 
 another, is no less a state of slavery than a state 
 of siihjection. If the state itself be one of slavery, 
 the idea, submission, which makes it so, is in this 
 case an element of the system. Hence, the true 
 philosophical definition of the principle, as before 
 stated, is control by the tuill of another, with its 
 correlative (subjection, or submission, as the case 
 might be) impHed. It may be the one; it may 
 be the other ; and wdiichever it is in a given case, 
 is the mere logical accident of that case, and does 
 not at all affect the jirinciple itself. 
 
 As the whole of the abstract idea of the system 
 of slavery is to be found in the terms master and 
 slave in correlation ; and submission and subjection 
 to control by the tvill of another is the whole idea 
 contained in the correlative sense of these terms, 
 (certainly nothing more and nothing less,) the 
 definition given is the whole, and nothing more, of 
 the abstract principle of the institution. Who- 
 ever is in this condition is to that extent a slave. 
 Whatever system envelops this principle — it mat- 
 ters not what form it may take, what coincident 
 principles it may include, or what name may be 
 given to it, or how far the practical working of 
 this principle may be modified — it is nevertheless 
 
46 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 to the extent that this principle enters into it a 
 system of slavery. It may be a wke system, be- 
 cause it is a necessary means for the accomplish- 
 ment of somei desii'able end ; or it may be an un- 
 wise system, because it is a means unsuited to the 
 end proposed. But neither hypothesis will at all 
 affect the principle. That is the same in the one 
 case as in the other ; that is, whether it be abused 
 or properly used, the principle itself is the same. 
 But can it be properly used at all ? This leads to 
 the second inquiry — Is this a sound, legitimate 
 principle, which may and should be adopted in 
 practice whenever it may be wise to do so ? 
 
 We need not scruple to admit that if injustice 
 or any similar idea should be found to enter as an 
 element into the abstract principle, it is a poisoned 
 principle, upon which no honest man will allow 
 himself to act. But is this the case ? Doubtless, 
 there may be injustice in slavery, as in every sys- 
 tem which has persons for its subjects : that is, 
 any master acting under the authority of this sys- 
 tem may perpetrate great injustice ; but we main- 
 tain that when he does so he introduces a princi- 
 ple foreign to the system, and for Avhich he is 
 individually responsible : he does that which mars 
 the character of the whole performance, and 
 stamps his own personal conduct with the guilt of 
 injustice. 
 
OFSLAVERY. - 47 
 
 However carelessly many persons are accus- 
 tomed to speak on this subject, yet we may assure 
 ourselves that a little reflection will satisfy any 
 candid mind that the principle is a legitimate one, 
 and cannot with any degree of propriety be re- 
 garded as sinful. It will readily occur to all 
 intelHgent minds, that this principle enters more ^ 
 or less as an essential element into every form of 
 human government. No government can be appro- 
 priate to human beings, in their present fallen con- 
 dition, that does not embody this generic element 
 in a greater or less degree. 
 
 A form of control, clearly embodying the idea 
 of government, and at the same time conferring 
 absolute freedom, is a solecism. If men would 
 uniformly govern themselves aright by their own 
 wills, there could be no necessity for government, 
 or room for its exercise, at least in the sense in 
 which we now understand the term. A govern- 
 ment adapted to such a people, I allow, might be 
 without the element of physical control, so indis- 
 pensable in human governments. It would be 
 (compared to human) a modification of govern- 
 ment — if government it might be called — for which 
 our language supphes no term. We cannot con- 
 ceive it to be appropriate to any intelligences this 
 side of the " spirits of just men made perfect in 
 heaven." These, we conceive, are sufficiently 
 
48 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 intelligent to understand clearly and correctly all 
 the duties appertaining to the various relations 
 they sustain, and so perfected in moral feehng as 
 to fulfil these duties from the impulses of their 
 own sponta7ieoiis volitions. Government, as it may 
 be understood and applied to such inteUigences, 
 must be essentially different from that which is 
 appropriate to beings of arbitrary volition; and 
 whOj therefore, should be held to accountability in 
 the exercise of their freedom by the most rigid 
 restrictions from penal sanctions. To these latter 
 a government that did not embody the iwincijple of 
 slavery would be no government at all. 
 
 Authoritative control, with its correlative, (ac- 
 cording to the more general classification given,) 
 is the abstract principle of slavery. But a state 
 of freedom is the opposite of a state of slavery. 
 The abstract principle of a state of freedom or 
 liberty is, therefore, the opposite to that of sla- 
 \ very. Hence self-control is the abstract principle 
 of freedom, as its opposite — control hy another — is 
 the principle of slavery. 
 
 Now every government adapted to fallen beings 
 whose personal or mental liberty consists in arU- 
 trary volition, is necessarily a combination of 
 these two opposite elements — the principle of 
 freedom and the principle of slavery. Either of 
 these entering alone into the system of govern- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 49 
 
 ment, would in the end defeat the legitimate ob- 
 ject of government — the happiness of the people. 
 If the government were based upon the principle 
 of freedom alone, allowing every man the unre- 
 stricted liberty of self-control, the wildest anarchy 
 would result : if to avoid this the opposite prin- 
 ciple should be adopted, allowing no liberty of 
 self-control, but subjecting all to control by the 
 will of another, it would be found as impracticable 
 as the other was disastrous, and, as far as success- 
 ful, only appropriate to idiots and infants. A 
 good government is such a harmonious union of 
 these opposing elements, as adapts it to the wants 
 of the people. For as, in chemistry, elements in 
 opposite states of electricity unite and form valu- 
 able compounds, so in political science, antago- 
 nistic principles enter necessarily into the composi- 
 tion of government. The character or kind of the 
 government is defined by the ratios in w^hich these 
 elements enter into its formation. If the principle 
 of slavery enter very largely into the government, 
 in a highly consolidated form, it is then an abso- 
 lute monarchy or military despotism. If the 
 exercise of this supreme power is distributed 
 among the heads of families, it assumes the patri- 
 archal or domestic form. If this principle enter 
 in a less degTee, but still in a much greater degree 
 than the principle of self-control, some one of the 
 3 
 
50 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 forms of constitutional monarchy or hereditary 
 aristocracy Avill result. If these opposite prin- 
 ciples enter into the government in somewhat 
 equal ratios, it is then a democratic republic — a 
 well-balanced government — such as ours is de- 
 signed to be. Hence we see that God has ren- 
 dered the blessing of civil freedom inseparable 
 from the presence and operation of the principle 
 of slavery. Such is the present arrangement, 
 that government can no otherwise secure freedom 
 to its subjects than by abridging them to a cer- 
 tain extent of self-control ; or, in other words, 
 government must place its subjects under the 
 operation of the principle of slavery in some 
 things, the more effectually to secure their practi- 
 cal freedom in other things. And the citizen who 
 may be determined not to submit to this order of 
 things, and shall persist to do, from the action of 
 a depraved will, what the State — his master — 
 says he shall not do, will, sooner or later, find 
 himself reduced to a condition of most abject 
 slavery, Avithin the walls of a pubKc prison. 
 
 It is entirely obvious that a government, to 
 secure the highest amount of happiness to its sub- 
 jects, must be adapted to their social and moral 
 condition. This adaptation, as before intimated, 
 can only be effected by the ratios in which the 
 antagonistic elements of liberty and of slavery shall 
 
OF SLAVERY. 51 
 
 enter into the composition of the goyernmeut. 
 Now this is virtually the position, after all, of a 
 no less distinguished abolitionist and literary man 
 than Dr. Wayland, the author of your text. On 
 the subject " of the mode in tvhich the objects of 
 society are accomidlished^' after bringing to view the 
 different forms of government — "wholly heredi- 
 tary" — " partly hereditary" — " partly elective" — 
 and " wholly elective" — he asks, " Which of these 
 is the preferable form of government ?" and adds, 
 " The answer must be conditional. The best form 
 of government for any people, is the best that its 
 present moral and social condition render j^racticable. 
 A people may be so entirely surrendered to the in- 
 fluence of imssion^ and so feebly influenced by moral 
 restraint^ that a government which rehed on moral 
 restraint could not exist for a day. In this case 
 a subordinate and inferior principle yet remains — 
 the princij)le of fear ; and the only resort is to a 
 government of force, or a mihtary despotism." 
 Now what is all this but a statement of the great 
 truth which we have akeady discussed, only in 
 different terms, that a government over a people, 
 in the moral and social condition described by Dr. 
 Wayland, which rehed upon " moral restraint,'' 
 that is, upon the principle of self-control, " could 
 not exist for a day ;' and that for such a people, 
 " the only resort is to a government of force, or a 
 
52 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 militaiy despotism" — that is, the highest conceiv- 
 able form or system of slavery. Now this is said, 
 by Dr. Wajland, after waging a relentless war 
 against both the principle and practice of slavery ! 
 Is not this an instance in which a great and honest 
 mind, having adopted certain false notions in an- 
 tagonism with the system of slavery, wars against 
 this system ; whilst, at the same time, this system 
 is underlaid, even in his own method of reasoning, 
 by a vast mine of fundamental principles which, 
 in spite of him, give it both being and activity ? 
 Why need one so learned as Dr. Wayland allow 
 the truth to escape his notice, because in one con- 
 nection it wears the livery of one form of words, 
 and in another connection very properly assumes 
 the hvery of a different form of language ? 
 
 To proceed : History informs us of many such 
 communities as those defined by Dr. Wayland, to 
 which any other form of government would be 
 entirely inappropriate but the one he calls a 
 '^government of force or a military despotism^'' 
 which is none other than the very highest form 
 of slavery. And your own good sense, young 
 gentlemen, must assure you that it would be 
 grossly absurd to confer on reckless boys of fif- 
 teen, or a mass of stupid pagans, all the rights of 
 free citizens of this great repubhc. No : the one 
 class should be retained under the slavery (for let 
 
OF SLAVERY. 53 
 
 US not scruple to call things by their right names) 
 of autJioritative control by their parents ; and the 
 other should be subjected to the operation of the 
 same general principle by the State. And to 
 adopt Dr. Wayland's own language on this point 
 — suicidal as it is to him — we add, in regard to 
 such citizens as are '^ entirely surrendered to the 
 influence of passion,'' that " after a government of 
 force has been established, and habits of subor- 
 dination have been formed, while the moral re- 
 straints are yet too feeble for self-government, an 
 hereditary government, which addresses itself to 
 the imagination, and strengthens itself by th€ influ- 
 ence of domestic connections and established usage, 
 may be as good a form of government as they can 
 sustain. As they advance in intellectual and 
 moral cultivation, it may advantageously become 
 more and more elective ; and in a suitable moral 
 condition, it may be wholly so." Now, to vary 
 the language in which these important facts are 
 expressed, so as to bring out the great philosophi- 
 cal principles which so evidently underlie them, 
 we would say, that when the government adapted 
 to an ignorant and depraved people has operated 
 under wise appliances to form habits of subordina- 
 tion among the masses, a modification of the ele- 
 ments of government is indicated as best suited 
 to their condition. Some one of the forms of 
 
64 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 hereditary government may be adopted. In this 
 government, the princi^yle of slavey^?/ is made to 
 oj^erate less actively, and there is more room for 
 the play of the opposite principle of self-control. 
 But as the moral principle is yet too feeble for 
 self-government proper, it is still held in strong 
 check by its antagonistic principle — the principle 
 of slavery. As they advance in intellectual and 
 moral cultivation, a further modification of the 
 relative operation of these principles is indicated 
 as proper. It may become more and more elec- 
 tive : that is, more and more of a democratic re- 
 public ; and in a suitable moral condition it may 
 be wholly so : that is, a government in which the 
 principle of slavery and the principle of liberty ope- 
 rate in about equal ratios. We call this a well- 
 balanced government. If it fulfil this condition, 
 it is because these opposing principles so check 
 and counterpoise each other that the government 
 is not likely to be unbalanced. One holds the 
 other in equilihrio. The principle of self-control is 
 in such vigorous operation among the masses, and 
 so craned up to a vigilant activity by coincident 
 forces derived from intelligence and interest, that 
 the principle of slavery — control hy the ivill of 
 another^ which in this instance is the will of the 
 majority — is not competent, according to the theory 
 of this government, to override and crush the 
 
Of^ SLAVERY 
 
 liberties of the country. On the other hand, the 
 jyrinciple of slavery^ which is the great jyradical 
 force of the goyernment, enfeebled as it is by a 
 prevailing popular enthusiasm for the widest free- 
 dom, and deriving no lyresent aid from interest, 
 finds this deficiency so fully supplied by the fact 
 that its impersonation is the ivill of the majorifi/, 
 that it is competent to resist the most violent 
 shocks which may come up from the misguided 
 self-control of the masses. How often have we 
 seen, in the history of our glorious republic, the 
 excited passions of the masses, misdirecting their 
 power of self-control, sweep like a hurricane over 
 the bosom of our political sea, and lash the waters 
 into a storm that threatened to engulf the hopes 
 of the nation ! But so vital and so active was that 
 principle which constitutes the true force of the 
 government, that that great ideal, the State — the 
 " Ship of State !" — outrode the tempest in perfect 
 safety ; and last, as first, the flag of liberty still 
 streamed from the mast-head. 
 
 Now, this is as far as the science of free gov- 
 ernment, so called, has been carried into practical 
 operation ; and in this we cannot fail to see that 
 the restraining and controlling jjrinciple of slaver?/ 
 is still in vigorous operation. We call it, by way 
 of eminence, difree government; and so it is, rela- 
 tively to other forms, a very free government. But 
 
56 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 then it is only relatively, not absolutely, so ; for 
 if it were rendered entirely free, by excluding the 
 oj^eration of the principle of slavery altogether, it 
 would be reduced at once to a form of government 
 which authorizes every man to do in all things and 
 in all respects just as he might please to do — a 
 guaranty which in the present state of fallen 
 human nature it could never make good, and, 
 therefore, virtually it would be no government at 
 all. 
 
 Seeing that the abstract principle of slavery 
 enters necessarily and essentially as an element 
 into every form of civil government, it is worse 
 than idle to affirm that it is wrong, fer se. But 
 more than this, it has the sanction of Jehovah : 
 for government, of which we have seen it is a 
 necessary element, is expressly declared in Holy 
 Scripture to be his ordinance. It entered largely 
 into the theocracy by which he governed the 
 Jewish nation ; and indeed is equally prominent in 
 the government which he exercises over all man- 
 kind, if we take it in its wide sense as compre- 
 hending the ultimate rewards and punishments 
 that await us in a future state. How imbecile 
 then is it to say of the system of slavery that it 
 is wrong in the abstract — wrong in principle ! 
 How little do men consider what they affirm in 
 this declaration ! Certainlv no man in his senses 
 
OF SLAVERY. 57 
 
 will gravely affirm of an essential principle of 
 government that it is wrong ! We repeat, tli(;n, 
 it is really time that certain politicians, as well as 
 ecclesiastics, had learned to chasten their language 
 on this subject. They have already accomphshed 
 incalculable mischief. They have conceded that 
 to the folly of flmaticism which, if it were true, 
 would render domestic slavery, with every other 
 form of civil government, wholly indefensible, and 
 their supporters the objects of the pity and scorn 
 of the civilized world. 
 
 There are many among ourselves who, though 
 they are not sufficient metaphysicians to detect 
 and expose the error of a conclusion, are suffici- 
 ently candid to admit that if the conceded dogma 
 of Jefferson be true, domestic slavery can never 
 be justified in practice by any circumstances what- 
 ever; and they have pious feeling enough to 
 prompt them to great hesitation in supporting the 
 institution in view of this admission, although they 
 are pressed to do so by circumstances of urgent 
 duty to the slaves themselves. In this state of 
 things there arises in many sensitive minds a most 
 painful state of feeling. Pressed on the one hand 
 by what is assumed to be correct principle, and on 
 the other by the claims of a high moral necessity, 
 — the necessity of governing and providing for 
 their slaves, which they erroneously suppose to 
 8* 
 
58 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 be in conflict with right principle, — they really find 
 themselves in a most embarrassing situation^ from 
 which they sigh to be released. Many such have 
 quietly retired from the State of their nativity 
 and choice as their only alternative. (This may 
 account for more of those removals, usually attri- 
 buted to worn-out lands, than many of our poli- 
 ticians wot of) Others remain, it is true, but it 
 is rather an act of subjection than submission. 
 Citizens of this class (and it is not a small class) 
 are of course always liable to become the victims 
 of any fanatical movement on the subject of sla- 
 very that may be afoot in the land. To all this 
 mischief, the speakers and writers in ques- 
 tion have contributed their full share. Yea, 
 for myself, I doubt not they have contributed 
 much more to dissatisfy the religious community 
 of the South — the large majority of the whole 
 population — than all the abolitionists of the North 
 put together. It is doubtless the magic of their 
 names which at present enables the M. E. Church 
 (the most regular and well-defined anti-slavery, if 
 not indeed abolitionist, association this day exist- 
 ing in the country) to maintain its footing in the 
 District of Columbia, the States of Delaware and 
 Maryland, and along the northern border of East- 
 ern and through a large part of Western Virginia, 
 together with a portion of Kentucky and Mis- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 59 
 
 somi. It is the authority of their names, also, 
 which so disquiets the feehngs of many good 
 people in the whole country as to make them the 
 victims of the political legerdemain of certain poli- 
 ticians, who, under cover of " free-soiHsm," " fugi- 
 tive slave law," and " Nebraska" excitements, are 
 overriding their rights and insulting the whole 
 country before the civilized world ; and who, last 
 though not least, are daily oppressing the African 
 population by the incubus of a morbid sensibility 
 in regard to them, which utterly prevents the 
 system under which they live from any thing like 
 a reasonable participation in the progress of civili- 
 zation. In view of these facts, we again assume 
 that it is really time they had learned to chasten 
 their language on the subject of African slavery. 
 Public opinion in the whole country must soon 
 become intolerant of so great an abuse of the 
 truth. 
 
60 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 Objections classified — Popular views discussed — "All men are 
 born free and equal" — "All men are created equal" — "All 
 men in a state of nature are free and equal " — And the parti- 
 cular form in which Dr. Wayland expresses the popular idea, 
 viz., " The relation in which men stand to each other is the 
 relation of equality ; not equality of condition, but equality of 
 rigid" — Remarks on Dr. Way land's course — His treatise on 
 Moral Science as a text-book. 
 
 It is now appropriate to consider some of the 
 speculations in Moral Science which may be sup- 
 posed to invalidate the position discussed in the 
 preceding lecture. As far as they have come 
 under my notice, they all belong to one class. 
 The general objection may be thus stated : Slavert/ 
 is an abridgment of rights to tuhich the enslaved are 
 entitled hy nature ; or, 7nore logically, slavery is an 
 abridgment of inalienable rights. This doctrine is 
 expressed in different forms of language, but is 
 essentially the same in meaning. It is with the 
 
OP SLAVERY. 61 
 
 popular view of this subject that I propose to deal 
 in this lecture. Hence I shall restrict my remarks, 
 in the first place, to the objection as it usually 
 exists in thought^ and notice several popular forms 
 of expression : 
 
 1. "All men are born free and equal." 
 Until within a few years past, this dogma was 
 stereotyped in all the text-books of the country — 
 from the horn-book to the most eminent treatise 
 on Moral Science for colleges and universities. 
 From the days of Jefferson until now, it has been 
 the text for the noisy twaddle of the "stump- 
 politician," and the profound discussions of the 
 grave senator in the Congress of the United 
 States. If this dogma, as it generally exists in 
 thought, be true, it will follow, that any and every 
 abridgment of liberty is a violation of original and 
 natural right — that is, inalienable right. Hence 
 every system of slavery must be based upon a 
 false principle. The popular sense in which this 
 language is generally understood, from father to 
 son, is evidently the literal sense. But taken in 
 this sense, the doctrine is utterly false. For men 
 are born in a state of infancy, and grow up to the 
 state of manhood ; and infants are entirely inca- 
 pable of freedom, and do not enjoy a particle of it. 
 They are not, therefore, born equally free, but in 
 a state of entire subjection. They grow up, it is 
 
62 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 true — if they be not imbeciles — to a degi'ee of 
 mental liberty, that is, the liberty of arbitrary 
 volition in the plain matters of 7igM and ivrong, 
 and hence are accountable ; but the degree of this 
 liberty, or how far they are thus mentally free, 
 deiDcnds upon the accident of birth, education, and 
 numerous coincident circumstances, which destroys 
 all equahty of mental freedom ; and as to equality 
 in other respects, it is scarcely a decent regard to 
 the feelings of mankind to affirm their equality. 
 They are not ])hysically equal. No two men will 
 compare exactly in this respect. They are not 
 'politically equal. The history of all human gov- 
 ernments, throughout all time, shows this. To 
 be "hewers of wood and drawers of w^ater," in 
 unequal and subordinate positions, to the fetv, has 
 been the lot of the great mass of mankind from 
 the days of Adam. But, says the "socialist," 
 (to whom the doctrine is far more creditable,) 
 "this latter is precisely the state of things we 
 deprecate, and affirm that such was never the 
 intention of Deity, but that it is his will that there 
 should be no such inequality among men ; that his 
 will is in itself the right; and w^hat it is his will 
 we should be, it is 7ight for us to be, and it is 
 our right to he; and that system which makes our 
 condition other than this, deprives us of our rights.'* 
 This is the philosophy of sociahsm. 
 
OP SLAVERY. 63 
 
 Now it is true that much of the inequahty of 
 condition among men is owing to an abuse of the 
 superior power which intelHgence confers upon the 
 few ; but this admission does not advance the 
 cause of sociahsm. For if it were allowed that 
 the will of God is the only rule of right — that is, 
 in itself the rights instead of this, that that which 
 in itself is the right is the will of God — it will not 
 help the argument. For, on this hypothesis, the 
 will of God is the only rule of right, as on the 
 other it conforms to the only rule of right ; so 
 that on either, the will of God may be taken as a 
 certain rule of right. What then does he will? 
 In regard to the present subject of inquiry, w^e can 
 only judge what he wills from that which he has 
 done. Now we have seen that he has not en- 
 dow^ed the souls of men with equal capacity, nor 
 has he even placed them in circumstances of pro- 
 vidential equahty, favorable to an equal develop- 
 ment of the unequal capacities he has given them. 
 Superior intelhgence is the condition of inequality. 
 Where this exists, there is essential inequality, 
 and practical inequality cannot usually be avoided. 
 Hence superior and inferior, and cognate terms, 
 are found in all languages, and the conditions they 
 represent are found amongst all people. Hence 
 inequality among men is the will of God ; and if 
 his will is the rule of our rights^ we have no ab- 
 
64 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 stract right to equality. It is rather our duty to 
 submit to that inequaHty of condition which results 
 from the superior intelligence or moral power of 
 others. Superior physical power may, for a time, 
 give us the ascendency ; but things will find their 
 level, Superior intelligence will ultimately bear 
 its possessor to his destined eminence. A state 
 of oppression is not one of inequality merely. It 
 is one in which superior intelligence has degraded 
 and afflicted those who rank below it, in an inferior 
 condition ; or it is an instance in which, by the 
 aid of brute force, those of inferior condition have, 
 for a time, risen at the expense of those of superior 
 intelligence. If we are oppressed, in either of 
 these ways, we have a right to complain, because 
 our oppressors violate the wiU of God concerning 
 ns — violate our rio-hts : but we have no ridit to 
 complain of inequaUf^ merely. Inequahty is the 
 law of Heaven. He who complains of this is not 
 less luucise than the prisoner who frets at his con- 
 dition, and chafes himself against the bars and 
 bolts of the prison which securely confines him ! 
 
 But if the dogma in question cannot be made to 
 serve the cause of truth, it has often been made 
 to serve the cause of poKcy. Many there are 
 who have not scrupled to use it as a tocsin to call 
 together a clan, not their inferiors merely, but so 
 degraded in then- inferiority, that, for the price of 
 
OF SLAVERY. 65 
 
 being honored with the distinction of "free and equal 
 feUovj-citizcnSy'' they have been ready as menials 
 to bow their necks to their masters, debase them- 
 selves, dishonor the state, and insult Jehovah ! 
 
 2. "All men are created equaL" 
 
 This is only another form in which the social 
 philosophy is pleased to express its one idea. We 
 need only notice the additional error acquired by 
 the change of language. "All men," it is said, 
 " are created." It is written in the first of Gene- 
 sis, that " God created man in his own image : in 
 the image of God created he him : male and female 
 created he them." The term " man" is, of course, 
 to be understood in its generic sense, and all that 
 is affirmed is, that God directly created Adam and 
 Eve, and all their posterity seminally in them; 
 and from whom, therefore, they have proceeded, 
 as to both soul and body, by generation, and not 
 by a separate act of creation by Jehovah. Now 
 of these two created beings, one was placed in 
 direct and immediate subordination to the other ; 
 and although it be true, as it often practically is, 
 that the fall has reversed this order of things, and 
 placed the wife at the head of affairs, still the 
 doctrine of headship, the doctrine of inequality/, 
 prevails in the one case as in the other. It is not 
 amiss, however, to remark in passing, that even 
 so great and humble a man as the Apostle Paul 
 
66 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 preferred the old-fashioned doctrine : he insists 
 that we observe the ori2:inal order of things : '" I 
 suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the 
 man;" 1 Tim. ii. 12; "but they are cpnimanded 
 to be under obedience, as also saith the law." 1 
 Cor. xiv. 34. 
 
 As to other points in this dogma, they have 
 been already treated. We only add that philoso- 
 phy, no less than religion and true patriotism, can- 
 not fail to regret that a dogma setting each of their 
 claims aside, and teaching the purest agrarianism, 
 and that under the most deadly form — the form 
 oi pure abstract truth — should have found its way 
 into that immortal instrument, the Declaration of 
 American Independence. We cannot otherwise 
 account for it than by the fact that one of the 
 presiding minds of that great paper had become 
 strongly tinctured with the infidel philosophy of 
 France. 
 
 3. "All men in a state of nature are free and 
 equal." 
 
 This is the form of words by which that great 
 man, Locke, involved himself in the doctrine of 
 socialism. The school of philosophy has freed 
 itself of the errors of Locke, and of much of the 
 infidelity of Hume which those errors precipitated 
 upon the world. The error now under notice, in 
 the unsettled political state of France, was seized 
 
OF SLAVERY. 67 
 
 upon by the Communists : infidelity and anarchy 
 followed. From them, it was consecrated in an 
 abridged form of words in the greatest state paper 
 that was ever written, — the " Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence," — and incorporated into the popular 
 language of the American people, and, indeed, into 
 that of every people where the English language 
 is spoken. Great and good men, who abhor the 
 folly of socialism, do not scruple to assert that 
 the true theory of all governments is, that they 
 are an abridgment of original and natural rights ; 
 forgetful of the fact that it is from the fountain of 
 socialism that they draw their original supply of 
 ideas. Those of the republican type maintain 
 that the government should be founded upon the 
 concessions of the majority, and that any thing else 
 is tyranny. I propose to deal with this idea in a 
 future lecture. I now only consider the dogma 
 in the literal sense — the form in which it exists 
 in popular thought. 
 
 Literally, what is the state of man by nature ? 
 and. Is he free and equal in that state ? We can 
 conceive of man as existing only in one or the 
 other of two states ; one of which is his natural 
 state, and the other merely hypothetical : that is, 
 the simple, or individual state, and the complex, or 
 social state. To conceive of men in their simple 
 state, or as not in a state of society^ is to conceive 
 
68 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 of them as existing as mere individuals : that is, 
 tmfJioiit connection or relation one with the other. Is 
 this the natural state of man — the state intended 
 for him by nature? Certainly not. It is not 
 known to history, any more than to us, that any 
 set of men ever existed in this way. This, then, 
 is a merely hypothetical state. In reality, there 
 never was such a state of things, and never will 
 he. Indeed, on the hypothesis that such was 
 the original state of men by nature, or as intended 
 by the Lord, it would foUow as a mere truism 
 that each one of those separate individuals was 
 free from control by any one or all of the others : 
 that is, they were all free and equal. That this 
 truism expresses the truth of the case, no doubt 
 exists in the thought of a great many ; but they 
 overlook the hypothesis which makes it a hypo- 
 thetical truism, merely because it never had any 
 existence in fact, and never can have. 
 
 To conceive of men in the social state is to con- 
 ceive of them in their relations to each other. 
 Hence it is a complex state. Several ideas enter 
 into this state — not only individuahty, as in the 
 former case, but also contiguity of time and place, 
 variety, and often contrariety of relations, together 
 with all the ideas which, as sequences, grow out 
 of these. Now, a leading idea involved in this 
 state, and inseparable from it, is the idea of gov- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 69 
 
 ernment : that is, the i'>ol'dical\^ inseparable from 
 the social state. These various and conflicting 
 relations must be defined by certain rules, carry- 
 ing the full idea of control. Without this, these 
 relations could not operate in harmonious agree- 
 ment for a single day. Now, as the natural state 
 of man is the state for which he was made, — the 
 state to which alone his entire nature is adapted, 
 — there can be no dispute, the social state is the 
 natural state of man. "And the Lord God said, 
 It is not good that the man should be alone : I will 
 make him an helpmeet for him." He w^as made, 
 then, for society, and society was immediately 
 furnished him. But the lavj of relation, we find, 
 was coincident with the relation itself : " There- 
 fore shall a man leave his father and his mother, 
 and shall cleave unto his wife." Gen. ii. 24. And 
 so also, every one born into the w^orld was born 
 in a state of society — the social state — and has 
 always existed in this state : that is, under govern- 
 ment. But we have before proved that a state of 
 slavery is fundamental in the complex idea of gov- 
 ernment. There is, there can be, no government 
 vjithoid it. Therefore, the natural state of man, or 
 the state to which he is adapted by both his mental 
 and physical constitution, is a state of slavery in 
 combination with liberty, vjJiich is the complex idea 
 of government. 
 
70 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 4. " The relation which men sustain to each 
 other is the relation of equality : not equality of 
 condition^ but equality of rights 
 
 This is the form in which Dr. Wayland prefers 
 to express the doctrine of equality.* He explains 
 himself thus : " Each separate individual is created 
 with precisely the same right to use the advan- 
 tages with which God has endowed him as any 
 other individual." From this position^ as thus 
 explained, he deduces an argument the force of 
 which, without expressing it in so many words, is 
 constructively made to pervade the whole perform- 
 ance. For his whole argument may be embodied 
 thus : the government which places an individual 
 in any other condition than that of political equal- 
 ity is an odious tyranny : the government which 
 establishes domestic slavery does this, and is 
 therefore an odious tyranny. 
 
 Now, the proposition, as he explains it, may be 
 admitted as a truism ; but then the doctrine of 
 essential equality of right w^ill not follow from 
 such an admission : that is, social and political 
 equality. For what if it be true that "each« 
 separate individual has precisely the same right 
 to use the advantages with which God has en- 
 dowed him T It only follows that each one has a 
 
 * Moral Science. Part II., Division I — Reciprocity. ^ 
 
OF SLAVERY. 71 
 
 common right in this respect merely, but not that 
 there is an essential equality of right in any 
 available sense in which we are accustomed to 
 understand the phrase. For if so, it will follow 
 that brutes have an essential equcdity of rights 
 with men, and that both men and brutes have an 
 essential equality of rights with angels. This is 
 not pushing the argument too far in either direc- 
 tion. For brutes, in a sense well defined by Dr. 
 Way land himself, have rights. No one but a 
 moral brute would deny the right of his fellow- 
 creature — the brute — to appropriate an accessible 
 bucket of refreshing water to slake his burning 
 thirst. Nothing is more certain than that brutes, 
 men, and angels have a common right to appropri- 
 ate the advantages Avith which God has endowed 
 them. Brutes could not have lower, and angels 
 could not have higher, rights in this respect. But 
 surely it cannot be said that this common right 
 confers on brutes, men, and angels, essential 
 equality of rights in any practical sense what- 
 ever ; for then it will follow that brutes, men, 
 and angels have an equal right to social and poli- 
 tical equality — a bold and reckless absurdity. 
 
 We admit that one man has a common right 
 with each and all other men in the respect stated ; 
 but not that they have common rights in other 
 respects. The common right to use our '^advan- 
 
72 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 tages to promote our happiness^ will not constitute 
 us equals in any proper sense, unless our advan- 
 tages be equal. Now, Dr. Waylancl himself allows, 
 in the very terms of his proposition, that men are 
 not equal in condition — that is, not equal in advan- 
 tages. And nothing is more obvious than that 
 men are not equal in that intellectual and moral 
 condition which would enable them to use certain 
 social and political advantages for the benefit of 
 themselves and others : consequently, upon his 
 own admission, they would have no right to them. 
 Unless, then, it can be shown that God has en- 
 dowed all human beings with intellectual and 
 moral capacities sufficiently developed to enable 
 them to be used for the common welfare, they 
 have no right to what we call political freedom. 
 But it is unquestionable that men are not univers- 
 ally nor even generally so endowed. It is not 
 the case with minors. Political freedom is with- 
 held from them by the laws of all States, for the 
 obvious reason that it is not among the privileges 
 which God, as yet, endowed them with the ability 
 to use for the common welfare. Still, no one, so 
 far as we ai^e aware, ever dreamed that minors 
 were herein abridged of their natural rights, and 
 that government and parents were " odious tyrants' 
 because they subjected them to one of the known 
 forms of domestic slavery ! We are not surprised, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 73 
 
 therefore, that Dr. Wayland found himself com- 
 pelled to admit that minors were exceptions to his 
 rule ; which, however, he had argued as univer- 
 sal — universals admit of no exceptions. 
 
 Again, it is not true of barbarians, through any 
 of the stages of barbarism. At no period are they 
 in that state of intellectual and moral development 
 in which they could use for the common welfare 
 the blessings of civil freedom, as understood and 
 enjoyed by a highly civilized people. If they 
 were, they would not be barbarians, but a civilized 
 people, to whom the right of civilization — pohtical 
 freedom — would inure. 
 
 Now I assume here, what I shall prove in a 
 future lecture, that the African came into this 
 country in a state of extreme barbarism ; and that, 
 in the judgment of Southern people — whom preju- 
 dice itself can hardly deny are honest and the only 
 competent judges in this matter — they are still, 
 as a race, in a state of semi-barbarism, to say the 
 least. If we are right in this position, they also 
 are an example of persons who are clearly not 
 entitled to the rights which inure only to a state 
 of civilization. With what propriety, therefore, 
 could any decent man, whose object is not to in- 
 sult, af&rm that we are "odious tyrants," for 
 withholding from the African the rights which are 
 appropriate only to a state of civilization : unless 
 4 
 
74 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 he were prepared first to show that we are 
 wrong in our position as to the question of fact, 
 that they are still in a state of semi-barbarism^ and, 
 therefore, not entitled to civil freedom ? 
 
 How shall we characterize the course of Dr. 
 Waj^land ! After drawing an ingenious argument 
 through many pages of his performance : appeal- 
 ing to the facts and principles of Holy Scripture : 
 not faihng, in the progress and application of his 
 false position, to stigmatize the system of African 
 slavery as an odious tyranny, and this for the 
 obvious purpose of degi'ading the Southern States 
 of this Union in the eyes of the whole civilized 
 world : then, when he is confronted, as he neces- 
 sarily was, in the progress of his own argument, 
 by the only material fact in the whole discussion, 
 he adroitly evades all consideration of it whatever ! 
 On page 216, fourth edition, he states the position 
 of the South, that the " slaves are not competent to 
 self-government," and shortly replies, " This is a 
 question of fact which it is not the province of 
 Moral Philosophy to decide." Why then did he 
 decide it by an application of his false position to 
 the South ? Echo answers. Why ? 
 
 Had he confined the application of his principles 
 to the rights which belong to a civilized people, 
 we should have no cause to complain ; or had he 
 adduced facts to invalidate the position of the 
 
OF SLAVERY. ^ 75 
 
 South in regard to its African population, we 
 should be bound to regard him as maintaining an 
 honoi'able discussion ; or, yielding this point, had 
 he attempted to define that form of government 
 most appropriate to a mass of semi-barbarians, 
 dwelling in the-midst of a highly civilized people, 
 with whom they could not amalgamate ; or, de- 
 chning this, had he frankly confessed his incom- 
 petency (as indeed will really appear upon a dis- 
 cussion of his basis principle) to do justice to the 
 subject of Moral Philosophy at this point at least 
 — in either case we should be bound to respect his 
 effort. But departing, as he evidently does, from 
 all these obvious lines of duty in the pathway of 
 his desolating errors, and inflicting so deep a 
 wound upon the feelings of the whole Southern 
 community, it must be allowed that our charity is 
 heavily taxed in accounting for his course. He 
 can have no cause to complain that we adopt the 
 opinion that he has permitted an early prejudice 
 to grow into a feeling of fanaticism, so fixed as to 
 warp his judgment on points of very simple apph- 
 cation in Moral Science. 
 
 Dr. Wayland's treatise is a text-book in many 
 of our literary institutions, and he himself is emi- 
 nently distinguished both in the rehgious and lite- 
 rary world. Such a text-book, thus endorsed by 
 both piety and learning, put into the hands of our 
 
76 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 young men, could rarely fail of its object — espe- 
 cially if the professor concur in enforcing its doc- 
 trines. This is frequently the case in Northern 
 institutions, and has often occurred in Southern; 
 and where it has not, the professor, as a general 
 thing, is either silent, or he concedes the doctrines 
 of the text, and rests the defence of the South 
 upon the false position, that " she cannot help her- 
 self !" The assumption that God has placed men 
 in circumstances in which they cannot avoid a 
 violation of his own immutable principles of right, 
 may be so entirely overlooked, as to leave the 
 doctrines and arguments of the text to work an 
 increasing conviction that there is moral wrong in 
 African slavery. If this state of things continue, 
 we must not be surprised if abolition fanaticism 
 should have a still more rapid growth in our land. 
 
OP SLAVEBY. 77 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF RIGHTS DISCUSSED. 
 
 Why it is necessary to define the term rights — The right in 
 itself defined to be the good — The doctrine that the will of God 
 is the origin of the right considered — The Trill of God not the 
 origin of the right, hut an expression of the right which is the 
 good — Natural rights and acquired rights, each defined. 
 
 There are questions which lie back of this dis- 
 cussion — errors, as I think, which underlie the 
 popular ideas of both government and rights. We 
 should not consider that we had fully met the 
 difficulties of the subject if we passed them bv. 
 
 Domestic slavery, it is said, is an abridgment 
 of inalienable rights ; and legitimate government 
 is a voluntary concession of certain alienable 
 rights. 
 
 Natural rights are, of course, such as are inher- 
 ent in the constitution of man : inalienable, because 
 in point of fact he cannot be substantively deprived 
 of them. The law which in any case provides to 
 
78 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 do this, treats him as though he were not a rational, 
 but a mere sentient being — and therein alienates 
 his rights. Domestic slavery is said to treat the 
 slave as a mere chattel, a thing, not an entity, and 
 hence deprives him by provision of law of the 
 right of being treated as a rational being as he is, 
 and not a mere thing. This is said, because it 
 j)laces his time and labor at the disposal of another 
 man. How far this reproach is just, turns upon a 
 definite answer to the question — What are rights ? 
 '• Government is a voliintari/ concession of certain 
 alienable rights'' If this concession be made by 
 the majority of the citizens, the government is 
 called repubhcan; if otherwise, it is called despotic. 
 In this theory of government, certain rights are 
 assumed to be given up, in order to secure other 
 and more important rights. I have shown govern- 
 ment to embody, of necessity, two great abstract 
 principles in liarmonious operation — though, in 
 their essential nature, the one antagonizes the 
 other. Now the principle of slavery — control hy 
 the tvill of another — certainly operates an abridg- 
 ment of the exercise of self-control^ which is the 
 principle of liberty. And so far as the principle 
 of slavery operates, in any given instance of gov- 
 ernment, is that, in such instance, a giving up, to 
 that extent, of the right of self-control^ in order to 
 secure a right to the self-control which remains 
 
OF SLAVERY. iU 
 
 angiven np ? Is this so ? This question also 
 turn upon the solution of that other cjuestion — 
 What are rights ? 
 
 And again, sdf-conirol, we say, is the principle 
 of liberty. Practical freedom is the exercise of 
 the right of self-control. How far does the right 
 of self-control extend ? I say that an instiuice in 
 which a body of men emerged from a state of 
 nature, (so called.) and formed a government by 
 an original act, is unknown to history. It never 
 occurred. Man v/as placed originally by Jehovah 
 himself under political law. The very moment 
 that he placed the first being in a relation to 
 another by giving him a " helpmeet^' he gave him 
 a law to govern that relation, as we have seen ; 
 and all the subsequent acts of men m the matter 
 of government-making, have been such modifica- 
 tions of the existing form of government as they 
 supposed would better suit their circumstances. 
 But it is said that w^hen society meets in conven- 
 tion to agree upon certain principles called a con- 
 stitution, under which the laws shall be made, 
 men do virtuall}^, for the time being, resolve them- 
 selves into their original position or state without 
 government ; and that the constitution so formed 
 is virtually an original formation. Well, for the 
 sake of the argument, let it be so. When, there- 
 fore, society thus falls back upon its original 
 
80 P H I L S P H Y A N D PRACTICE 
 
 position^ men stand upon the basis of what are 
 supposed their original rights I What is that ? 
 Why, the right that each man has to do as he 
 may please. They form a government : that is, 
 give up a part, more or less, of their original rigM, 
 Of course a part remains ungiven up, and the giv- 
 ing up cannot be to secure the possession of that 
 which is akeady in possession ! What is it that 
 invests these questions with difficulty ? Is it not 
 the ambiguity of the term rights ? Let us then 
 define rights, if we would not be for ever entoiled 
 by these absurdities. 
 
 And still again : Is liberty the right of self- 
 control? Is not man — accountable man — free in 
 virtue of his very humanity ? Does tliis freedom 
 imply absolute liberty ? If so, absolute liberty is 
 inherent m his very constitution — it is inalienable. 
 What right, then, can he have to give it up, or 
 any part of it ? If so, he has the right to do that 
 wdiich subjectively he cannot do. If, then, govern- 
 ment be a concession of the right of self-control 
 in this sense, it is the concession of an inalienable 
 right, and should be abandoned as a piece of io\\.Y. 
 
 It is entirely obvious, therefore, that we can- 
 not advance in these inquiries at aU v/ithout 
 first settling the question, What are rights? 
 
 The English language is allowed to be one of 
 great power, compass, and accuracy, and therefore 
 
OF SLAVERY. 81 
 
 eminently adapted to reasoning. It derives this 
 quality in a good degree from its flexibilit}^, the 
 different varieties of idea^ and often the different 
 shades of meaning in these varieties that may be 
 expressed by one word. No language is supposed 
 to compare with it in this respect. But whilst 
 this adapts it to the purpose of correct reasoning, 
 it opens also a wide field for errors in argument. 
 Men usually differ widely in ojnnion^ but they do 
 not often differ in sentiment. All intelligent and 
 good men feel right, and mean rigid. They often 
 differ in opinion because they differ in the mean- 
 ing they attach to the language, the same 
 language, which is the medium through which 
 each views the same subject. Different men use 
 the same word in different senses. The same 
 man often uses the same word by habit in differ- 
 ent senses in the same connection. They come 
 to different conclusions, of course, and the same 
 man often entoils himself by his own argument. 
 Now, there are few words with which men have 
 more to do in discussions and opinions about 
 liberty and government — the next most important 
 matters to personal religion — than with the word 
 rights; and there are few words which are capable 
 of more varied application, and which are in truth 
 oftener applied to express different shades of 
 
 meaning, than this word rights. Webster gives 
 4* 
 
82 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 correctly some forty different meanings of this 
 term, together ^vith several subordinate senses in 
 Avhich it occurs, all of which are in common use. 
 Our language — and of what language is not the 
 same true ? — our hterature, our theology, our poli- 
 tics — society on all sides — is bristling with rights! 
 Now, is it not obvious that there must be some 
 generic idea which classifies all the different mean- 
 ings and applications of this term, and which has 
 its foundation in the common sense, the common 
 reason of all mankind ? 
 
 If, then, we inquire what are our rights in any 
 given case, this question directly involves that 
 other and ultimate question, What is the right in 
 itself? the solution of wdiich solves at once the 
 general question in regard to all cases. And al- 
 though the case in which our rights may appear 
 must be first, in point of time before our minds, to 
 call up our idea of the rights still our definite ante- 
 cedent idea of the right is the logical condition on 
 which we determine w^hether the right appears in 
 that case. 
 
 Call then, to your mind, an instance of justice, 
 and one of injustice : a case of virtue and a case 
 of crime : an example of heroism and an example 
 of weakness : does not each of these cases em- 
 body, the one class your idea of the 7ig]Lt in itself, 
 and the other your idea of the turong in itself? 
 
OF SLAVERY. 83 
 
 But your conception of the cases in which your 
 antecedent idea of the rigJit and the wi^ong ap- 
 pears, and your antecedent idea of that right and 
 of that tvrong, are very different ideas : that is, the 
 case itself and your idea of the principle are dis- 
 tinct : the one a thing, the other an idea of some- 
 thing real. What, then, is your idea of the 7'ight, 
 which is so distinct in your mind from the case in 
 which it appears ? Interrogate your reason and 
 consciousness. Interrogate the reason and con- 
 sciousness of all marddnd. 
 
 Take this example : "The father of Cains To- 
 rajiiiis had been proscribed by the triumvirate. 
 Cains Tora7iiits, coming over to the interest of that 
 party, discovered to the officers who were in pur- 
 suit of his father the place where he concealed 
 himself, and gave withal a description hy which 
 they might distinguish his person when thoy 
 found him. The old man, more anxious for the 
 safety and fortunes of his son than about the little 
 that might remain of his own life, began immedi- 
 ately to inquire of the officers who seized him, 
 whether his son were well, whether he had done 
 his duty to the satisfaction of the generals. 'That 
 son,' replied one of the officers, ' so dear to thy 
 affections, betrayed thee to us : by his informa- 
 tion thou art apprehended, and diest.' The officer, 
 with this, struck a poniard to his heart, and the 
 
84 PHILOSOPHY AXU PRACTICE 
 
 unhiii^py parent feil^ not so much afiected by his 
 fate as by the means to which he owed it.""^' 
 Here is an example of the greatest filial impiety, 
 and of the highest parental affection. The one 
 fulfils our idea of the right, the other our idea of 
 the vjTong. Now, what is this idea of the right 
 and the wrong in which all are supposed to agree ? 
 We would not ask, with the disciple of Pale}^, of 
 Condillac, or of Helvetius, what the "wild boy, 
 caught years ago in the woods of Hanover," would 
 have thought of this case ; nor v/hat the savage, 
 without experience and without instruction, cut 
 off in his infancy from all intercourse with his 
 species, would think of it. No : " the savage state 
 offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, so to 
 speak — the germ of humanity, but not humanity 
 entire. The true man is the perfect man of his 
 kind : true human nature is human nature arrived 
 at its developnient."f We utterly deny that, in 
 order to arrive at the judgment of human nature, 
 we need consult a savage in such circumstances, 
 or indeed to consult a savage at all. And yet we 
 say that even a savage of good mind, who has 
 lived long enough in society to get the idea of the 
 relation of parent and child — such as even savages 
 have — would pronounce the conduct of the one to 
 
 * Paley's Philosophy. — Moral Science. f M. Cousin. 
 
OF SLAVEllY. 85 
 
 De right, and of the other to be wrong, and haA^e a 
 definite idea of that right and that turong, each in 
 itself. And we furthermore say, that human 
 nature cultivated to the highest degree hears the 
 same testimony to the difference in the conduct 
 of this father and this son, and attaches essentially 
 the same ideas to that difference. In calling the 
 one right and the other lurong, men say, and they 
 mean to say, that the one is good and the other is 
 evil. This is the uniform judgment of human 
 reason — the permanent belief of mankind. To 
 this common sense bears ample testimony. Gram- 
 marians have not invented languages. Govern- 
 ment itself dates back of legislators — they have 
 only modified it. Philosophers have not invented 
 beliefs : without concert, without conventions, the 
 world has fallen upon certain behefs, and certain 
 signs to express these beliefs. In the secret 
 chambers of the soul, not of any one individual 
 man, but of all men individually, consciousness 
 bears testimony that such and such is the behef 
 of all men, and this we call the judgment of com- 
 mon sense ; and such is also her testimony in all 
 languages as to the thing that is rigid, and that 
 the 7nght in any given case is the idea we have of 
 the good in that case. The right, then, is the good. 
 " Right, rectus',' says Webster, ^- straightness, 
 rectitude ;" which he explains to be conformity to 
 
86 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 rule or law, and that the tvill of God is the ulti- 
 Qiate rule or law which determines the i^igJit or 
 the ivrong in all cases. Hence conformity to this 
 rule is the generic idea of the right in itself, ac- 
 cording to Webster. In this view. Home Tooke, 
 in his Diversions of Purley, concurs. As his 
 criticism is ingenious, instructive, and generally 
 truthful, I quote the more material portion of his 
 article on rights. After telling us in his dialogue 
 that Johnson only informs us that rigid is not 
 ivrong^ and ivrong is not rights he adds : 
 
 " H. Right is no other than RECT^i;?^, {regetum,) 
 the past participle of the Latin verb regere, etc. 
 
 '' In the same manner, our English word just is 
 the past particijole of the verb juhere. 
 
 " Decree, Edict, Statute, Institute, Maxdate, 
 Precept, are all past participles. 
 
 " F. What then is law ? 
 
 " H. It is merely the past tense and past parti- 
 ciple of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb which 
 means something or any thing laid down as a rule 
 of conduct. Thus when a man demands his right, 
 he asks only that which it is ordered he shall 
 have. A right conduct is that which is ordered : 
 a RIGHT reckoning is that which is ordered : a right 
 line is that which is ordered or directed, (not a ran- 
 dom extension, but) the shortest between two 
 points : the right road is that ordered to be passed 
 
OF SLAVERY. 87 
 
 (for the object you have in view :) to do right is 
 to clo that which is ordered to be done : to be in 
 the RIGHT is to be in such situation or circum- 
 stances as are ordered : to have right or law on 
 one's side is to have in one's favor that which is 
 ordered or laid down : a right and just action is 
 such an one as is ordered and commanded : a just 
 man is such as he is commanded to be — qid leges 
 juraqiie served — who observes and obeys the 
 things laid down or commanded ; and the right 
 hand is that which custom and those who have 
 brought us up have ordered or directed us to use 
 in preference, when one hand only is employed ; 
 and the left hand is that which is leaved, left, or 
 wdiich we are taught to leave out of use on such 
 occasions. So that left, you see, is also a past 
 participle. 
 
 " F. Every thing, then, that is ordered and com- 
 manded is right and just ? 
 
 ^^ II. Surely ; for that is only affirming that 
 w^hat is ordered and commanded^ is ordered and 
 commanded. 
 
 " F. Now wdiat becomes of your vaunted rights 
 of man ? According to you, the chief merit of man 
 is obedience ; and whatever is ordered and com- 
 manded is right and just. This is pretty well for 
 a democrat. And those have always been your 
 sentiments ? 
 
88 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 " H. Always ; and those sentiments confirm my 
 democracy. 
 
 ^^'F. Those sentiments do not appear to have 
 made you very conspicuous for obedience. There 
 are not a few passages, I beheve, in your life, 
 wdiere you have opposed what was ordered and 
 commanded. Upon your principles, w^as that right ? 
 
 "H. Perfectly. 
 
 " F. How now ! Was it ordered and commanded 
 that you should oppose what was ordered and com- 
 manded! Can the same thing be at the same 
 time both right and wrong ? 
 
 " H. Travel back to Melinda, and you will find 
 the difficulty easily solved." (The people of 
 Melinda are all left-handed^ i. e., ilieir light is our 
 left. But they are as ?7^/^^handed as we are ; for 
 they use that hand in preference which is ordered 
 by their custom, and is therefore their right hand^ 
 and leave out of employ the other, which is, there- 
 fore, their left hand.) "A thing may be at the 
 same time both right and wrong, as well as right 
 and left. It may be commanded to be done and 
 comr.ianded not to be done. The law — that which 
 is laid dotun — may be different by different autho- 
 rities. 
 
 " I have always been most obedient when most 
 taxed with disobedience. But my right hand is 
 not the right hand of Melinda. The right 1 
 
OF SLAVERY. 89 
 
 revere is not the right ordered by sycophants : the 
 juB vagum, the capricious command of princes or 
 ministers. I follow the law of God, (what is laid 
 dotun by him for the rule of my conduct,) when I 
 follow the laws of human nature : which without 
 any human testimony we know must proceed from 
 God ; and upon these are founded the rights of 
 man, or what is ordered for man. I revere the 
 constitution and constitutional laws of England, 
 because they are in conformity Avith the laws of 
 God and ncdure; and upon these are founded the 
 rational rights of Enghshmen. If princes, or 
 ministers, or the corrupt sham-representatives of 
 the people, order, command, or lay doivn any thing- 
 contrary to that which is ordered, commanded, or 
 laid down by God, human nature, or the constitu- 
 tion of this government, I will still hold fast by 
 the higher authorities. If the meaner authorities 
 are offended, they can only destroy the body of 
 the individual, but never can affect the right, or 
 that which is ordered by their superiors. "'•' 
 
 Thus he is found to agree with Webster, that 
 the ivill of God is the ultimate genus of the right. 
 That is right, which conforms to the v^^ill of God 
 as laid dotun in laiv — whether that law be a turitten 
 revelation, nature, or the customs of society, (as in 
 
 * See his whole article on Rio;hts. 
 
90 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the case of the 7^)gM and left hand.) as the exponent 
 of that will — they are what is ordered in the case, 
 and make the right. Hence he condemns as 
 ^* wretched mummery" the distinction admitted, 
 by M. Portahs, between obedience to a command, 
 and obedience to what is right and just in itsehf, 
 and, on the same ground, pronounces it "highly 
 improper" to say, with Mr. Locke, '^ God has a 
 right to do it : we are his creatures." For truly 
 if his will be the ultimate genus of right, then he 
 can have no rights, for there is certainly no supe- 
 rior to whose commands he conforms in the acts of 
 his will. But precisely at this point let us take 
 our stand. I affirm on the authority of Scripture, 
 no less than sound philosophy, (alwaj's in har- 
 mony,) that God Jms rights, and that the distinc- 
 tion of M. Portalis is in many instances correct ; 
 and that hence Tooke, Dr. Paley, (who also con- 
 curs in this view — see his article Rights, in his 
 Moral Philosophy,) Dr. Webster, with many 
 others of great distinction, strangely err, not in 
 their etymology of this word, but in th;it hypo- 
 thesis by which they make it a siguificate of the 
 tviil of God. We cannot agree Avith them that 
 rights and duties which are reciprocal, are resolv- 
 able Old}' into the will of God — have his will alone 
 for their ultimate foundation. I take ground back 
 of this. True, I say with them — and I claim full 
 
OF SLAVERY. ' 91 
 
 credit in the declaration — that the volitions, the 
 acts of God, are always right ; but I do not say 
 that his will makes the essential or true distinc- 
 tion between 7'ight and ivrong. We dare not as- 
 sume that God, could, by an act of voKtion, make 
 the right to be the tirong, and the ivrong to be the 
 rigid — good evil, and evil good ! It is absurd to 
 assume that God can do things that are in them- 
 selves 'contradictory. Omnipotent, we know, he 
 is ; but such things are not the objects of powder, 
 any more than things which are the objects of 
 power, are, in the same sense, the objects of 
 Omniscience. To affirm that he could make the 
 right to be the w^rong, is as false as it would be 
 impious to affirm that he would do it, if he could — 
 false, because, if he can, he has not deposited 
 the truth in that great master-work of his hand, 
 the mind of man ; for, by the power of the intui- 
 tion he has given us, we are assured that the idea 
 is in itself a gross absurdity. And if this be not 
 decisive of the question, then neither intuition nor 
 the deductions of intuition are of any authority. 
 Man is the victim of a false guide wdthin ! He 
 may ''' eat and drink, for to-morrow he dies !" 
 There Vv^ill be no more of him ; or, what is worse, 
 he is but a link in a chain of sentient beings who 
 are governed by a cruel fate, which regards not 
 the distinctions of right and ivrong ; and he may 
 
92 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 be the sport of wickedness in the world to come, 
 as he lias been the victim of deception in this ! I 
 think it more than error to reason thus ! I think 
 it profane ! 
 
 We may take ground back of this — ground as 
 honorable to God as it is exalting to man and 
 encouraging to his hopes. It is true, that both 
 rectitude and duty, together with liberty, are 
 resolvable into the essential good. Or, in other 
 words, freedom^ rectitude^ and duty are the modes 
 of thought in which we conceive of the good as 
 existing in the soul of man, and that they are, 
 each of them, in their distinct nature and harmoni- 
 ous union, the true ideal of the good — the modes 
 of thought, also, in which the intuition of man per- 
 ceives the good in the case of every moral action 
 which is good. And concerning the good in itself, 
 which is thus in an humble degree perceived by 
 us, it is certainly a reahty Avhich is immutable and 
 eternal. God did not make it — nor was it made. 
 It is of the essential nature of God, and eternal. 
 He is the great impersonation of the good. His 
 will, his volitions, in all cases, are but the expres- 
 sions of this high attribute. His will, therefore, 
 always conforming to the essential good, is a per- 
 fect rule of what is right in itself, and proper to 
 be observed by us, as a rule of duty or conduct. 
 Such a rule, it will be seen, is eminently adapted to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 93 
 
 the wants of humanity ; l3ut, at the same time, his 
 will and the good are different realities. The one 
 is an essential (_[uanty of his holy nature, and the 
 other is, to a certain extent, an expression of this 
 attribute in the form of volitions. That the will 
 of God did not make the right in itself, will readily 
 appear. Is it to be conceived that there ever was 
 a period in eternity past, when truth was not 
 truth, or when truth did not exist ? when tlie good 
 was not the good^ or when the good did not exist ? 
 But does it not accord with the clearest teachings 
 of reason, that the truth always was the truth, 
 and ever will be the truth ? that the good always 
 will be the good ? That two and two are equal to 
 four ; that to affirm a thing to be and not to be 
 at the same time is an absurdity and a contradic- 
 tion ; and that things equal to one and the same 
 thing are equal to one another, we say are all in- 
 tuitive truths — we cannot be mistaken about 
 them. So also in morals : that the truth is good ; 
 that virtue is good ; that a good action is not an 
 evil action ; and that to affirm that a good action 
 is not a good action is an absurdity, a contradic- 
 tion, we say, are all intuitions — we cannot he mis- 
 taken ahoiit them. But is it not equally intuitive 
 that these things were always so — that these 
 truths were always truths — the good was always 
 the good, just as certainly as that they are so 
 
94 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 now ? Then the eternit?/ of these things is just as 
 certainly an intuition, as that they exist now is an 
 intuition. Hence the eternity of God, who is the 
 great impersonation of this high quahty, or whose 
 attribute it is, is an intuitive truth. Hence his 
 will did not make it, for it is absurd to say that 
 he made himself. His will, therefore, Avhich, in 
 giA^en cases, is his volition, is but the expression 
 of this essential quality of his holy nature. Hence 
 his will is a rule of right, because in all cases it 
 conforms to the good, but it did not make the 
 good. 
 
 Therefore the pjght, as it conforms to the essen- 
 tial GOOD, is of the nature of the good. It is pro- 
 perly a significate of the good, and not a significate 
 of the tuill of God. Things agreeing with one and 
 the same thing agree with each other. Hence it 
 coincides with the will of God. But such coin- 
 cidence does not constitute any thing right in 
 itself; but it is because, like the will of God, it 
 conforms to, or is of the. nature of, the essential 
 good, that it is right. The right then, in itself, is 
 the good. The good is the true generic idea which' 
 classifies all the different applications of this term. 
 So far as any thing is of the nature of the good, it 
 is in itself right. So far as any thing, to which 
 the idea of the right applies, is negative of the 
 good, i. e., is evil, it is wrong. 
 
OFSLAVERY. ' 95 
 
 The GOOD, therefore, as an ultimate gemis, is 
 much more extensive in meaning than the right. 
 It extends to all phjskal as well as moral good. 
 Our subject requires us to consider it only so flir 
 as it apphes to humanity. And how far is this ? 
 When Jehovah created man, he pronounced him to 
 be ^* very good," i. e., essentially good in the attri- 
 butes of his nature. He was created in " his own 
 image : in the image of God created he him." 
 "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of 
 the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life ; and man became a living soldi' 
 That is, he was created a pure spiritual intelH- 
 gence. He had a clear and correct perception and 
 judgment of pure abstract truth, and of the rela- 
 tions of truth ; w^ith the corresponding feelings of 
 obligation to duty, and a power of will sufficient 
 to control the mental states within the sphere of 
 its operations. Now, as a pure intelligence, thus 
 endowed, he is within the limits of his capacity a 
 cause within himself — strictly a self-acting agent, 
 and hence accountable. And as he was created 
 with a feeling of obligation to observe the good as 
 a rule in all his conduct, he w^as created a subject 
 of duty — he was under obligation to do, to act ; 
 and as in each of these respects, and in all others, 
 he was created in conformity with the essential 
 good, he was rectus, right. All this is implied in 
 
96 PHILOSOPHY A In I) P II A C T I C E 
 
 that declaration of his essential nature, as a pure 
 spiritual intelligence, (who was therein made in 
 the image of God,) wdiich defined him to be " very 
 goody Nor can we think of this good as a quality 
 or attribute of humanity, without being conscious, 
 if we reflect closely, of associating in our minds 
 the idea that the being who personates iL is for 
 that reason free; that for that reason he is rectus, 
 straight, conformed to the good as the rule, that 
 is, right; and that for the same reason he is under 
 obligation — it is his didy to act according to that 
 rule. Every instance of moral action that is good 
 implies these ideas : it is free, it is rectus, straight, 
 and it is done in accordance with duty. In the 
 same sense in wdiich life, sense, and motion enter 
 into and so form the comprehension of the crea- 
 ture, animal; so liberty, rectitude, and duty form 
 the comprehension of moral good, so flir as it 
 applies to humanity. These are distinct ideas. 
 Still they coincide, and either implies the others as 
 correlatives. Hence we say of a free action that 
 \i is good, implying that it is at the same time 
 rectus, and done in accordance with duty ; and of 
 an action in conformity to a proper rule, that it is 
 good, implying at the same time that it v^ free, and 
 done in accordance with duty ; and also of an 
 action in compliance with duty, that it is good, 
 implying that it is also free, and straight, i. e., 
 
OF SLAVERY. 97 
 
 conformed to rule : thus in each case we imply the 
 correlative ideas. 
 
 Now, Avhatever is in my possession by natural 
 endowment is mine, in the strictest sense. Hence, 
 freedom is. mine, duti/ is mine, and rectitude is 
 mine, because the good is mine, and those are the 
 elements of the good, each one implying the 
 others. 
 
 Hence arises the idea of iiaturcd right : that is, 
 the right with which I am endowed by the consti- 
 tution of my nature as a rational being. But 
 what is that right ? Evidently, the good. The 
 good as an attribute is in my possession. I am 
 constituted with it and by it. Hence it is inalien- 
 able. Divest me of the iiood as an attribute of 
 my nature, i. e., liberty, rectitude, and duty, and 
 I sink at once in the scale of being : I cease alto- 
 gether to be a rational or accountable being. 
 
 Let no one imagine that this position conflicts 
 with the well-known fact that man is a fallen 
 being. For although fallen, he is still account- 
 able. True, his moral nature is in ruins, but still 
 it is a moral nature. Thouoh disordered, it is not 
 eradicated. Hence the restoration by grace is 
 called a conversion ; but if the essential moral 
 nature of man had been destroyed by the fall, and 
 an attribute of essential evil had taken the place 
 of it, his restoration could not be called, as it is, a 
 5 
 
98 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 change, but should be called in the strictest sense 
 an original creation. Hence, although man is 
 fallen, depraved — and we need not object to the 
 strong terms in which this depravity is usually 
 expressed — still we find that the sentiment of all 
 mankind is on the side of virtue, on the side of 
 the good ; and that men, though unchanged by 
 sovereign grace, are still required to be honest, 
 gentlemanly, and in all things regardful of each 
 other's rights. We admit of exceptions or modi- 
 fications of this only in the case of those in whom 
 humanity has not been fully developed, as before 
 noticed, and those in civihzed life who have so far 
 abused their moral nature as, in the lan2:uao;e of 
 Paul, to fit themselves for destruction. There- 
 fore, it still remains that the good in the form of 
 rectitude, 7nght, is in some modification an endow- 
 ment of my nature : the right, in itself, is mine 
 by nature. 
 
 But the good, as an attribute, is an active prin- 
 ciple. We were endowed with it for the purpose 
 of movement — for results. It is my duty to act 
 fight — straight, or in accordance with the good as 
 a rule. Hence, whatever is a necessary condition 
 of the operation of this active principle, the essen- 
 tial good, is in itself a good which is either in my 
 possession, and hence is mine by possession ; or 
 it ought to be in my possession, and hence is mine 
 
OF SLAVERY. 99 
 
 by just title. Hence, to breathe, under all cir- 
 cumstances, together Avith all physical motion and 
 the sustenance of the body, which involves the 
 right of property to a certain extent, each in given 
 circumstances, is the natural right of every one. 
 So also the right of the embryo-man, the idiot, 
 the imbecile, the uncivihzed, or the savage, to 
 protection and defence, is a natural right ; and for 
 the same reason, to be protected and defended 
 from certain helpless conditions by others, is the 
 natural right of every one in all states of human- 
 ity. Because each of these, and of all similar 
 things, is in itself good, being a necessary condition 
 of the operation of the essential good, and is either 
 in our possession or ought to be in our possession ; 
 each one is also a natural rigld^ the good that is 
 or ought to be in our possession. 
 
 But there are acquired rights. 
 
 It is the didg of man to act, from the very fact 
 that he is endowed with the attribute of the good, 
 which envelops the idea of duty. He also has 
 jJoiver to act from the very same natural constitu- 
 tion. Now, if he use this poiver as duty and rec- 
 titude indicate that he should do, all nature 
 teaches, what the Bible confirms, that he will 
 glorify God, i. e., exemplify his goodness, and 
 therein promote his own happiness and the happi- 
 ness of those with whom he is associated; or, in 
 
100 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 other Avords, he will secure for himself and confer 
 upon his fellows eminent benefits resulting from 
 the performance of his duty. Now, wdiatever re- 
 sults to him in this w^ay is certainly his by pos- 
 session, or by DiA'ine grant, as much so as any 
 nhinvsil rif/ht; but these henefits, being of the nature 
 of the essential good, (for the reason that they are 
 henefits^ are in themselves right,) result to him in 
 the performance of his duty, and therefore are his 
 riglds. But the acquisition is made to depend 
 upon the exercise of his arhitrarij volition. If he 
 use this in pursuance of duty, they follow. If he 
 use it in violation of duty, they do not follow. 
 Hence, if he realize them at all, either by posses- 
 sion or by title, they are acquired, and therefore 
 are acquired rights or benefits. 
 
 Therefore, acquired rights may be defined, such 
 good, in the form of benefits or privileges, as results 
 from the performance of duty. Logically, they 
 belong to the class of the essential good called 
 benefits or privileges, w^ith the ^'' essential differ- 
 ence' that they are such as result from the per- 
 formance of duty. Any other result, though in 
 itself of the nature of the essential good, yet, as it 
 conferred no benefit, could not be said to be our 
 right. Capital punishment, for example, when in 
 accordance with the Divine will, is in itself of the 
 nature of the essential good ; still, it would be an 
 
OF SLAVERY. 101 
 
 abuse of language to say, in any ordinary case, 
 that it was the right of the criminal to be hung ! 
 because for no reason that we can imagine does 
 it confer any benefit or privilege upon the criminal. 
 To be acquired rights, therefore, they must not 
 only be of the nature of the good — that is, actual 
 benefits — but this good must result from the per- 
 formance of duty, and not from the non-perform- 
 ance of duty, as in the example given. 
 
 The definition corresponds with the language of 
 common sense. All men, in speaking of cases 
 which are supposed to involve the question of 
 eights, employ the term in this sense. You say, 
 of a farmer in a given case, that he had no 
 right to an abundant harvest : why ? because he 
 neglected his farm: his lands were not properly 
 prepared, and the growling crop was left open to 
 depredations from stock : that is, he neglected his 
 duty ; he had no right to the benefit of an abund- 
 ant harvest. And again, you say to a neighbor. 
 You should have paid a certain sum of money to 
 A., in a given case. He had a right to the money, 
 because he complied with the conditions on which 
 the money was to be paid. He did his duty, and 
 therefore had a right to the money. Thus, the 
 neglect of duty negatives right in the one case, 
 and the performance afiirms it in the other, ac- 
 cording to the common usage of language. 
 
102 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 Another idea which cleriilj- enters into the com- 
 mon and correct use of this term is that it is recip- 
 rocal with obligation : that is, wherever there is a 
 right in one person, there is a corresponding obli- 
 gation, diet I/, upon others. If one man has a right 
 to an estate, others are under obligation, that is, it 
 is their dutg, to abstain from it. If the letting of it 
 alone be the result of duty on the part of others, 
 the enjoyment of it by him must also result from 
 duty on his part, or the ideas do not coincide : 
 that which was duty in one set of men would not 
 be duty in another, in regard to the same thing, 
 and in correlative circumstances. This would be 
 absurd : therefore, the duty of one set of men to 
 let another alone in the enjoyment of a certain 
 benefit, implies the correlative idea that they 
 enjoy the benefit in virtue of doing their duty. 
 Hence, those benefits which are our rights result 
 to us from the performance of our duty. 
 
 The points established in this discussion are : 
 1. That conformity to what is ordered or com- 
 manded is not the true generic idea of the right 
 in itself What is ordered or commanded can 
 only interpret the right, when the command itself 
 conforms to the essential good, as in the case of 
 the Divine will. This is always right, because it 
 so conforms, or is always an expression of the 
 essential good. 
 
OF SLAVERY. lOB 
 
 Hence, the good is the true generic idea of the 
 right. This alone can interpret the right in any 
 case. Therefore, although man, in virtue of his 
 constitution as a pure intelhgence, has the povjer 
 to do tvrong. he has not, and never cjin have, the 
 right to do wrong. For vrrong is the negative of 
 right ; and any thing, whether attribute, quality, 
 opinion, doctrine, or act — every thing, vrhether 
 moral or physical — to be right, must be of the 
 nature of the good: all else is ivrong^ not right. 
 And it further follows, that the only true subjec- 
 tive right which any man has to exercise his 
 power of self-control, is in doing that which is 
 good, and not in doing that Avhich is evil. 
 
 2. The natural rights of man are. 
 
 First — The essential good in his possession by 
 natural endowment, and which is therefore inalien- 
 ible. And, Second — The necessary conditions, 
 whatever they may be, of the operation of the 
 inherent good as an active principle. Some of 
 these are inalienable, and others are alienable. 
 To this view of natural rights the common usage 
 of language conforms. 
 
 3. The acquired rights of man are, such good, 
 in the form of benefits or privileges, as results to 
 him from the performance of duty. 
 
104: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF RIGHTS APPLIED TO GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Government, human as well as Divine, is a necessity of man's 
 fallen condition — All men concur in this — Man did not origin- 
 ate government : he has only modified the form — The legitimate 
 objects of government, and the means Avhich it employs to 
 efiect these objects — The logical inferences : 1. Although he 
 has the power, he has no right to do wrong ; 2. As a fallen 
 
 . being, he is, without a government over him, liable to lose the 
 power of self-control — "What are the rights of man : 1. In a 
 state of infancy ; 2. In a state of maturity ; and, 3. In a 
 savage or uncivilized state — Civil government is not founded 
 on a concession of rights. 
 
 Philosophers, it seems to me, strangely over- 
 look the tendency of man's fall to modify the ope- 
 ration of the laws of mind ; and those wdio admit 
 the fall still overlook this fact, that the depravity 
 of man's nature w^as the result of deprivation^ and 
 not the infusion of an evil principle as an attribute 
 of his nature. But it is not w^ith the theology of 
 this subject that we are now dealing. The fact 
 that, as a fallen being, he was deprived of the im- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 105 
 
 mediate presiding influence of the Divine Spirit, 
 is the matter that more immediately engages our 
 attention. His lower physical nature, the great 
 medium of the soul's communication with the out- 
 ward Avorld, and of consciousness in the embodied 
 state, originally operated in perfect and harmonious 
 subordination to his higher spiritual nature. In 
 this condition, his appetites, propensities, and pas- 
 sions presented no bar to his happiness, or to that 
 of his fellows. The government or control Avhich 
 his situation demanded, vre may suppose, was 
 simple, and concerned chiefly his relation to the 
 Deity. But when, on the great occasion of his 
 trial, he exercised his power of self-action, and 
 exalted this nature as a rule of moral action, in- 
 stead of the essential good of his higher nature, 
 of which the will of God in the given case Vvas the 
 full and just exponent, there resulted a depriva- 
 tion of the Divine Spirit, such as entirely changed 
 the relation of those departments of his nature. 
 Under the clouded condition of intellect conse- 
 quent upon this deprivation, his lower nature, 
 with its appetites, propensities, and passions, is 
 brought into constant and fierce conflict with his 
 spiritual nature. This change in the condition of 
 his humanity presents his case in an aspect alto- 
 gether new. The history of each individual man 
 becom.es the history of a warfare — a warfare with 
 
106 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 himself, and a warffire with his fellows. "With a 
 highly vigorous moral nature, he is also the sub- 
 ject of a carnal or depraved nature. In this state 
 of things, government becomes an actual necessity 
 of Ms condition. The Divine government, with all 
 the aids and appliances afforded by the grand 
 scheme of atonement, must appeal to his passions, 
 both of hope and of fear. For it is only by re- 
 ducing his lower nature to its originally subordi- 
 nate and harmonious position that an equilibrium 
 wnll be estabhshed, and his primordial happiness 
 regained. But the Divine government, though 
 operating in harmony w^ith the claims of his moral 
 nature, and founded upon the relation which he 
 sustains to Jehovah, and indispensable to his hap- 
 piness here and hereafter, of itself alone does not 
 meet a great many of the immediate demands of 
 his condition. Hence the statement of Solomon : 
 ^' Because sentence against an evil work is not 
 executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons 
 of men is fully set in them to do evil." The con- 
 sequences of obedience, high and holy as they 
 are, and the consequences of disobedience, great 
 and terrible as they are, are too remote from man, 
 in many states of intellect and feeling in which he 
 often places himself, to meet the immediate de- 
 mands of his nature. Hence, that modification of 
 government called civil government, is no less de- 
 
OF SLAVERY. , 107 
 
 manclecl by the necessities of his condition than 
 the Divine. 
 
 Civil government deals chiefly with the relations 
 of man to his fellow-man. It coincides with the 
 Divine government. They each aim at the con- 
 trol of the lower nature of man, and the develop- 
 ment of his higher nature. The means they 
 employ are the same in principle. They address 
 the same passions. The rewards and punish- 
 ments of the one are in this hfe, and of the other 
 chiefly in the life to come. Withal, the ciA^l has 
 the sanction of the Divine, and the Divine should 
 always have the sanction of the civil, government. 
 But still they are entirely distinct, and should not 
 be confounded either in theory or in practice 
 The one is secular, and the other is Divine. 
 
 Now, we say that civil government — for of that 
 we are called more particularly to speak — is a 
 necessit?/ of mans condition. It dates back as early 
 as the creation of man. God himself established 
 it in the law he gave to govern the first relation 
 that existed on earth — the relation between Adam 
 and his '' helpmeet." After the fall, a necessity 
 arose which gave it a new and more important 
 bearing. We soon see it ramifying itself through 
 all society, and dealing with all the relations of 
 life. 
 
 Its necessity and authority, as a great means of 
 
108 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 controlling the lower nature of man, is among the 
 permanent beliefs of mankind. Neither legislators 
 nor philosophers originated these beliefs. They 
 are among the intuitions of man. The common 
 judgment of mankind is not more assured that 
 man exists, than that fallen man must be con- 
 trolled in his appetites, propensities, and passions 
 — the sum of what is often considered his interest 
 and his happiness — by the jihi/sical poivers of gov- 
 ernment. Each individual man feels that he needs 
 its powerful sanctions to arm him against himself, 
 when violently tempted to do wrong ; and that he 
 needs its sanctions to protect him from outrage and 
 wrono: from his fellow-men, when moved bv similar 
 forces. The instincts of animal nature are not 
 more certain in their movements than are the in- 
 tuitive perceptions and spontaneous feelings of 
 mankind, causing them to lean upon the strong 
 arm of civil government, to control the propensi- 
 ties and passions, and to promote the free exercise 
 of the higher moral nature of man. 
 
 Government is the whole society in action. 
 No people was ev^r knoAvn to exist for any defi- 
 nite period without government. Sometimes, it is 
 true, the form has been the result of implied un- 
 derstandings among the people — as when '^ there 
 was no judge in Israel :" at others, a master-spirit 
 has assumed the reins, and been deferred to by 
 
F S L AVERY. 109 
 
 common consent ; and at others, it has been modi- 
 fied by formal processes — such as conventions and 
 constitutions. Be this, however, as it may, gov- 
 ernment has always existed. Legislators did not 
 make it. They have had much to do in modify- 
 ing, directing, and often in corrupting the form ; 
 but nothing to do in originating government, in 
 any proper sense of the term. It sprang sponta- 
 neously from the common sense of mankind. An 
 agent indispensable to self-preservation was cer- 
 tainly coeval with the race. 
 
 In its true generic sense, that is, in a sense 
 equally applicable to all forms, government is con- 
 trol by the authority of God and the people. 
 God, in his w^ord, declares the authority of tlie 
 magistrate to be his ordinance ; and this accords 
 with the intuitive belief and feehng of necessity 
 of all mankind : not that either approves in all 
 cases of the /on?? wliich government assumes, but 
 that the generic principle, in all cases, has the 
 sanction of each. 
 
 The legitimate object of government is to secure 
 to the people the highest amount of freedom wdiich 
 their moral condition and relative circumstances 
 vrill admit. The means which it employs to effect 
 this object, are, 1. Suitable penalties, addressed 
 to their hopes and fears, to lay them under such 
 restraints as to the indulgence of their appetites, 
 
110 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 propensities, and passions, as thereby to prevent 
 them from operating as a bar to the free exercise 
 of their intellectual and moral powers in pursuit 
 of the essential good ; and, 2. The security which 
 it offers to every mauj in the exercise of the higher 
 powers of his nature, that he may do it without 
 restraint from the passions of men ; or, in other 
 words, to guarantee to every man the free exercise 
 of his essential power to do good. 
 
 That both the object of government, and the 
 means which it employs, are correctly stated, 
 will not be disputed. All men concur in these 
 views. They underlie all our opinions and reason- 
 ings on the subject of civil government. But 
 in assenting to this much, (and how can it be 
 avoided ?) may we not stand committed to much 
 more than many theoretical politicians are aware ? 
 
 Let us trace the logical inferences wdiich arise 
 from the principles discussed. 
 
 I. Man, we find, is endowed w^ith a self-acting 
 power of will, which is called mental liberty, and 
 hence he is accountable. For although it is ad- 
 mitted that there cannot be a volition without a 
 motive, yet it is an idea inseparable from our 
 notions of mental liberty, that there cannot be any 
 thing in these motives necessitating the volition ; 
 for in that case it would not be free. But he is 
 free to adopt either the right or the w^rong motive 
 
OF SLAVERY. Ill 
 
 of volition, and therefore he is accountable for his 
 actions. Nor does it follow that this liberty con- 
 fers the rigid to do urong. His liberty, as we 
 have shown, is to be understood in a sense agree- 
 ing w^ith the coincident ideas of rigid and duti/. 
 We are all conscious, that so soon as w^e perceive 
 ihe good^ in any case, we have a feeling of ohliga- 
 tion to observe it as the rule of conduct, and to 
 avoid the contrary as wrong ; that is, each man has 
 a conscience. Hence, although man has the iwwer 
 to do wrong, he has no right to do wrong ; but 
 only a rigid to do that which is good. Such, and 
 such only, is the true subjective right of self-con- 
 trol. It is not a right to do as we may please, 
 unless we shall please to do that which, in itself, 
 is right ; that is, the good. 
 
 II. His fall, Ave have seen, has had the effect to 
 place him in such circumstances, that the attributes 
 of his lower nature, his appetites, propensities, and 
 passions, often have such ascendency as motives 
 of action, that he is always liable to do wrong. 
 Many reasons, a iniori^ could be given for this. 
 The mind is first brought into contact with the 
 outward world through the bodily senses. They 
 come first into play ; and hence the natural sensi- 
 bilities are first developed. The will, in the form 
 of spontaneous volition, is accustomed, from earhest 
 life, to act from these as a motive, for the reason 
 
112 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 that there is no other from which it can act. The 
 pure intelhgencC; the percipient of the good^ and 
 the corresponding feelings of obligation, unfold 
 themselves slowly ; and long before it may be said 
 that the mind is matured, the will is accustomed 
 to make the natural sensibilities the motive of 
 spontaneous volition. Now the w^ill is, like all 
 other faculties of the mind, subject to the great 
 law of habit ; and if not checked, restrained accord- 
 ing to the true idea of government, a hahit of sub- 
 mission is formed, which, if not early dissolved, be- 
 comes a confirmed habit. The will, instead of being 
 the governing power of the mind, becomes, in truth, 
 the faculty governed. It has lost the poiver of self- 
 control. It has become the slave of passion — con- 
 firmed in the habit of submission. It is precisely 
 at this point of mental degradation that Paul 
 declares of "vessels of wrath," those who have 
 brought themselves into this state by their own 
 act, that " they are fitted to destruction." Now, 
 in view of these facts and the principles already 
 established, what are the rights of man ? 
 
 First. In the state of infancy. It has been 
 proved that the subjective endowments of human- 
 ity, and whatever is necessary to their existence 
 and operation, are the natural right of man. That 
 the undeveloped good is the endowment of this 
 form of humanity will not be disputed : hence 
 
OF SLAVERY. 113 
 
 whatever is necessary to its existence and ope- 
 ration, is the natural right of infants. But it is 
 obvious that a governing power, existing some 
 where, is indispensably necessary in the case of 
 the child ; that is, a power must exist sufficiently 
 potent to control the spontaneous volitions of the 
 will, or, in the circumstances of its position, it will 
 probably extinguish its own liberty, by the law 
 of habit. Government, then, — absolute govern- 
 ment, — is necessary to the existence and operation 
 of the endowment of humanity in the state of 
 infancy ; and therefore absolute government is the 
 natural rigid of the infant. Hence all civil govern- 
 ments have exercised (so far as the will and phy- 
 sical condition are concerned) an absolute despotism 
 over the child, and have recognized the parent, or 
 some one appointed in the place of the parent, as 
 the agent of its functions in this respect. Not to 
 accord to the infant this extreme form of control, 
 would be a practical denial of its natural rights. 
 Therefore this extreme form of despotism, s'o far 
 from being a curse, is the natural right of infants 
 — the good to which they are entitled by nature. 
 And again, the civil government accords to the 
 child a progressive modification of this form of 
 government under given circumstances. It re- 
 quires its agent to relax the stringency of tJiis 
 control, and to extend a privilege of self-control, 
 
114 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 in the ratio in wliicli the pure intelligence and 
 feelings of obligation or duty va^ iJTadicalhj devel- 
 oped. For a child who had become, to a certain 
 extent, a subject of duty, and was disposed to ful- 
 fil this duty, but was kept, fer force, in the physi- 
 cal condition of infancy until he lost the use of his 
 limbs, would be considered as deprived of the right 
 of self-control to that extent, and thereby cruelly 
 treated. The agent in s.uch a case would be 
 severely punished, and the child committed to 
 other hands. 
 
 Hence, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence 
 is unfolded, and feelings of obhgation arise, or 
 conscience is developed, and becomes the practical 
 rule of action, the individual acquires the right of 
 self-control, and only in that ratio. This right 
 may ultimately reach to all things in themselves 
 good — the civil government always holding the 
 authority to punish departures from duty, and 
 thereby always abridging men of the moral power 
 to do wrong, (because it never could be their right 
 to do wrong,) and ahvays fortifying them in the 
 right exercise of hberty of will, by furnishing 
 motives, addressed to their intelligence and pas- 
 sions, to observe the right and to avoid the 
 wrong in the exercise of the volitive power. 
 Therefore, the natural rigid of man is the right to 
 such absolute control by others, in the earlier 
 
OF SLAVERY. 115 
 
 periods of his life, as that his ^vill may retain its 
 self-acting power unimpaired, as his mind is natur- 
 ally unfolded hy time and circumstances ; and to 
 such modification of this absolute control in after 
 life, as may afford him due restraint under tempt- 
 ation to do wrong, and proper encouragement, at 
 all times, to do right. 
 
 Second. The riglit of man in a state of maturity, 
 1. The government should accord him all his 
 natural rights, and protect him in the exercise of 
 the same. That is, the political government should 
 cooperate wdth the Divine to preserve his will in 
 its normal condition as a self-acting power, and to 
 guarantee to him the exercise of this power of 
 self-action in all things good. The man who is 
 protected in the enjoyment of this inherent liberty 
 of will, is a free man in the strictest sense of the 
 word. The government over him may be concen- 
 trated in the hands of one man, or it may be 
 divided among an aristocracy, more or less nume- 
 rous, or it may be w^hat is called a democracy, but 
 this does not of itself affect the fact of his free- 
 dom. If the government secure him in the enjoy- 
 ment of these rights, and of all wdiich necessarily 
 attaches to them, he is essentially free. The kind 
 of go^'erninent, as a hereditary monarchy, or a 
 democratic republic, does not, of itself, determine 
 the actual fi'eedom of its subjects. History fur- 
 
116 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 nishes many examples of government in which the 
 poAver of control was concentrated in the hands of 
 but one, or of a few individuals, which afforded its 
 subjects the highest amount of essential liberty. 
 To this day, " ilie freedom of the British Constitii- 
 tion' — as much as we justly prefer our own — is 
 by no means an idle boast. It is a great mistake 
 to suppose that a government which deposits the 
 sovereignty among the great mass of the people, 
 is the only free government. We are constrained 
 to acknowledge that it is better to be oppressed 
 by one^ or by a few tyrants, than by a multitude 
 of tyrants. It is not this or that Jcind of govern- 
 ment that makes the subject essentially free. But 
 it is the fact that the controlling power, whether 
 wielded by one or by many, secures each man in 
 the enjoyment of his natural rights — affords him 
 that system of appliances which develops and 
 matures the self-acting power of his will — discour- 
 ages aU abuse of this power, and fully protects 
 him in the proper exercise of it in the pursuit of 
 the essential good. It is this that rdalces him free. 
 We prefer, for those to whom it is applicable, 
 a democratic republic ; because it is a more secure 
 government, and less liable to an abuse of power ; 
 not because it is necessarily a more free govern- 
 ment than any other. Another form of govern- 
 ment may secure equal freedom in every essential 
 
OF SLAVERY. 117 
 
 particular ; and this form may be as oppressive as 
 auy other ; and Avhenever it is so, the condition of 
 the down-trodden minority is far more hopeless 
 than is that of the oppressed majority under some 
 other form of government. Still, in certain con- 
 ditions of the people, it is a much more secure 
 form of government. The sovereigns of a state 
 should always be socially equal, and, at the same 
 time, honest as well as intelligent. Such rulers 
 will not be oppressors. If the sovereigns of a 
 democracy are intelligent, for the reason that but 
 few participate directly and personally in the ad- 
 ministration of government and the spoils of office, 
 they have but few inducements to corruption, and 
 are more likely to be honest. The mass of the 
 people, though often wrong in opinion, are always 
 right in sentiment — they mean to do right, and 
 they desire to do right. If they do err in a given 
 case, they may usually be set right, for they have 
 no motive to stay Avrong. Hence, we think that 
 when the condition of intelligence is fulfilled in 
 the case of those occupying a social footing, we 
 may expect a wiser and purer government ; whilst 
 the extent to which they may participate in the 
 affairs of government, giving it a firmer hold upon 
 their affections, cannot fail to make it a more 
 secure government. It is widely different in the 
 case of a government concentrated in the hands of 
 
118 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 a few. The sovereiirns are at the same tmie the 
 administrators of law. They share not only the 
 honors of sovereignty, but also the immediate pro- 
 fits of sovereignty — the spoils of office. Tempta- 
 tions to abuse power are always present and 
 active. Hence we find that such oovernments are 
 more frequently oppressive. Withal, even in 
 cases in which they are not, (for they need not 
 be,) for the reason that the mass of the people do 
 not immediately participate in the affairs of gov- 
 ernment, they are not as devoted to its interests, 
 and hence the government cannot be as secure. 
 For these reasons, a democratic republic is called 
 by way of eminence a free government; but, evi- 
 dently, not because it is the only form which 
 secures freedom to its subjects. Any of these 
 forms are legitimate when they are so adapted to 
 the condition of the people as to secure to them 
 the higrhest amount of freedom of which that con- 
 
 o 
 
 dition will admit. 
 
 2. The government should secure to him all his 
 acquired rights, or the rights which he acquires 
 by the proper use of his essential rights. Of i 
 these, we notice, 
 
 1. His rights of social equality wdth those with 
 w^hom he holds common interests, pleasures, bene- 
 fits, happiness, and duties. These rights usually 
 vary with the condition of different individuals. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 119 
 
 or different classes of individuals. It will not be 
 maintained that an infant or idiot, and a man of 
 rude intellect and vulgar habits, have interests and 
 duties common to each other, and common to per- 
 sons in a different condition, in any such sense as 
 would entitle them all to social equality. Both 
 their mental and physical condition would be a bar 
 to any such equality. So in the case of the 
 sexes, difference in physical condition is a bar, 
 except in the marriage state. So also certain 
 races of men are by their physical condition barred 
 from social equality, in many respects, with those 
 of other races. Those duties required by one 
 condition in order to attain the essential good are 
 very different from those of another condition 
 which are necessary to attain the same object. 
 But the privilege of social equality with all in a 
 similar condition, which results from the discharge 
 of the duties of that condition, is the right of 
 every one. Some will require positive law to 
 secure them; as in the marriage relation, the 
 social as w^ell as other rights of the parties must 
 be secured by law; whilst others will be better 
 secured by leaving them to be regulated by the 
 conventional usages of society — only another form 
 of government. But there is an obvious differ- 
 ence in the social rights of men wdiich government 
 is bound to respect, unless it would arrest the pro- 
 
120 PHILOSOPPIY AND PRACTICE 
 
 gress of civilization; because it is an inequality 
 founded in that difference of condition, against 
 which no government can provide, nor was it 
 intended that it should provide. We notice, 
 
 2. That government should secure to him all 
 those political rights to which he is entitled by 
 making a proper use of his essential rights. 
 
 We need not specify all the political rights 
 which may be regarded acquired rights. It is 
 sufficient to consider this topic in regard to the 
 question of sovereignty. We say, that all the 
 members of a given society, having a common in- 
 terest in that society, are entitled to share the 
 sovereignty of its government on certain conditions, 
 and on no other conditions. We take the ground 
 that mere humanity, in itself considered, does not 
 entitle any one to the rights of political sove- 
 reignty. If this were so, we should be bound to 
 place females, together with minors of both sexes, 
 and the inmates of State prisons, among the sove- 
 reigns of society. They are all perfect specimens 
 .of humanity. Of the first it may be said, they 
 are often equal in intellect with the other sex, and 
 in other respects are generally superior specimens 
 of humanity. These all have an interest in soci- 
 ety common to all other members of it, and yet it 
 is admitted that they should not be numbered 
 among the sovereigns of the land. What is it, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 121 
 
 then, that entitles a man to the right of political 
 sovereignty ? First — He should have reached 
 that point in mental development in which he will 
 have a capacity, in common with others, to under- 
 stand and appreciate the leading principles of 
 government and their applications. Second — He 
 should have reached that period in life in which 
 there is usually a corresponding development of 
 the moral sense — the feeling of obhgation to do 
 right — which affords a reasonable guaranty for the 
 faithful application of his knowledge in discharg- 
 ing the duties of sovereignty. Third — He should 
 be in that state of social equahty which gives him 
 a common interest, a common happiness, and com- 
 mon duties as a citizen, with other sovereigns, 
 which will also afford a necessary guaranty for 
 the faithful performance of his duties. And, 
 Fourth — He should be in that physical condition, 
 also, which is necessary to the duties of so respon- 
 sible a position, under all ordinary circumstances. 
 If one or more of these conditions exclude a whole 
 sex, together with all minors, idiots, felons, and 
 foreigners, they at the same time limit it to a defi- 
 nite class of males, and bar all others from any 
 title to it. No sensible man would admit that 
 the power of sovereign control inherent in govern- 
 ment could, with safety to the only legitimate 
 object of government, the happiness of the sub 
 6 
 
122 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 jectSj be deposited with any other class of men. 
 But those who fulfil these conditions have a right 
 to rule. They have acquired it by the perform- 
 ance of those duties which have elevated them to 
 the condition of being qualified for sovereignty. 
 It should not be withheld. If those in a society 
 quahfied for sovereignty be numerous, the govern- 
 ment should take the popular form — a democratic 
 republic. But if those qualified to rule are a 
 limited portion of the wdiole society, some other 
 form of government is more appropriate. 
 
 But our subject leads us to notice : 
 
 Third. The rigliis of man in the savage or uncivil^ 
 ized state. 
 
 No savage community was ever known to rise 
 unaided to a state of civilization; and every ex- 
 ample of savage society furnishes evidence that it 
 is a state into which they have fallen by the ten- 
 dencies of depraved nature. They are instances 
 in which the government originally enjoyed — both 
 human and Divine — has failed to preserve to the 
 individual that liberty of wiU in the pursuit of the 
 good v/hich government is designed to secure. 
 The pure intelligence is not sufiiciently developed 
 to constitute an enlightened conscience. Dwelling 
 apart from civiKzed society, the absence of all the 
 artificial w^ants of civilization is highly favorable to 
 many of the natural virtues — such as hospitahty 
 
OP SLAVERY. . 123 
 
 to strangers, truth, fidelity, and generosity to their 
 friends ; but the undeveloped state of the pure 
 reason leaves the moral sense in a state of so 
 much immaturity, as to characterize them as un- 
 faithful, cruel, and revengeful to their enemies. 
 These are characteristics which, in their condition 
 of physical maturity, make them terrible to their 
 neighbors. 
 
 Now the question is. What are the rights of such 
 a people ? It is useless to discuss this question so 
 far as it relates to mere savage government ; for 
 in this view it is a c[uestion of no interest. But 
 the question. What rights can they claim of a 
 civihzed people ? is the one with which we have 
 to deal. 
 
 They certainly have a natural right to protec- 
 tion under given circumstances, and freedom from 
 oppression under all circumstances. If a civilized 
 people, holding a balance of power in virtue of 
 superior intelhgence, have an undisputed right to 
 protect themselves from the cruelty and infidelity 
 of neighboring savages, still it will be admitted 
 that oppression in any proper sense of the term 
 would be an invasion of their natural rights. 
 They have a right to be left in the enjoyment of 
 the highest amount of freedom which their mental 
 state will allow them to use legitimately. And 
 more than this, their natural rights claim for them 
 
124 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 reasonable exertions to elevate their moral condi- 
 tion. Hence the noble efforts now being made by 
 the Christian people of this country to evangelize 
 the savages on our border, and the no less com- 
 mendable efforts of the United States government 
 to favor this design, by an annual appropriation 
 from the national treasury. All this is only ac- 
 cording them their rights. But do these rights 
 entitle them to claim social equality with a civil- 
 ized people ? That which it is the right of another 
 to claim of me, it is my duty to grant. Is it then 
 my duty to grant social equality to any or to 
 every w^andering savage that may chance to pass 
 my dwelling? Should I not only extend to him 
 the rights of hospitality due to a wandering savage 
 — give him food and shelter in given circumstances, 
 and treat him kindly in all respects — but extend 
 to him true social equality, such as it is my duty 
 to do to other men in certain states of civilization ! 
 No man — himself not a savage — w^ould dare affirm 
 this ! The savage has no right to claim it. The 
 reason is obvious on the principles discussed. 
 Certain social rights arise only on certain condi- 
 tions of moral development, and the fulfilment of 
 the duties which attach to that state. The savage 
 has not reached this condition ; hence has not ful- 
 filled its duties, and is not entitled to the right of 
 social equality which attaches to that state. For 
 
OF SLAVERY. 125 
 
 a sensible man to affirm that he has this right in 
 virtue of his mere humanity, would be simply 
 ridiculous. And this being so, it follows, a for- 
 tiori, that it is much less our duty to allow him an 
 equal participation in the sovereignty of the State 
 — allow him a control in the affairs of government 
 — share the authority to regulate our relations, 
 domestic and foreign; and even to participate in 
 governing our families. 
 
 The man who should gravely propose in Con- 
 gress to annex the savage tribes of our border, as 
 sovereign States of this Union, would, by all right- 
 minded men, be regarded as insane. No one of the 
 managers of looms, spindles, and other machinery, 
 among the agrarian portion of our northern com- 
 munity, with all their boasted knowledge of the 
 natural rights of man, and their readiness to ac- 
 cord equal rights to all men, and to protect them 
 in asserting those rights, have, as yet, made up their 
 minds to go thus far — although we may be at a loss 
 to account for it that they so far falsify their prin- 
 ciples as not to do so. 
 
 Now, as it is not our duty to do this in behalf 
 of a neighboring race of uncivilized people, for the 
 reason that they have no right to it, how does 
 the question stand in regard to a numerous class 
 of such persons, spread through a definite section 
 of our country ? Does this change of position and 
 
126 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 contact with civilization confer on tliem higher 
 rights than it has ah^eacly been admitted belong 
 to them in a sej^arate state in virtue of their 
 humanity? Is it our duty to accord to them 
 equality of political rights ? and for the reason 
 that they are diffused through the mass of society ? 
 Can this position be maintained ? On the con- 
 trary, the change of position, and the service which 
 in that position they render to the cause of civil- 
 ization, which is assumed to acquire for them a 
 right that does not belong to their class of per- 
 sons in a separate position, so far from affording 
 a vindication of this doctrine, furnishes a still 
 stronger reason against it. They are not only 
 uncivihzed, but are now in a position to exert an 
 evil influence, which in a separate state they could 
 not do, although they might dwell upon our bor- 
 der. In a separate state, the artificial wants of 
 civihzed life are unknown to them. The great 
 sources of temptation to do wrong by invading the 
 rights of neighbors, is not supplied to them by 
 their position. But when in immediate contact 
 with civilization, a great many of these artificial 
 wants are learned by them, and felt to be objects 
 of desire. These desires, by a fixed law of the 
 human mind, must be a constant source of tempta- 
 tion — they clamor for gratification. If the indul- 
 gence should not be restrained, either by a system 
 
OF SLAVERY. 127 
 
 of laws vrhich reached the case, or by the motives 
 which a state of civilization supplies, they would 
 inevitably result in a disregard of the rights of 
 property, and a general depravation of morals. 
 They are without the latter, for they are uncivil- 
 ized. Hence the demands of their position must 
 be met hy laws appropriate to an uncivilized 
 people. The laws appropriate to a state of civil- 
 ization, cooperating as they do with the motives 
 supplied by that state, are not more than equal to 
 the task of restraining the passions of civilized 
 men. To rely upon them in the case of uncivilized 
 men would be the grossest folly. Hence if it were 
 not our duty to share our political rights with 
 such a people, dwelling upon our border, in a 
 separate state, for a much stronger reason it is 
 not our duty to do this for those dwelling in our 
 midst. If it is not our duty to do it, it cannot be 
 their right to claim it ; for rights and duties are 
 always reciprocal. But, on the contrary, for the 
 same general reasons by which it becomes the duty 
 of a civilized state to place all its minors under the 
 despotism of parental control, as before defined, it 
 is the duty of the state to place an uncivilized race 
 which may chance to dwell within its borders, 
 under a similar form of government. This despot- 
 ism need not be oppressive in the one case any 
 more than in the other. It is the proud boast of 
 
128 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 all our native citizens that they have always lived 
 under a free government ; and yet they were 
 brought up to the age of twenty-one under a pure 
 despotism. But this does not deprive them of 
 their right to boast. True, the government con- 
 ferred almost absolute control upon the parent, or 
 guardian, or master of the apprentice ! These 
 might have oppressed them. But the government, 
 which stood ready to vindicate their rights, did 
 not do it. The government, in w^hat it did, only 
 accorded them their natural rights, as we have 
 seen — provided to confer on them the highest 
 amount of freedom of which their condition would 
 admit. It was to them essentially a free govern- 
 ment, though in one of the forms of despotism. 
 So in that form of despotism appropriate to a race 
 of uncivilized people dwelling in the midst of a 
 civihzed people, if adapted to their condition, or 
 securing to them (as in the case of minors) their 
 natural rights, it is, for them, and to them, a free 
 government. So far from being a curse, as many 
 of our philosophers teach, it is a blessing, which 
 their essential rights entitle them to claim. Any 
 other form of government would be, in their case, as 
 well as in that of minors, a practical denial of their 
 rights ; because it would result in the annihilation 
 of their essential rights ; that is, the enslavement 
 of their w^ills to the basest passions of fallen nature. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 129 
 
 Hence, ^Ye find that government, both human 
 and Divme, is a special necessity of man's fallen 
 condition, and coeval with the history of the race : 
 that its legitimate object is to preserve him from 
 that annihilation of his essential liberty of will 
 which w^ould inevitably follow if there were no 
 government, and to secure him in the enjoyment 
 of the highest amount of this liberty which his 
 condition wiU allow : that to do this, various forms 
 of civil government are admissible ; and that the 
 one best adapted to the condition of the people is 
 the one that should be applied, and is the only 
 strictly /r(?^ government for the people to whom it 
 is appropriate. A democracy applied to minors 
 or savages, in the midst of a civihzed people, 
 w^ould be the most grinding of all oppressions. 
 We have seen that the means appropriate to gov- 
 ernment are suitable penalties addressed to our 
 passions of hope and fear : that the only riglit 
 which a man has to exercise his inherent liberty 
 — that is, the only right he has of self-control — is 
 the authority to do that w^hich, in itself, is right 
 — not a right to do wrong : that the exclusive 
 authority of government is to restrain man from 
 doing tvrong, and to protect and encourage him in 
 doing right — restrain his ]Jower to do wrong, not 
 his power to do right — this it seeks to strengthen. 
 We have seen that the rights of man in a state oi* 
 
130 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 minority — and the same of uncivilized men dwell- 
 ing in a community of the civiKzed — are to the 
 benefits of an absolute form of government ; any 
 other would be only a system of ruinous oppres- 
 sion to them : that at his maturity as a civihzed 
 man, he should be protected in the exercise of all 
 the rights which naturally belong to a state of 
 maturity, and also the enjoyment of all those 
 rights which he has acquired by availing himself 
 of the privileges afforded by his condition. Of 
 his acquired rights, w^e see that on certain con- 
 ditions he is entitled to social equality ; and that 
 on certain further conditions, he is entitled to the 
 right of political sovereignty. 
 
 Now, we ask, in what sense can it be said that 
 legitimate government is a concession of some 
 rights, in order to secure others ? Certainly, in 
 no good sense, seeing it only limits his power to 
 do tvrong^ by laying him under suitable disabilities, 
 and that it does this in order to secure both the 
 power and the privilege of doing right. But by 
 falsely assuming that government is a concession 
 of rights, and that the government in which every 
 citizen does not make a voluntary concession of 
 the rights exercised by government is a cruel op- 
 pression, men fall upon conclusions which, .when 
 carried out, (and principles will tend to work out 
 their results,) lead to agrarianism : that is, the 
 
OF SLAVERY. ' 131 
 
 destruction of all rights, by the annihilation of 
 all civilization. 
 
 And again we ask, How does it follow that the 
 domestic slavery of the negro in America is an 
 abridgment of his inahenable rights ? Certainly 
 not from the fact that he is placed under an 
 absolute form of control, for we have seen that, in 
 certain conditions of humanity, that is the only 
 form of government that will secure any freedom 
 at all : as in the case of all minors, and the case 
 of an uncivilized race that may chance to be dif- 
 fused among the mass of a civilized people. If, 
 then, his government be an oppression at all, it is 
 because his state of civilization, and the relative 
 circumstances of his condition, have acquired for 
 him the rights of social equality and the rights of 
 loolitical sovereignty. These are questions of fact 
 that will be considered in their proper place. 
 
132 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE yi. 
 
 THE ABSTRACT PRINCIPLE OF SLAVERY DISCUSSED ON 
 SCRIPTURE GROUNDS, AND MISREPRESENTATIONS OP 
 THE PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 
 
 The true subjective right of self-control defined according to 
 the Scriptures — The abstract principle of slavery sanctioned 
 by the Scriptures — The Roman government — Dr. Wayland's 
 Scripture argument examined and refuted — The positions of 
 Dr. Chauning and Prof. Whewell examined and refuted. 
 
 The inquiry, if the institution of domestic sla- 
 very existing amongst us agrees in its details with 
 the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, is reserved 
 for a future lecture. We now inquire how far it 
 agrees w^ith the Holy Scriptures in its great funda- 
 mental principles ? — the abstract principles which, 
 thus far, have been shown to be right. 
 
 We, of course, acknowledge the full authority 
 of the Scriptures. Although not a formal philo- 
 sophical treatise, the Bible embodies no other than 
 the profoundest principles both of mental and 
 moral science ; and all its teachings are in acc^/rd- 
 
OFSLAVERT. 133 
 
 ance with them. " To the law," then, '^ and to 
 the testimony." Do they sanction the principles 
 I have sought to establish ? Do they accord to 
 man any other subj.ective right of self-control than 
 simply the yight to do that which in itself is right 
 — that is, good ? True, they assume that he has 
 the ijoiver to do wrong, but at the same time they 
 deny to him all rigid to do wrong. All those 
 scriptures which forbid his doing tvroiig, and en- 
 join it upon him to do rigJit, under severe penal- 
 ties for disobedience, are in proof. They are too 
 numerous and famihar to requke that I quote 
 them. They all assume that he has power to do 
 either right or wrong^ but only a right to do that 
 which is 7Hght. AVhoever, then, sets up a right to 
 do a thing, and can give no better reason for it 
 than that he has power to do it in virtue of his 
 humanity, and that therefore others should not 
 interpose obstacles in the way of his doing it, on 
 peril of abridging hmi of a natural right, assumes 
 far more than the Scriptures allow him ; nay, he 
 assumes that which is forbidden him in Holy 
 Scripture, no less than in reason and common 
 sense ; and if alloAved to exercise such lawless 
 power, under the plea of natural rights he could 
 not fiil to put an end to all law, and to precipi- 
 tate society into a state of anarchy. Therefore, 
 the government which places minors, ahens, and 
 
134 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 citizens, who at the same time allow themselves 
 to be subjects of a foreign prince, together 
 with nncivihzed persons, in circumstances in which 
 they cannot, or are not likely, to injure their 
 neighbors, or to injure society, does not, for that 
 reason, deprive them of a natural right, unless it 
 could be shown that they have a natural right to 
 do the very thing which the Scriptures declare 
 they have no right to do, that is, to injure their 
 neighbors ! It further follows, that the right to 
 do an act which involves accountability, is the 
 right to do that which, in itself, is right; or, in 
 other words, the only natural right of self-control 
 is the right to do that which is good. Hence, 
 those who claim for any class of society a right to 
 political sovereignty, should be prepared to show 
 that the essential good requires that such privi- 
 lege be accorded them, or they fail to establish 
 their right, for the reason that no right can ever 
 be justly acquired which does not coincide with 
 the natural right to do good. 
 
 Again, we have shown that the abstract principle 
 of slavery is control by the will of another, w^ith 
 its correlatives : that this is an essential element 
 of all government; for a government which did 
 not exercise the right to control men, even against 
 their wills, under given circumstances, would be 
 no government at all. Do these views accord 
 
OF SLAVERY. 135 
 
 with the teachings of the Holy Scriptures ? That 
 control is an essential idea of government, is an 
 intuitive perception, and needs no proof The 
 question then resolves itself into this : Do the 
 Scriptures sanction government? That the Bible 
 itself is only a system of government, will not be 
 disputed. It forhids and commands, and requires 
 all men to conform their volitions to its require- 
 ments, as to that which is in itself good. More- 
 over, it sanctions civil government in the most 
 express terms : " Let every soul be subject unto 
 the higher powers. For there is no power but of 
 God : the powers that be are ordained of God. 
 Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power," that 
 is, the authority of government, " resisteth the 
 ordinance of God ; and they that resist shall 
 receive to themselves damnation," etc. (Rom. 
 xiii. 1-7. See A. Clarke's notes.) This was said 
 to the Roman Christians, and was an injunction to 
 obey Csesar's government. In that government, 
 it is well known, the slavery element greatly 
 predominated : but little room w^as left for the 
 exercise of self-control ; political sovereignty being 
 denied to the people. In declaring government, 
 even in this extreme form of controlling the wills 
 of men, to be his appointment, God estabhshes the 
 imnciple, as in itself right. Dr. Way land, how- 
 ever, (see article, Modes in which Personal Lib- 
 
136 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 erty may be violated,) affirms, '' that the gospel is 
 diametrically opposed to the principle of slavery." 
 The moral precepts of the Bible, which he as- 
 sumes to be diametrically opposed to the principle 
 of slavery, are, (as quoted by himself,) " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighhor as thyself; and all things 
 whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
 do ye even so unto them." He says that, " were 
 this precept obeyed, it is manifest that slavery 
 could not in fact exist for a single instant. The 
 princii^le of the precept is absolutely subversive 
 of the principle of slavery." That the gospel 
 should, nevertheless, acknowledge slaveholders 
 (for neither the JcAvish nor the Roman law re- 
 quired any citizen to hold slaves) as " helievers,'' 
 and " tvorthy of all honor,'' and require of the 
 Christian slaves held by them to acknowledge 
 them as hrethren, that is, good men, and accord 
 them all honor, is evidently a troublesome question 
 to the Doctor. There is no room for surprise. 
 The second scripture quoted, it is allowed, inter- 
 prets the first. In what sense then are we to 
 understand the duty inculcated in the second? 
 There are only two senses in which the form of 
 the expression will allow us to evolve any signifi- 
 cance whatever. The first is. Do unto another 
 whatsoever you would have him to do unto you, 
 if you were in his situation ; and the second is, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 1?>1 
 
 Do unto another whatsoever you vv^ould have a 
 7^i(/ht to reqmre another to do unto yoU; if you 
 were in his circumstances. 
 
 Now if we could suppose that the Saviour in- 
 tended his language to be understood in the first 
 sense, it will not perhaps be disputed that it 
 is our duty to abolish domestic slavery, for we 
 should, no doubt, desire to be released, if we were 
 in a state of domestic slavery. But, unfortunately 
 for the argument, this interpretation would not 
 stop at the abolition of domestic slavery in the 
 case of the African. It would reach to the domes- 
 tic slavery of the child also. There is scarcely a 
 wayward lad in Christendom w^ho could not justly 
 claim release from parental restraint on the same 
 principle ! Nay, more, the criminal at the bar of 
 civil justice, the inmates of State prisons, and the 
 poor man in his hovel, would all claim release ! 
 And as that which is duty in others, in such cases, 
 is a right in them, not to grant them release would 
 certainly be a denial of their just rights ! Is this 
 the sense in which Dr. Wayland would have us 
 understand the Saviour of mankind? Certain it 
 is, that this is the only sense in which his words 
 can be understood so as to involve the necessary 
 abolition of slavery ! We cheerfully acquit Dr. 
 W. from the purpose to teach any such agrarian 
 folly. Still, we can see no good reason why one 
 
138 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 SO eminent, as a Christian and a scholar, should 
 permit even an early prejudice as to a practical ques- 
 tion, about which he allows that he is uninformed, 
 to betray him into such views of a plain principle 
 as logically involve him in the grossest absurdities. 
 
 That the second sense given is the proper one 
 in which to understand the Saviour's doctrine can 
 admit of no dispute. What we should have a 
 right to claim, if we w^ere in the circumstances of 
 a slave, is jDrecisely that which we are to accord 
 to such slave, according to the precept of the 
 Saviour. If we should have a right to claim poli- 
 tical sovereignt}^, in those circumstances, we are 
 bound to allow them such sovereignty, that is, 
 release them from slavery. This directly involves 
 the question, Whether they are fitted for that 
 self-government which is involved in such sover- 
 eignty ? That they are not so in virtue of their 
 humanity merely, we have proved ; and whether 
 they are so or not, by acquirement, is a practical 
 question which Dr. Wayland allows that he is not 
 competent to decide. This question will be met 
 in another place. It is sufficient here to state, 
 that the scripture so confidently relied on as re- 
 pudiating the principle of slavery, is found not to 
 reach the question of the principle at all, and, 
 therefore, is wholly misapplied. 
 
 The patriarchal form of government, which ex- 
 
OFSLAVERY, 139 
 
 isted before the theocracy of the Jews, constituted 
 the patriarch (he being the head of the family) the 
 owner of slaves. Abraham, Lot, and others, held 
 them in large numbers. These men enjoyed the 
 unqualified approbation of Jehovah, and in their 
 character of slaveholders, no less than in many 
 other respects. According to Dr. W., they en- 
 joyed the Divine approbation in the practice of 
 iniquity ; for he says, the Bible condemns both 
 the pinciidle and the loradice of slavery ! 
 
 It is evident that the Jews broudit slaves with 
 
 <_^ 
 
 them from Egypt ; for the terms of the Decalogue 
 not only imply that they were famihar with 
 domestic slavery, but also that it was, at that 
 time, an existing practice among them. But more 
 than this, the Decalogue is strictly the constitu- 
 tion which Jehovah himself gave to the Jewish 
 nation. Now to assume that he provided in this 
 constitution to protect in all time to come (for it 
 is allowed to embody immutable principles) a rela- 
 tion which was, in itself, an iniqidiy, is more than 
 a mere absurdity — it is frofanity. And it is cer- 
 tain that the tenth article of this constitution pro- 
 vides to protect the right of property in slaves : 
 ''Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors man-servant, 
 72or his MAio-SERVANT, noT any thing that is thy 
 neighbor sT 
 
 The Saviour has recognized this law, as it was 
 
140 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 originally designed to be, of universal obligation 
 and force : '^ Think not that I am come to dedroy 
 the laiu or the inophets : I am not come to dedroy ^ 
 hut tofulfiir Matt. V. 17. 
 
 In accordance with this fundamental law of the 
 nation, God j^roceeded to provide in their civil in- 
 stitutions for the oiDeration of a regular system of 
 domestic slavery. Under these institutions, a 
 Hebrew might lose his liberty and become a 
 domestic slave, in six different ways. (See A. 
 Clarke, on Ex. xxi.) 
 
 1. In extreme poverty, he might sell his Hberty. 
 Lev. XXV. 39 : '''If thy hr other he ivaxed poor and 
 he sold unto theeT 
 
 2. A father might sell his child. Ex. xxi. 7 : 
 "If a man sell his daughter to he a maid-servant^ 
 
 3. Insolvent debtors became the slaves of their 
 creditors. 2 Kings iv. 1 : "My hushand is dead^ 
 and the creditor is come to taJce unto him my ttuo 
 sons to he honds7nenr Also, Matt, xviii. 25. 
 
 4. A thief, if he had not money to pay the fine 
 laid on him by the law, was to be sold for his 
 profit whom he had robbed, Ex. xxii. 3 : "If he 
 have nothing^ then he shall he sold for the theftT 
 
 5. A Hebrew was liable to be taken in war, and 
 sold for a slave. 2 Chron. xii. 8. 
 
 6. A Hebrew slave who had been ransomed 
 from a Gentile by a Hebrew, might be sold 
 
OF SLAVERY. 141 
 
 by liim who ransomed him to one of his own 
 nation. 
 
 All who became slaves under this system were 
 emancipated in the seventh year, except those 
 who should refuse to accept liberty. Ex. xxi. 2-6. 
 They were emancipated in the year of jubilee. 
 
 But then, the law further provided for domestic 
 slaves in ijerpeiiiitij . 
 
 " Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which 
 thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are 
 round about you : of them shall ye buy bondmen 
 and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the 
 strangers that do sojourn among, you, of them 
 shall ye buy, and of their families that are w^ith 
 you, which they begat in your land; and they 
 shall be your possession ; and ye shall take them 
 as an inheritance for your children after you, to 
 inherit them for a possession : they shall be your 
 bondmen for ever; but over your brethren, the 
 children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one 
 another with rigor." Lev. xxv. 44-46. 
 
 The attempts which are sometimes made to 
 prove that ^ovXog, of the Septuagint, and serviis. 
 of the Vulgate version, translated indifferently 
 servant or slave, means only a hired servant, need 
 only to be mentioned to be refuted. That these 
 terms defined an actual state of slavery among 
 the Greeks and Romans, no one acquainted with 
 
142 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the facts will deny. But whatever might be their 
 original meaning, they are to be understood, as 
 Bible terms, in the sense of the original Hebrew, 
 which they are employed to express. Now, 
 nothing is more certain than this, that the Hebrew 
 Bible (and the same is true of the English trans- 
 lation) speaks of servants^ hired servants, and hond 
 servants. The term servant is the generic form, 
 and evidently means, a person who is controlled 
 by the will of another : hired servant is one who 
 serves in that way by contract for a definite 
 period ; whilst hond servant is one who has either 
 contracted to do so through his whole life, or who, 
 by the usages of war, or hj inheritance, or by 
 purchase from another, was so bound to service — 
 (such as Paul calls a " servant under the yoke." 
 2 Tim. vi. 1.) These different relations are dis- 
 tinctly marked by the use of these terms in the 
 Bible, and especially the meaning of bond serv- 
 ant, in distinction from a hired servant : '^If ihy 
 brother that dwelleth hy thee he tvaxen j^oor, and he 
 sold unto thee, thou shalt not comjpel him to serve as 
 a BOND SERVANT, hid as a hired servant, and as a 
 sojourner, shall he heT Lev. xxv. 39, 40. 
 
 Thus we find that the Jewish constitution pro- 
 vided to protect the right of property in servants 
 or slaves in the generic sense : that is, whether in 
 the one form or the other ; and that He who gave 
 
OF SLAVERY. 143 
 
 tliem their civil institutions, also provided under 
 their constitution for the organization of a regular 
 system of domestic slavery, in two distinct forms : 
 the one, the enslavement, in the true generic sense, 
 of Hebrews in given circumstances, for a definite 
 period ; and the other, the enslavement, in the 
 same sense, of the neighboring heathen, in fer- 
 loetuity. 
 
 Such was the legal origin of domestic slavery 
 among the Jews. During all the calamities that 
 have befallen that people, this constitution and 
 these laws have known neither repeal nor modifi- 
 cation. At no period of their history were they 
 without domestic slaves ; and when the Saviour 
 dwelt among them, the whole land was filled with 
 such slaves. No State in this Union can with 
 more propriety be regarded a slaveholding com- 
 munity, than was that of the Jewish people in 
 the days of the Saviour. In every congregation 
 which he addressed, bond slaves may have min- 
 gled. The hospitalities of every family of which 
 he partook, w^ere probably ministered to him, 
 more or less, by domestic slaves. And in all this 
 time, and under all these circumstances, not a 
 word is known to have escaped him, either in 
 public or in private, declaring the relation of mas- 
 ter and slave to be sinful ! But, on the contrary, 
 Paul's denunciation — 1 Tim. vi. 3 — of the teach- 
 
144 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 ers of abolition doctrines, that they ''consent not 
 to tvholesoine ivo7'ds, even the ivords of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ^' is sufficient reason to beheve that 
 he was always understood to approve of the rela- 
 tion, and to condemn in express terms all attempts 
 to abolish it as a duty of the religion which he 
 taught. And certain it is, that this relation is 
 made the subject of some of his most eloquent 
 allusions, and the basis of some of his most in- 
 structive parables : " One is your Master, even 
 Christ," Matt, xxiii. 10 : " Good Master, what 
 shall I do?" Mark x. 17: "No man can serve 
 two masters," Matt. vi. 24 — are specimens of 
 the former; whilst the parable, Matt. xiii. 24-28, 
 '^And the servants said. Wilt thou that we go and 
 gather them up ?" — of the vineyard. Matt. xxi. ; of 
 the talents. Matt. xxv. ; and others of a similar 
 nature, are striking examples of the latter. And 
 yet, young gentlemen, the author of your text 
 says, the doctrines of the Bible, and especially the 
 teachings of the Saviour, are " diametrically op- 
 posed to both the principle and the practice of 
 domestic slavery." If this be true, it is really 
 passing strange that Jehovah himself should pro- 
 vide, in the organic law of the Jewish common- 
 wealth, for the working of a system of domestic 
 slavery, and, by a series of laws drawn up 
 under this constitution, set such a system in 
 
OF SLAVERY. 145 
 
 rtctual operation ; and that the Saviour of man- 
 kind shoukl also give, according to every legiti- 
 mate interpretation that can be put, either upon 
 his language or his conduct, his unquahfied appro- 
 bation to that which was so flatly opposed to all 
 ]iis doctrines ! It is saying but little of all this to 
 affirm that it is grossly absurd ! It can appeal 
 to no doctrine that we are aware of for its defence, 
 unless it be the kindred absurdity that the ivill of 
 God is not the rule of right, in this sense, that it 
 always conforms to that Avhich, in itself, is rigid, 
 i. e., good \ but that it is the rule of right in this 
 other sense, that it is absolutely, in itself, the only 
 rule of right ; and that, in the case under consid- 
 eration, domestic slavery Avas right for the Jews, 
 because God so willed it, but the same thing in 
 principle, and under similar circumstances, would 
 be wrong for any other people, because in regard 
 to them God had willed differently : thus assign- 
 ing to Deity the power to make the wrong the 
 right, and the right the tvrong ! We regret to 
 know that this absurd view of the Divine volitions 
 has found its way beyond the pages of Dr. Paley. 
 It is countenanced by some writers of eminent 
 distinction in theology. But to give it a definite 
 application in any case, is all that is required for 
 its entire refutation. We rely with confidence on 
 the conclusion that what God thus provided for in 
 
146 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the Jewish constitution, was right in principle in 
 itself, and that, under the circumstances of the 
 Jewish people, it was right in practice. 
 
 Among the strange, if not wholly unaccount- 
 ahle, misconceptions, if not gross misrepresenta- 
 tioQS, of the fundamental ideas of domestic slavery, 
 we may place those of Dr. Channing and Prof. 
 Whewell. The latter, in his " Elements of Mo- 
 rality," states that " slavery converts a person into 
 a thing — a subject merely passive, without any of 
 the recognized attributes of human nature." "A 
 slave," he further says, " in the eye of the law 
 which stamps him with that character, is not ac- 
 knowledged as a man. He is reduced to the level 
 of a brute ;" that is, as he explains it, " he is 
 divested of his moral nature." 
 
 Dr. Channing, the great apostle of Unitarianism 
 in America, says, '' The very idea of a slave is that 
 he belongs to another : that he is bound to live 
 and labor for another ; to be another's instrument, 
 that is, in all things, just as a threshing-machine, 
 or another beast of burden ; and to make another's 
 will his habitual law, however adverse to his own." 
 He adds, in another place, " We have thus estab- 
 lished the reality and sacredness of human rights ; 
 and that slavery is an infraction of these, is too 
 plain to need any labored proof. Sla^-ery violates 
 not one, but all; violates them not incidentally, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 147 
 
 but necessarily, systematically, from its very 
 nature." 
 
 These, together with your text, young gentle- 
 men, are leading authorities on this subject. Fol- 
 lowing these, we should adopt the belief that the 
 principle of slavery in question is, as they express 
 it, " an absorption of the humanity of one man into 
 the will of another;" or, in other words, that 
 '^ slavery contemplates him, not as a responsible, 
 but a mere sentient being — not as a man, but a 
 brute." 
 
 If this be so, the w^onder is not, as they affirm, 
 that the civilized world is so indignant at its 
 outrageous wrongs, but that " it has been so slow 
 in detecting its gross and palpable enormities : 
 that mankind, for so many ages, acquiesced in a 
 system as monstrously unnatural as would be a 
 general effort to walk upon the head or to think 
 with the feet !" We need have no hesitation in 
 flatly denying the truth of this description, and 
 pronouncing it a caricature. For if this be a faith- 
 ful description, we can safely affirm that no in- 
 stance of slavery ever existed under the authority 
 of law in an}^ nation known to history. 
 
 In the first place, the state of things so rhetori- 
 cally described is a palpable impossibility. The 
 constitution of the human mind is in flat contra- 
 diction to the idea of the absorption of the will. 
 
148 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the conscience, and the understanding!: of one man 
 into the personality of another ! This is a state 
 of things which the human mind cannot even con- 
 ceive to be possible, but does intuitively perceive 
 to be utterly impossible. In the next place, we 
 affirm that the idea of ^personal rights and inrsonal 
 responsihiliti/ pervades the whole system. Both 
 the Divine and human law^s which recognize , the 
 system, assume the personality and responsibility 
 of the slave. Even under the Roman and Grecian 
 codes — which reco2;'nized far more strin2:ent forms 
 of slavery than that of the African in this country, 
 at any period of its history — this view of the sys- 
 tem will find no support. Paul and Peter, who 
 wrote with special allusion to slaves under these 
 laws, so far from regarding this personality as lost 
 and sw^allowed up in the humanity of the master, 
 expressly assumed their personality and respon- 
 sibility. For whilst they recognize him as a ser- 
 vant, they treat him as a man : they declare him 
 possessed, though a slave, of certain rights, which 
 it was injustice in the master to disregard, and 
 mider obligation to certain duties, as a slave, which 
 it would be sinful in him to neglect ; and, more- 
 over, that it was the offhfe of that religion whose 
 functions they filled, to protect these rights and 
 duties w^ith its most solemn sanctions. Hence 
 they enjoin upon masters the moral obligation of 
 
OF SLAVERY. 149 
 
 rendering to their bondmen '^ that tvldcJi is just 
 and equal,'' and upon servants to " he subject to 
 their masters witli all fear, not only to the good and 
 gentle, hut also to tJie froiuard. For this is thank- 
 ivorthy, if a man, for conscience totvard God, endure 
 grief, suffering ivrongfidlgT Was this treating 
 them as beings whose wills were absorbed in the 
 humanity of the master, who therefore was the 
 only accountable person for all their conduct ! 
 Nothing could be more alien from truth, and signifi- 
 cant of falsehood ! No: obedience is never ap- 
 plied, except as a figurative term, and especially 
 by the apostles, to any but rational and account- 
 able beings. And with such inspired requisitions 
 before us — ^^ ohedience from the one, and justice 
 from the other'' — it is grossly absurd to affirm 
 that the relation of master and slave regards the 
 slave as a brute, and not as an accountable man. 
 " The blind passivity of a corpse, or the mechani- 
 cal obedience of a tool," w^hich Channing and 
 Whew ell regard as constituting the essential idea 
 of slavery, seems never to have entered the minds 
 of the apostles. They considered slavery as a 
 social and political economy, in which rel.'itions 
 involving reciprocal rights and duties subsisted, 
 between moral, intelhgent, and responsible beings, 
 between whom, as between men in other relations, 
 religion held the scales of justice. 
 
150 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 The right of property in man, as man, is no- 
 where taught in Scripture, although it distinctly 
 recognizes the relation of master and slave. The 
 ridit which the master has in the slaA^e, accordinsf 
 to the Scriptures, is, not to the man, but to so 
 much of his time and labor as is consistent with 
 his rights of humanity. The master who disre- 
 gards these claims, denies his slave that which is 
 ^^just and equal." The duty wdiich the slave 
 owes, is the service which, in conformity with 
 these rights, the master exacts. A failure in 
 either party is a breach of Scripture. 
 
 The only difference between free and slave 
 labor is, that the one is rendered in consequence 
 of a contract, and the other in consequence of a 
 command. Each is service rendered according to 
 the will of another ; and each may, or may not, 
 be according to the consent of the party rendering 
 service. The former is often as involuntary, in 
 point of fact, as the latter. Hirelings assent to it, 
 in most cases, as a necessity of their condition. 
 They do not consent to it — they are far from 
 choosing it. A few persons reach that high attain- 
 ment of a pure Christianity, in wdiich they learn 
 in every state in wdiich they are placed, in the 
 providence of God, ^Hherewith to be content" — 
 they choose it. But in the general, hired service 
 i.« in point of fact, as involuntary as slave labor. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 151 
 
 A right, therefore, to the time and labor of 
 another to a definite extent, by no means involves 
 the right to his humanity. Such right is a mere 
 fiction, to which even the imagination can give no 
 significance or consistency. '^ It is the miserable 
 cant of those who would storm by prejudice what 
 they cannot demolish by argument." 
 
 Thus, young gentlemen, that the abstract prin- 
 ciple of the institution of slavery, and the princi- 
 ples of natural rights, coincide, and that both have 
 the unqualified approbation of Holy Scripture, 
 cannot be successfully controverted. Natural 
 rights and the principle of slavery do not conflict. 
 No man has a natural right to do wrong. That 
 wherein tbe principle of slavery is in itself 7n(jht, 
 is that, when carried out in the form of civil govern- ^ 
 ment, it furnishes an instance in which the sub- 
 jects of government who are liable to injure society 
 by doing wrong, are placed under such disabilities, 
 or in such circumstances, in which they cannot or 
 are not likely to do this wrong, but to do that 
 w^hich they have a natural right to do, that is, do 
 good. In all cases in which this principle enters 
 into the government in such ratio or modification 
 as to secure these ends, it coincides wdth natural 
 rights, and insures to the subject the highest 
 amount of freedom of which his moral condition 
 will admit ; it is to him essentially a free govern- 
 
152 PHILOSOPHY AxVD PRACTICE 
 
 nient, although, in adapting itself to his moral 
 condition, it may assume an extreme form of 
 despotism. 
 
 Whether the Southern States of this Union 
 have wisely adapted this principle to the moral 
 condition of the African population residing within 
 their horders, and thereby secured to them an 
 essentially free government, remains to be con- 
 sidered. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 153 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE IXSTITUTIOX OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 
 The question stated — The conduct of masters a separate ques' 
 tion — The institution defined — The position of the abolitionists 
 and that of the Southern people — The presumption is in favor 
 of the Latter — Those who claim freedom for the blacks of this 
 country failed to secure it to those on whom they professed to 
 confer it — The doctrine by which they seek to vindicate the 
 claim set up for them, together with the fact of history assumed 
 to be true, is false. 
 
 Having proved that the abstract principle of 
 the institution of domestic slavery is a legitimate 
 principle, both in itself, and in this, that it coin- 
 cides with the great fundamental principle of r/V///f, 
 and does not necessarily conflict with the ri(//il, 
 and is therefore in itself (/oody and not evil; tJie 
 next inquiry that arises is this : ''Is the institution 
 of domestic slaverjj^ existing among us, and involving 
 this principle, justified hj the circumstances of the 
 casf*, and therefore right f — according to the doctrine 
 evolved in the second lecture, namely, that the 
 7* 
 
154 PHILOSOPHY AND PRxVCTICE 
 
 principle of an action, being itself right, the action 
 is right, provided other and coincident principles 
 justify the action, or, as we usually say, provided 
 the circumstances require it. 
 
 Let it be observed, that the conduct of indiviil 
 ual slaveholders, in the exercise of any discretion 
 conferred on them by the nature of their relation 
 as masters, is still a separate question, and not 
 here to be taken into the discussion. We inquire 
 as to the propriety of the institution : Is it de- 
 manded at all by the circumstances of the case ? 
 This is eminently a practical question, and is the 
 onl}^ one which involves the morality of the insti- 
 tution itself, now that the abstract principle is 
 shown to be legitimate. 
 
 Domestic slavery is one of the subordinate 
 forms of civil government. It may be defined an 
 imperium in imperio — a government within a gov- 
 ernment : one in which the subject of the infe- 
 rior government is under the control of a master, 
 up to a certain limit defined by the superior gov- 
 ernment, and beyond which both the master and 
 the slave are alike subject to control by the supe- 
 rior government. The question now arises, Is 
 this a suitable government for the negro race in 
 America? Without doubt, this question is to be 
 settled on the same general principles by which 
 we should settle a similar question in regard to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 155 
 
 the suitableness of any other form of goA^ernment 
 for any other people. For example, the same 
 principles which determine the fitness of a mili- 
 tary despotism, a constitutional monarchy, or a 
 democratic republic, to any particular community 
 of white persons, will determine the suitableness 
 of this form of government to the African race in 
 this country. They are all different forms of 
 control, belonging to the same genus — govern- 
 ment ; and pervaded by the same generic elements 
 — the principles of slavery and liberty combined 
 in different ratios, in order to secure the greatest 
 amount of happiness to those communities to 
 which they are fitly applied. The claims of the 
 African might be separately examined in regard 
 to each of these forms of government ; but this 
 course is not demanded by the interests of this 
 discussion. Nor need we stop to inquire, how 
 the Africans came into this country : whether 
 lawfully or unlawfully — w^hether by their own act, 
 or the act of another. These are in truth side 
 issues, and do not necessarily attach to this dis- 
 cussion. They will be treated as incidental to the 
 main question ] for although it were allowed that 
 they are here unlawfully, and that it is our duty 
 to remove them, yet it is still true that they are 
 here, and cannot be immediately removed, and 
 must therefore be subjected, as human beings, to 
 
156 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 some one of the known forms of civil government 
 What form of government shall this be ? Accord- 
 ing to principles well established, and admitted on 
 all sides, it should be such a form of government 
 as, from its adaptation to their intellectual, moral, 
 relative, and physical condition, is best calculated 
 to promote their happiness and the happiness of 
 those with whom they are necessarily associated. 
 But what form of government is it which will 
 most probably accomplish this object ? 
 
 The anti-slavery party, as well as the abolition 
 faction, claim for the Africans a democratic repub- 
 lic : that is, that they should have equal political 
 privileges with the whites, and only be subject 
 with them to the same modified form of slavery ! 
 On the contrary, we of the South maintain that, 
 from their lyresent state of mental imbecility, moral 
 degradation, and physical inferiority, they should 
 be placed under that more decided form of con- 
 trol called domestic slavery. Who is ri(/Iit ? 
 
 In discussing this question, we take the ground, 
 first, that, in advance of all direct argument, we 
 are entitled to the full benefit of the fremmption 
 in argument — the burden of proof lies upon those 
 who dispute our position ; and, secondly, that we 
 are right in fact — that the circumstances of the 
 case demand this form of government on behalf 
 of the race, as their rights their blessing ; because 
 
OF SLAVERY. 157 
 
 this form of government, duly and properly ad- 
 ministered, as it may be, and ovrjld to be, is calcu- 
 lated to afford them the highest, if not the only 
 amount of political freedom and happiness to 
 which their humanity is at present adapted, and 
 especially in view of their existing relations to a 
 higher form of civilization, in the case of those 
 among whom they dwell. 
 
 1. We are presumptiveli/ right. The onus lies 
 wholly upon those who oppose our position. 
 
 In taking this ground, we readily waive the 
 presumption founded upon the mere fact that do- 
 mestic slavery is an existing institution, and is 
 entitled to stand as good, until the contrary is 
 made to appear. We go back of this. We throw 
 ourselves upon original ground. We say, that if 
 this were now an original question in the country, 
 the presumption would be, that this was the ap- 
 propriate form of government for the African race 
 in this country. 
 
 As an original case, it would be an undisputed 
 fact that the race was in an unciviHzed state. 
 We have demonstrated, in a former lecture, that 
 an uncivilized people is not adapted to a state of 
 ])olitical freedom. To such a people dwelhng in 
 the midst of a civilized people, it could not be a 
 right, because it would not be a good, but an evil, 
 a curse. There is no reason to assume that to 
 
 \X 
 
158 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 place them in this condition would elevate them 
 at once to such fitness as would make it a bless- 
 ing, but there is eveiy reason to presume that the 
 reverse would follow an elevation to political free- 
 dom. If any think otherwise; the burden of 
 proof lies upon him. 
 
 This presumption is greatly strengthened by 
 the fact that they who claim pohtical freedom for 
 the Africans now in the country, have signally 
 failed to secure it for those upon whom they have 
 professed to confer it. Essential freedom is in- 
 separably interlaced with social equalifi/. With- 
 out the latter, the former cannot possibly exist. 
 The Northern States have long since conferred 
 the forms of civil freedom upon the African por- 
 tion of their population, but to the present hour 
 they have denied them social equalifi/. Herein, 
 they extinguish all the lights and comforts of 
 essential freedom. They settle upon them a suf- 
 focative anhelation, which is truly the most op- 
 pressive form of slavery. The social inequality 
 of the races, it is well known, exists in a much 
 more modified form at the South than at the 
 North. That those who have made, as we allow, 
 an honest effort to confer essential freedom upon 
 them, have signally failed, greatly strengthens the 
 presumption that we are right in believing that 
 the end they proposed was impracticable, and 
 
OF SLAVERY. 159 
 
 that we need not be so umvise as to imitate their 
 folly. 
 
 But this presumption is still further strengthened 
 by the fjict that the basis argument upon which 
 the abolitionists usually rest the claims of the Afri- 
 can, is entirely sophistical. It is this : Slave pro- 
 perty was originally acquired by robbery and 
 violence, and therefore can never become lawful 
 property. Hence we should confer upon them 
 political freedom, regardless of whatever conse- 
 quences may follow ; seeing that an act of robbery 
 can never extinguish the original right of the 
 person robbed, or confer original title upon the 
 robber. 
 
 The doctrine assumed in this argument is, that 
 possessions unjustly acquired originally, can never 
 become legal possessions ; or that a state of things 
 originally resulting from ivrong^ can never, by 
 lapse of time, or the force of any circumstances, 
 become right. The fact assumed as the basis of 
 this doctrine in its application to the African is, 
 that they were stolen while in a state of freedom, 
 and reduced to a state of slavery. But we deny 
 both the doctrine and the hypothetical assumption 
 on which it is based. 
 
 1. If the doctrine be true, it w^ill follow that all 
 wrong is without any remedy, except in the few 
 cases in which things may be restored to their origi- 
 
160 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 nal state. This would be a deplorable state of 
 things indeed. It Avould work special disaster to 
 our Northern brethren. For, first, if this doctrine 
 be true, they own scarcely one foot of honest 
 land ; nor is there any in the whole country, save 
 the original purchase of William Penn, and a few 
 other unappreciable portions of territory. The 
 Indians were the original and rightful owners of 
 this whole country, according to the theory of 
 rights which forms the basis of this doctrine. 
 From the most of their possessions they were 
 forcibly ejected at the peril of life as well as lib- 
 erty ; and from the remainder they were driven 
 by a policy which in civilized life would be held 
 and treated as knavery. These lands, according 
 to this doctrine, should in all honesty be restored 
 to their rightful owners, or to those wdio inherit 
 them under their title, or the present holders are 
 robbers. Second. The Africans, it is said, were 
 stolen ! If so, those who received them in this 
 country can only be regarded as the receivers of 
 stolen property — no better, if not worse, than 
 the original thieves. But on this hypothesis, 
 Who stole them ? and who received this stolen 
 property, knowing it to be so stolen ? These ques- 
 tions admit of but one answer : The forefathers 
 of the present generation of New England popula- 
 tion! From their ports, vessels Avere fitted out, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 161 
 
 and einployecl in this system of ^MTian-stealing." 
 They became the receivers of this stolen property. 
 Those who were not demanded by their own agri- 
 cultural pursuits, w^ere sold in Southern markets. 
 As the climate and soil of the South w^ere better 
 suited to such labor, the larger portion of all this 
 stolen property w%as accumulated in the South. 
 The product of the lands of New^ England, and 
 the product of these sales of stolen Africans, have 
 been, from time to time, invested in commercial 
 and manufacturing pursuits. These constitute the 
 chief sources of the great w^ealth of the New Eng- 
 land States, to the present day ; and these, it is 
 well known, are mainly supported by the products 
 of slave labor at the South. This being so, the 
 great w^ealth of the Northern States can be regarded 
 only as so much dishonest gain ! Really, it is time 
 they were looking to the duty of restitution ! But 
 the disaster of this doctrine does not exhaust 
 itself with our Northern brethren. The Norman 
 Conquest of Great Britain is that by which all the 
 land-titles of England are held to the present day. 
 All these titles are held under the rights acquired 
 by this conquest. Now it is well known that 
 the Norman Conquest was the most lawless piece 
 of injustice and butchery, the record of which ever 
 disgraced the pages of human history ! Upon the 
 basis of the doctrine in question, it is equally cer- 
 
162 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 tain that there is scarcely an honest shilling in 
 all England ! Nor is this all : the present titles 
 of all Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa, are 
 traceable, more or less remotely, to a source 
 equall}^ cruel and unjust ! Thus there is an end 
 pretty much to all honesty, as to the possessions 
 of the civilized world ! Surely, the absurdity of 
 this conclusion is sufficient to invalid-ate the sound- 
 ness of the doctrine from which it arises. 
 
 Now we are far from affirming that wrong — 
 Avhich is the negative of light — can ever become, 
 by circumstances or any thing else, otherwise 
 than it is, that is, tvrong, namel}^, not I'-ight. But 
 the state or tiling which, under one set of circum- 
 stances, is ivrong, i^^'^y? under other circumstances, 
 become rigid. It is not the ivrong in itself which, 
 in such a case, changes to right ; but, by a change 
 of circum.stances, the ivrong no longer inheres, but 
 the right inheres in that which formerly involved 
 the wrong ; and therefore the state or thing which 
 was before wrong, now becomes right. Hence, 
 although it be admitted that the land-titles of the 
 civilized world were originally founded in tvrong, 
 an<l therefore were unjust titles, it may not follow 
 that those wdio now hold them, do so by an unjust 
 title, because the original title was unjust. The 
 facts may be thus stated in regard to the most of 
 them. The titles were originally acquired by 
 
OF SLAVERY. 163 
 
 vjrong ; in many instances, cruel tvrong ! The 
 authors of these wrongs were usually the heads 
 of government, who, in their circumstances, wxre 
 beyond control The/j did the wrong. The ulti- 
 mate results of their doings, by the lapse of time 
 with its perpetual changes, upset all the exist- 
 ing relations of society, merged the descendants 
 of the actors and sufferers in these wrongs into 
 the mass of society, beyond the power of just dis- 
 crimination, and introduced an altogether new state 
 of things. Under these circumstances, the original 
 w^rong was ultimately placed beyond all remedy. 
 The restoration of the lands to the original and 
 lawful owners became an impossibility. To at- 
 tempt such a w^ork could only be followed by the 
 grossest injustice to all the parties concerned. In 
 this state of things, the question of title — Who 
 shall own these lands ? becomes an original ques- 
 tion. And in this state of the case, the simple 
 fact of present possession — there being no one to 
 claim antecedent possession — according to the 
 fundamental belief of all mankind, confers moral 
 title, and should therefore be made legal. Hence 
 the title is just, because the idea of the right in 
 itself — that which is good — now inheres in the 
 man who holds property under such circumstances. 
 The argument authorizes this prescriptive princi- 
 ple in political science : That tvhen the original 
 
164 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 7vrong cannot he remedied^ tvitJioid inflicting greater 
 injiu^g, ON all the parties concerned, than to iier- 
 mit the existing state of things to remain^ in this 
 state of the case, the existing state of things is in 
 itself RIGHT, and should he permitted to remain. 
 
 Upon the basis of this principle — without which, 
 w^e have no scruple to say, society could nowhere 
 harmonize for a single hour — we have no difficulty 
 in vindicating the honesty of the descendants of 
 the Puritans, or the land-titles of the civilized 
 world, or the thousand other titles w^hich are 
 equally involved by the absurd doctrine under 
 consideration. Nor do we find any difficulty in 
 allowing them a just title to all the proceeds of 
 the African traffic, even though it should be con- 
 ceded that their forefathers were, as they charac- 
 terize them, a set of mere men-stealers ! 
 
 Having invalidated this doctrine as a piece of 
 gross sophistry, we remark : ^ 
 
 2. That we also deny the hypothesis upon the 
 basis of which this false doctrine has been made 
 to apply to the Africans of this country ; that 
 is, we deny that African slavery in this country 
 had its origin or was founded in cruelty and rob- 
 bery. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt the statements of 
 history, that many slave-ships originally (as per- 
 haps is still the case to some extent) acquired 
 
OF SLAVERY. 165 
 
 their cargoes, some by robbery and violence, and 
 some by purchase. The sufferings of what is 
 called the "middle passage " are, no doubt, cor- 
 rectly stated in history. We have no motive to 
 controvert these statements, nor indeed to inquire 
 into their authenticity. We are not even the 
 apologists of any of the actors in these scenes, 
 much less their defenders. There may have been 
 cruel wrongs, and under circumstances of even 
 greater aggravation than those recorded in history. 
 Be it so ! The actors have long since gone to 
 their account, and we may safely leave them to 
 Him who judgeth righteously. The conduct of 
 these agents, whether cruel or kind, is not an 
 element in this discussion. Our inquiry goes to 
 the foundation of this matter — the true producing 
 cause for the introduction of the African into this 
 country, and his position as a slave. What was 
 this ? It will not be maintained that these agents, 
 whether humane or not, can in any proper sense 
 be said to be the cause or foundation of African 
 slavery in this country. With much greater pro- 
 priety it may be said that the artisans of Boston 
 were the founders and builders of the city. They 
 were necessary agents. They might have done 
 their part well. They might have done it dis- 
 honestly, cruelly. Neither hypothesis wull enti- 
 tle them to rank as the true and proper founders 
 
 •y 
 
166 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 and builders of the city. So neither are the men 
 in question to be regarded as the founders and 
 builders of African slavery in America. Whether 
 they did their part as they should have done, or 
 should not have done ; or whether they did the 
 work at all, or not, is the mere logical accident of 
 a cause^ which lay back of all they did, and of all 
 they might have done, whether good or bad. 
 This cause is evolved by the inquiry, Why did 
 they bring them into the country at all ? If some 
 potent cause had not been at work, would they or 
 any others have brought them into the country ? 
 Certainly not. This cause^ then, whatever it w\as, 
 is without doubt the true foundation, the imme- 
 diate cause, of African slavery in America. What, 
 then, was this cause ? But one answer can be 
 given to this inquiry. On it there can be no 
 division of opinion. It was the state of public 
 opinion in Great Britain, and the state of public 
 opinion in her colonies in this country at the 
 time. This state of public opinion demanded 
 their introduction and employment as slaves, and 
 hence they were introduced and so emplo3^ed. 
 Whatever demerit or merit, then, was in the origin 
 and maturity of this state of things, is traceable 
 directly to public opinion, and attaches directly 
 as a virtue or a crime, as the case may be, to 
 those who controlled public opinion, through the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 167 
 
 long period of its inception, formation, and matu- 
 rity, and to them alone. This being the true ori- 
 gin and foundation of the system, if it had its 
 foundation in rolhery and violence^ it was because 
 pubUc opinion, through that long period, was so 
 eminently corrupt as to set itself, deliberately and 
 of full purpose, to work to perpetrate rohleri/ and 
 violence^ without any redeeming virtue ; for such 
 crimes admit of none. Was this so ? Can we 
 be prepared to believe it? In default of all 
 history at this point to detail the origin and pro- 
 gress of pubhc opinion on this subject, we are left 
 to form our judgment from our knowledge of the 
 men whom we know to have participated more 
 largely than any others in directing public opinion 
 in their day, and to the history of the times in 
 which they lived. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, African slaves were 
 first introduced into this country, and the practice 
 was continued, under the sanction of law% until the 
 years 1778 and 1808, inclusive. At an early 
 period, public opinion was matured on this sub- 
 ject both in England and in the colonies, and we 
 see that for a long period it sustained the practice 
 of introducing slaves directly from Africa into 
 this country. Now, we affirm that the position 
 postulated in regard to this case is among the 
 most palpable absurdities that can be conceived. 
 
168 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 The character of the men who controlled public 
 opinion in that day, and the patriotic and Christian 
 age in which they lived, utterly disprove the gross 
 assumption that they yielded themselves up to 
 falsify the truth and the conscience that was in 
 them, and become a mere corporation of land- 
 pirates and freebooters ! If our ignorance of the 
 history of those times should disqualify us to 
 account for the existence of this state of public 
 opinion on any strictly rational grounds, common 
 sense would forbid that we assign for it so unrea- 
 sonable a cause as this ; whilst the least that 
 charity could suggest would be, that we place it 
 among those things for which we were unable to 
 account. 
 
 From the time they w^ere first introduced into 
 the colonies, about 1620, to the time the system 
 may be considered as permanently estabhshed, 
 makes a period of some hundred and fifty years. 
 Among the eminent personages who appeared in 
 Great Britain during this period, and did not fail 
 to impress their genius and moral character upon 
 the age in which they lived, we may mention, 
 James I., Cromwell, and William III., Burnet, 
 Tillotson, Barrow, South, with Bunyan and Mil- 
 ton ; and also Newton and Locke. 
 
 In the colonies, during this time, there lived 
 Cotton Mather, Brainerd, Eliot, and Roger Wil- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 1G9 
 
 liams ; Winthrop, Sir H. Vane, and Samuel 
 Adams, with Henry, Washington, and Frankhn. 
 
 These great men, and some of them eminently 
 good men, stood connected with a numerous class 
 of highly influential men, though inferior in posi- 
 tion, and all together may he regarded as embody- 
 ing and controlhng pubhc opinion in their day. 
 Some of them w^ere preeminently distinguished for 
 their patriotic devotion to the rights of humanit3^ 
 Many others were men of wide views on all sub- 
 jects, and of broad and expansive feelings of 
 benevolence, and indeed of the soundest piety. 
 Add to all this, many of them are to this day 
 w^ithout a peer in intellectual distinctions, if indeed 
 the same may not be said of their attainments in 
 literature and science. The age of Barrow, and 
 of Locke, and Newton, in philosophy, and of 
 Washington and Franklin, in patriotism, public 
 benevolence, common sense, and general learning, 
 still stands on the pages of history without a 
 rival. But these men, and their numerous comi- 
 peers and co-laborers, were no better than a hoard 
 of mountain robbers ! They coolly coincided with 
 each other, w^ithout formal concert or convention, 
 but by the common attraction of their natural 
 affinity for power and plunder, to murder, rob, 
 and enslave thousands of their innocent and de- 
 fenceless fellow-creatures — the helpless victims of 
 8 
 
170 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 public cupidity ! Such is the shameless position 
 strangely postulated in regard to these men and 
 their times ! We scruple not to affirm that this 
 is more than a stupid gratuity ! It is a gross 
 calumny upon humanity itself, of which the 
 authors should be profoundly ashamed ! 
 
 The advantages enjoyed in this day, by the 
 great success which has attended the art of print- 
 ing — an art for which we are indebted to the 
 genius of a former age — would no doubt a fiord us 
 a satisfactory history of the rise and progress of 
 public opinion on such a subject, if it w^re to 
 occur in this age. The state of the art at that 
 period, the proscription of the press, and especially 
 the new and unsettled condition of the colonies, 
 furnishes good cause for the deficiency. We may 
 not, therefore, account for public opinion as satis- 
 factorily now^, as might have been done at that 
 time. Still Ave have abundant materials for a 
 charitable construction of the conduct of our fore- 
 fiithers — both here and in England. The savage, 
 and indeed the brutal condition of the larger por- 
 tion of Africa, had long since been a matter of 
 history. All well-informed men were familiar 
 with the facts of African history. They were not 
 only Pagans, but Pagans of the most stapid and 
 enslaved kind — without the knowledge of God, or 
 the rudest forms of civilization. The population 
 
OF SLAVERY. 171 
 
 was divided into tribes, each governed by an igno- 
 rant petty king, who ruled his eqnahy Pagan sub- 
 jects a.s absohite slaves. In the place of the 
 knowledge and worship of the true God, which 
 was found to exist among the savages of America, 
 the African worships the devil — the evil spirit, 
 and that by the most humiliating and debasmg 
 rites of superstition. His superstitions furnished 
 frequent occasions for wars. These wars were 
 highly sanguinary — often exterminating, as all 
 wars amongst an ignorant and highly superstitious 
 people have always been. To spare the life of an 
 enemy in war, make him a prisoner, guard him as 
 such, or make him labor as a slave for his support, 
 is an advance of civihzation. To continue to put 
 the enemy to death to the end of the war, is the 
 necessary condition of a state of war in uncivilized 
 life. Such was the known condition of all the 
 African population south of Egypt and the States 
 of Barbary. Did not their condition appeal, as it 
 still does, to the benevolence of the civilized 
 w^orld ? But what could they do ? Send Chris- 
 tian missionaries ? No. We, in this country, 
 have succeeded, to some extent at least, in civiliz- 
 ing the savage tribes upon our border ! But 
 the Indians w-ere not, like the Africans, idola- 
 trous Pagans. Be this as it may, the com- 
 petency of missionary enterprise to civilize and 
 
172 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 christianize Pagans, was, as it still is to any very 
 material extent, an untried experiment. The 
 opinion then obtained, and to this hour it is not 
 wholly invalidated, that to reduce Pagans to a 
 state of labor was, among other agencies, a neces- 
 sary condition of their civilization. What then 
 could Christians do in that age for African civil- 
 ization ? They could not introduce them as lab- 
 orers in England, or on the continent of Europe. 
 Such a step would have denied bread to the mul- 
 titudes who already filled the menial offices of 
 society. It was impracticable to do this, and 
 inhuman to attempt it. Thus for long ages had 
 degraded and enslaved Africa ^'stretched forth" 
 her imploring hands, appealing to the ben volence 
 of the world for relief. But the wisest and best 
 men of the times saw no means of relief, and at- 
 tempted none. In this state of African history, 
 colonial settlements were ultimately effected on 
 the coast of North America. At an early period 
 an experiment was made by a Dutch Manhattan, 
 to introduce African labor into the colonies. Here 
 a wide field was open for their labor. It was 
 greatly demanded. To labor here denied bread to 
 no other laboring poor, as would have been the 
 case in England. The idea was caught at in both 
 hemispheres, as a ^'God-sencV for the African — for 
 the colonies, and a common civilization. No one 
 
OF SLAVERY. 173 
 
 dreamed of robbery, injustice, or ^vrong to any 
 one ! All considered it a ^vide door which a kind 
 Pj'ovidence had opened, and which piety itself bade 
 them enter ! No man Avho was worthy of the 
 age authorized any one to fit out a ship, from the 
 port of Boston or elsewhere, go to the coast of 
 Africa, steal a cargo of natives, murder all who 
 stood in the way of his schemes, tumble them into 
 the hold of their ship, without regard to health or 
 comfort, and make their way with their piratical 
 cargo to Boston and other markets, and turn them 
 into money ! Those wdio did this — as many no 
 doubt did — acted on their own responsibihty, and 
 have long since given their dreadful account to 
 God ! But the men who were worthy of the age, 
 and who would be worthy of any age, did author- 
 ize, by a common public opinion, the practice of 
 going to Africa, and negotiating a purchase w^ith 
 those who had long held and treated them as 
 slaves, and especially those who by the usages of 
 barbarous war were condemned to death. They 
 considered that thus to arrest the practice of put- 
 ting prisoners to death was humane, and worth}^ 
 of a Christian people; that to introduce them into 
 civilized society, teach them the habits of civilized 
 life, the principles and experience of Christianity, 
 and ultimately perhaps to send them back to re- 
 generate their fatherland, was an achievement 
 
174 PHILOSOPHY AxN'D PRACTICE 
 
 worthy of the highest attainments of piety' 
 Hence they had no scruple to purchase them 
 when brought to the country. The most emi- 
 nently patriotic and benevolent of the colonists 
 purchased them. The most pious members of 
 churches, and distinguished Christian ministers, 
 did the same. The immortal Whitefield did not 
 scruple to sustain his pious foundation in Georgia 
 by a large income, for the times, from slave pro- 
 perty. Were they correct in these views ? We 
 appeal to facts. Multitudes were brought to the 
 country who had otherwise perished in barbarous 
 warfare, or been murdered as captives, and the 
 others would have remained in a state of Pagan 
 ignorance, superstition, and slavery. By coming 
 into the country, they have been greatly improved 
 in their mental, moral, and ph^^sical condition. I 
 do not stay to trouble you with statistical details. 
 But my investigations warrant a statement, which 
 you can test at your leisure ; it is this : the num- 
 ber of Africans who have died in the communion 
 of the Methodist and Baptist churches of America 
 to the present time — and who, therefore, we may 
 assume, were christianized by their residence in 
 this country — exceeds the whole number of all 
 the heathen who have been christianized by the 
 labors of all the Protestant denominations of 
 Christendom since the days of Luther. Hence, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 175 
 
 we coTiclufle, that whatever Avere the cruelties of 
 individuals engaged in the original slave trade, 
 (for which they were responsible,) and whatever 
 may have been the abuses of the system since, by 
 imlividual slave owners, the system itself was 
 originally founded in a profound view of the prin- 
 ciples of political science, so far as regards this 
 country, and of political economy, and the claims 
 of Christian benevolence, so far as it regards the 
 Africans themselves. The resources of this vast 
 country have been rapidly developed. It is 
 already the asylum of the oppressed, and the 
 home of the poor, of all lands. Slave labor has 
 had no small share in all this. The reixeneration 
 of the continent of Africa has already commenced, 
 and the ultimate result is looked to with increas- 
 ing confidence. 
 
 Thus we have invalidated the doctrine^ and also 
 the hypothesis, which form the basis on which the 
 abolitionists rest their argument against the justice 
 and policy of the South. That their position is 
 not tenable is no direct proof that ours is right; 
 but it does afford a jwesiimption that we are right. 
 This presumption we claim, for the several reasons 
 given. The direct argument in vindication of the 
 system of domestic slaver\% upon its own merits, 
 is reserved for the next lecture. 
 
17G PlULOSOPHr AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE yill. 
 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY, AS A SYSTEM OF GOVERXMEXT FOR 
 THE AFRICANS IN AMERICA, EXAMINED AND DEFENDED 
 ON THE GROUND OF ITS ADAPTATION TO THE PRESENT 
 CONDITION OF THE RACE. 
 
 There should he a separate and subordinate government for our 
 African popuUition — Objection answered — Africans are not 
 competent to that measure of self-government which entitles a 
 man to political sovereignty — They Avere not prepared for free- 
 dom when first brought into the country, hence they were 
 placed under the domestic form of government — The humanity 
 of this policy — In the opinion of Southern people they are still 
 unprepared — The fanaticism and rashness of some, and the 
 inexcusable wickedness of others, who oppose the South. 
 
 It having been proved that both the doctrine 
 and the assumption of fact by Northern fanatics, 
 in regard to the claim of the African to a repnb- 
 hcan form of government, are false, and that the 
 presumption is in favor of the position of the 
 South, that domestic slavery is the appropriate 
 form of government for them, we are now left 
 free to pursue our inquiry, without offset from 
 
OF SLAVERY. 17t 
 
 these vagnries, into the merits of this system, and 
 
 its appropriateness to the African race in this 
 
 country. 
 
 The African is now here. Whether riiiht or 
 
 wrong originally, is not the question before us. 
 
 lie is here. What form of government is best 
 
 <^ 
 
 suited to him, and those with whom he is neces- 
 sarily associated ? And, 
 
 I. Let it be observed, that they are a distinct 
 race of people, separated by strongly marked 
 lines of moral and physical condition from those 
 amongst whom they reside. This difference is so 
 strongly marked that there can be no spontaneous 
 amalgamation by intermarriage, and consequently 
 no reciprocity of social rights and privileges be- 
 tween the races. Their history in the whole 
 country shows this to be the case. They must 
 therefore continue to exist as a separate race. To 
 this state of things the government over them 
 should be adapted, unless we would violate a 
 material condition of the problem to be solved. 
 For if the law should not provide for this state of 
 the case, the conventional usages of the superior 
 race amongst whom they dwell wdll certainly do 
 so. This is in proof from the example of all 
 those States which have failed to provide for the 
 African as a separate and distinct race ; for the 
 usages of society always supply the deficiency. 
 
178 PHILOSOPHY AXD PEACTICE 
 
 This omission on the part of the laAV is evidently 
 to the injury of the African. The history of thp. 
 race in the Northern States will show this. Es- 
 sential liberty is founded in, and is inseparable 
 from, certain social rights and privileges. But in 
 these respects, the African is a flir more proscribed 
 and degraded race in the Northern than in the 
 Southern States. 
 
 A government, then, should be provided for the 
 African, as a distinct and separate race, existing 
 in the bosom of another and superior race. Of 
 course this will be an imperium in imjjerio. 
 And as they are confessedly the inferior race, 
 who can never enjoy essential liberty or recipro- 
 city of social condition with the whites, the gov- 
 ernment adapted to them must be inferior and 
 subordinate to that of the whites amongst whom 
 they dwell. It must be subordinate ; for, in the 
 nature of things, it must be an independent or a 
 subordinate one. But two independent civil gov- 
 ernments cannot coexist, and control distinct 
 races dwelling together in the same community. 
 It follows that it must be subordinate. As sub- 
 ordinate, it must either assume some form of 
 military government, or it must conform to the 
 patriarchal species of government — a kind of 
 family government — that is, the domestic form 
 for which we contend. And as between a subor- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 179 
 
 dinate militaiy or patriarchal form of gOA'ernment, 
 both as regards the expense and the comfort, 
 there can be no controversy, we may consider the 
 claims of the patriarchal form, or the sj'stem of 
 domestic slavery, as established in this case. 
 
 13ut it may be supposed that the experiment 
 in the Northern States invalidates the position, 
 that this, being a distinct race of people, must be 
 controlled by a separate and subordinate form of 
 government. These States have a portion of this 
 race, and it is said they find no difficulty to result 
 from having placed them on a political footing 
 with other citizens. But this is a mere assump- 
 tion. It is not borne out by the fiicts of history. 
 
 As before stated, the conventional usages of 
 society have denied them the social rights and 
 privileges of free citizens ! They have proscribed 
 them as an inferior and degraded race. 
 
 The usage which forbids intermarriage is at 
 once a bar to all social equality. The road to 
 offices of trust, honor, and profit, is closed against 
 them — nay, even the means of subsistence beyond 
 a scanty supply of the necessaries of life. These 
 facts are undeniable. Now, to talk of liberty 
 when we effectually deny to a people all that 
 essentially constitutes it, is idle in the. extreme. 
 It is a mere paper hberty ! — liberty to submit 
 to the crushing usages of society ! — liberty to 
 
180 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 perish, in many instances, and that without sym- 
 pathy from the State. In these respects the con- 
 dition of the race is unquestionably better in the 
 Southern States. If they must be a degraded 
 race in the North as well as in the South, I hesi- 
 tate not to affirm that our domestic system affords 
 them a much better security for a competent and 
 comfortable living. It makes better provision for 
 them in old age and in youth, in sickness and in 
 health, than is secured to them by their so-called 
 liberty in the Northern States. 
 
 Of course, poor f miilies (in the literal sense) in 
 the South do not own slaves. They are usually 
 held by those who at least enjoy the necessaries 
 of hfe. Now, the progress of civilization has 
 established the custom in all such families of shar- 
 ing with their slaves the necessaries, and, not un- 
 frequently, many of the comforts of life. The 
 exceptions only make the rule general. 
 
 Again, the Southern system, by making the 
 African a part of the family circle, brings him into 
 more immediate contact with the habits of civiHzed 
 life, and cultivates a high degree of sympathy be- 
 tween him and his OAvners. Hence, the well- 
 known attachment of slaves to the families in 
 which they were brought up ; and their utter 
 repugnance to being hired to a Northern family, 
 whatever may be their reputation for piety 
 
OF SLAVERY. 181 
 
 ihey are without practical sympathy for them. 
 They often subject them to a degree of hard labor 
 to which they are not accustomed. Many humane 
 men in the South decline hiring their servants to 
 such persons. 
 
 There are evils, it is true, inseparable from the 
 presence of the race in this country, under any 
 circumstances. By conferring on them a mere 
 paper liberty, the Northern States have adroitly 
 freed themselves of a portion of these evils ; but 
 then they have evidently accumulated them upon 
 the African. The policy is marked by no sym- 
 pathy for the blacks. There is much more of 
 selfishness than of benevolence in the working of 
 the system. We conclude that our position is 
 true, that the Africans, being a separate and dis- 
 tinct race of people, who cannot spontaneously 
 amalgamate with the whites, should be placed 
 under a separate and subordinate form of govern- 
 ment, if w^e consult either their welfare or our 
 own. The examples referred to, as proof of the 
 contrary, are strongly confirmatory of the position. 
 
 But to claim for the African political equality 
 with the whites is subject to still stronger objec- 
 tions. We may further appeal to facts in support 
 of our proposition. 
 
 II. They are not, in point of intellectual and 
 moral development, in the condition for freedom ; 
 
182 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 that is, they are not fitted for that measure of 
 self-government which is necessary to pohtica] 
 sovereignt3^ It cannot, therefore, be justly 
 claimed for them. They have no right to it. It 
 would not be to them an essential good, but an 
 essential evil, a curse. To confer it on them, 
 either by an act of direct or gradual emancipation, 
 w^ould be eminently productive of injury to the 
 whole country, and utterly ruinous to them. 
 
 This proposition is capable of division. We 
 will discuss the points in the order in which they 
 stand. 
 
 First. They are not, in point of intellectual 
 and moral development, fitted for that measure of 
 self-government which is necessary to political 
 sovereignty. 
 
 We have said they are an inferior race. That 
 they are so in the original structure of their minds 
 I pretend not to affirm — nay, I do not believe it. 
 I ])elieve in the unity of the races — that God 
 '' hath made of one hlood all nations of men'' Acts 
 xvii. 26. But that the race in this country are 
 inferior, in the general development of their intel- 
 lectual and moral faculties, I am free to affirm. 
 This I attribute to the crushing influence of the 
 ages of barbarous and pag.an life to which their 
 forefathers in Africa were subjected. For, as, in 
 the progress of civilization, each succeeding gene- 
 
OF SLAYERY. 183 
 
 ration of civilized persons occupies a higher intel- 
 lectual and moral platform, so, in the descending 
 scale of barbarism, each succeeding generation of 
 barbarians occupies a lower platform of intellectual 
 and moral development. Hence, we can account 
 for the exceedingly barbarous condition of the 
 race when first brought into this country. It also 
 follows, that a race of men whose intellects have 
 been long stultified by ages of barbarism, cannot, 
 by any contact with the principles and usages of 
 civilized life, be speedily throw^n up to an elevated 
 platform. 
 
 - This also accounts, in a good degree, for the 
 slow progress which the race has made in civiliza- 
 tion, since their introduction into the country. 
 
 To recur now to the fact, which cannot be con- 
 troverted, that they were brought into this country 
 in a state of extreme barbarism and Pagan igno- 
 rance : in the first place, were they then in a con- 
 dition which fitted them for political sovereignty, 
 and equality of soci.-d rights and privileges with 
 the whites? If they were not for the latter, it is 
 very plain that they w^ere not for the former. It 
 is quite certain that they were not prepared for 
 either. If they were, why did not the Puritans 
 of New England allow them this sovereignty and 
 equality ? By their consent and active coopera- 
 tion, they w^ere brought into the country. Shall 
 
184 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 we revilingly say, with some of their ungrateful 
 descendants, that the good sense and love of hb- 
 erty Vvdiich had so lately driven them from their 
 fatherland, to find an asylum here from the 
 galling yoke of British oppression, had been so en- 
 tirely absorbed in the passion for gain, as to cause 
 them to be deaf to the claims of justice and 
 humanity in behalf of the African ! Shame on 
 their graceless accusers ! No : their good sense 
 forbade that a race of barbarous Pagans, who 
 could not be absorbed by intermarriage, but who 
 must continue to exist amongst them as a separate 
 and inferior race, should be placed on a common 
 platform with free citizens ! Their humanity, no 
 less than their good sense, induced them to adopt 
 the plan of domestic government, or slavery, sanc- 
 tioned by the usages of all civilized nations in 
 similar circumstances. If, for any cause, a horde of 
 barbarians should be introduced into New England 
 in the present day, in numbers too great to be 
 absorbed without injury, and in a physical condi- 
 tion making it improper to permit their absorption 
 by intermarriage with themselves, as in the case 
 of the Africans, does any man in his senses pre- 
 tend to believe that those States would confer on 
 them either social er[uality or political freedom ? 
 They would certainly consider it due to them- 
 selves, no less than to the barbarians, to place 
 
OF SLAVERY. 185 
 
 them under a subordinate gOA'ernment of some 
 kind. YVell, this is precisely Avhat their forefathers 
 did in the case of the Pagan Africans ; and what 
 the Southern colonies did ^Yhen the Xew England- 
 ers brought them South. Thus the origin of 
 domestic slavery, as a political institution, in the 
 country, shows that it was founded in the humanity 
 of our forefathers, no less than in their good sense. 
 Hence the second position stated : Political equal- 
 ity cannot be justly claimed for them. They have 
 no right to it. To them it w^ould not be an essen- 
 tial good, but an essential evil — a curse. 
 
 On the basis of the doctrine of rights discussed 
 in a preceding lecture, this proposition follows as 
 a conclusion from the fact here established in 
 regard to the Africans of this country. 
 
 But it may be said that the barbarous character 
 of the race has greatly improved since their first 
 introduction into this country. This is true — 
 eminently so. And standing, as this fad evidently 
 does, connected with the civilization and redemp- 
 tion of a wdiole continent of barbarians, upon whom 
 the crushing sceptre of Pagan ignorance has lain 
 for unnumbered ages, it fully vindicates both the 
 wisdom and benevolence of the providence of God, 
 wdiich permitted their introduction in such vast 
 numbers into civilized life, as affording the only 
 means of accomplishing his humane design. 
 
4 
 
 186 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 But the question of practical interest at this 
 point is, Have they been so far raised in the scale 
 of intellectual and moral elevation as to acquire 
 for them the right in question ? This point can 
 be settled only by an appeal to facts. I hesitate 
 not to allow, that if they are, it may be justly 
 claimed for them, because they are in that moral 
 condition which justly entitles them to it. It is 
 also admitted that if at the same time, they are 
 in a condition to be absorbed by a spontaneous 
 amalgamation, they are entitled to it here; and 
 much more so than a certain other class, wdio are 
 flockina- into the country, and to whom the ri^ht 
 is accorded w^ithout scruple ! This latter, how- 
 ever, is certainly not the case, ns the facts before 
 alluded to do clearly show. If, then, they be 
 entitled to politic;d freedom, they should be re- 
 moved to another territory. Africa is the rightful 
 home of the Africans. Thither they must go, if 
 they should ever be fitted for self-government. 
 Providence has wisely forecast this result, and is 
 rapidly building up a free government on the co;ist 
 of Africa, as their future home, and the centre 
 of civilization and Christianity to that long-be- 
 nighted continent. 
 
 But what of the question — Ave they indeed 
 fitted for politicd sovereignty? That many of 
 the free colored population, and some among the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 187 
 
 slaves, may be so, I think is more than prob- 
 ably true. Of the former I would say, that it is 
 a duty they owe themselves no less than the 
 country to accept the offer of the Colonization 
 Society, and remove to their native land. For, 
 although it be allowed that they are in the moral 
 condition of freedom, it is obvious that they never 
 can be essentially free, in the bosom of a people 
 with whom they can never amalgamate by mar- 
 ]'iage. And in regard to the latter, I have to say 
 that such of their owners as give that play to 
 their benevolent feelings which their circumstances 
 admit, and, as far as they can do so with propriety, 
 facilitate their removal to Africa by consent, en- 
 title themselves to high commendation, and it is 
 usually awarded them with great unanimity by 
 Southern people. 
 
 But tliat the same admissions can be made in 
 regard to the masses of this population in the 
 country, I utterly deny. On the contrary, I 
 affirm that duty to ourselves and humanity to 
 them alike forbid that civil liberty be conferred 
 on them in Africa, or elsewdiere, and least of all in 
 this country. 
 
 The assumption of Northern ngitators, that the 
 Southern people are not competent judges in this 
 matter, because they are too much interested in 
 their bondage, is as untrue in fact as it is offensive 
 
188 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 to our good sense and morals. No doubt there are 
 many in the South capable of any form of wicked- 
 ness ; nor need it be denied that we are as liable to 
 be misled in our judgments as other people. But it 
 is equally true, that the good sense and integrity of 
 the great mass of our population is a full counter- 
 balance to the acknowledged cupidity of the few. 
 And for a set of Northern agitators, wdio never 
 resided at the South, and who know but little or 
 nothing of the African character, to affect to 
 understand it better than the intelligent communi- 
 ties of the South, is perhaps the coolest piece of 
 impertinent self-conceit to be found on record ! 
 
 The intelligent and honest portion of the country 
 will scarcely fail to allow that the judgment of 
 the Southern people as to the character and capa- 
 bilities of the African is entitled to the highest 
 confidence, and may be regarded as an authorita- 
 tive settlement of this question. What, then, is 
 the concurrent opinion of the Southern people ? I 
 think myself well and fully informed on this 
 point. I hazard nothing in asserting, that it is 
 the general and w^ell-nigh the universal opinion of 
 the inteUigent and pious portion of our entire 
 population, that our African subjects, taken as a 
 whole, are not fitted for any form of political free- 
 dom of which we can conceive ; that they are not 
 in a condition to use it to their own advantage, or 
 
OFSLAVERY. 189 
 
 the peace of the communities in which the}" reside ; 
 and that to confer it upon them, in these circum- 
 stances, would in all probability lead to the extir- 
 pation of the race, as the only means of protecting 
 civilization from the insufferable evils of so direct 
 a contact with an unrestrained barbarism. It is 
 also an opinion equally sanctioned, that if they 
 were prepared for political freedom, it would be 
 scarcely less disastrous to confer it upon them in 
 this country. The reason is obvious. As they 
 cannot spontaneously amalgamate with the whites, 
 they could not, in the nature of things, enjoy free- 
 dom in their midst. Hence, if the masses should 
 ever reach that point, in the progress of civiliza- 
 tion, at which it might be proper to confer on 
 them the rights of political freedom, another loca- 
 tion would have to be sought for them. 
 
 The Southern people (using the term in the 
 sense specified) constitute a large portion of the 
 whole Union. They have progressed as far in 
 civilization, and, in many respects, much farther 
 than any people in the whole country. A very 
 large portion of them are confessedly pious, as 
 well as intelligent. Taken as a whole, they are 
 as eminently entitled to be regarded a rehgious 
 people as any other people , on the face of the 
 globe. Now, that such a people, so obviously 
 entitled to the highest consideration throughout 
 
190 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the civilized world, should, in their circumstances 
 of proximity to the African race, and long-con- 
 tinued personal acquaintance with their habits and 
 character, their capabilities and their liabilities, be 
 of the settled and almost undisputed opinion that 
 they are not competent to self-government; and 
 that, in their present circumstances, both the law 
 of reciprocity and the law of benevolence to the 
 African forbid that the rights of pohtical freedom 
 be accorded to them, does appear to me to afford 
 the most conclusive settlement of this question of 
 fact that the subject is capable of receiving. For, 
 although ca question of f^ict, it is capable of no 
 more conclusive settlement than an enlightened 
 public opinion can afford ; and who are so Avell 
 situated to form an opinion as the free and intelli- 
 gent communities of the South ? and wdio can be 
 more honest in its expression ? 
 
 As we cannot suppose the agitators of the 
 country on this subject to be ignorant of the fact 
 that such is the opinion of the Southern people, 
 and as we cannot allow that they are incapable of 
 appreciating the weight of this testimony, we 
 reach the conclusion that they are the victims of 
 a fanaticism resulting from a mistaken religious 
 opinion and feeling, which hurries them madly for- 
 ward, as regardless of the extent to which they 
 implicate their own good sense as they are of the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 101 
 
 extent to which they are aspersing the reputation 
 of their fellow-citizens, or the degree to which 
 they are actually putting to hazard the lives of 
 the very people for whom they piously persuade 
 themselves they are laboring. 
 
 Those whose conduct does not admit of this 
 apology are generally men who occupy the arena 
 of political agitation. Their object, evidently, is 
 to accumulate political power in the so-called free 
 States, and to promote the ends of personal ambi- 
 tion. The fanatical excitement of the country 
 may be turned to the account of these objects. 
 Hence, they labor with a zeal worthy of a better 
 cause. We of the South regard the agitators in 
 Congress, for the most part, to be of this class. 
 We consider them highly culpable, if, indeed, they 
 be not actually criminal. For we cannot suppose 
 them to be ignorant of the flicts and reasonings 
 here adduced. And besides these, there are other 
 facts of great and conclusive authority in the set- 
 tlement of this question, which we cannot suppose 
 have escaped the attention of men occupying their 
 high stations. I propose to notice some of them 
 iu the next lecture. 
 
192 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE NECESSITY FOR THE INSTITUTION OF DOMESTIC 
 SLAVERY EXEMPLIFIED BY FACTS. 
 
 The attempts made at domestic colonization — The result of tho 
 experiment in the case of our free colored population — The 
 colonization experiment on the coast of Africa — The example 
 of the Canaanitish nations — Summary of the argument on the 
 general point, and inferences. 
 
 " That the Africans are not^ in point of intel- 
 lectual and moral development, fitted for that 
 measure of self-government which is necessary to 
 political sovereignty : that political equality can- 
 not be justly claimed for them — they have no 
 right to it : that to them it could not be an essen- 
 tial good, but an essential evil, a curse ; and that 
 to confer it on them, by an act of direct or gradual 
 emancipation, would be eminently productive of 
 injury to the whole country, and utterly ruinous 
 to them." 
 
 This is the general proposition still under con- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 193 
 
 sideration. We haxe already discussed to some 
 extent the first two points. I reserve the subject 
 of emancipation for future lectures. I now pro- 
 ce(jd to exemplify the truth of the positions dis- 
 cussed on this general proposition, and thereby 
 show the actual necessity that we sustain, in the 
 present circumstances of the race, the system of 
 domestic slavery. And, 
 
 First. We adduce the fact of domestic coloniza- 
 tion. 
 
 This has been frequently attempted in the 
 Southern States, and has as often failed for the 
 want of success. Eminently humane, though 
 mistaken men, have tried this experiment with 
 their slaves. Some have tried it on a small scale : 
 standing only as their nominal owners, and giving 
 them the control of their time and labor, and the 
 use of necessary lands for cultivation. Others 
 have tried the same plan on a more extended scale 
 of operations. But if there is a single successful 
 experiment now in operation in the Southern 
 t. ^i^h'Y, I am not aware of it. In every instance 
 the o.. ' "s have been compelled to resume the 
 control of Jieir slaves, to prevent them from be- 
 coming a tax on the community, and a nuisance 
 in the neighborhood. 
 
 Second. The result of the experiment in the 
 case of the free colored population, is equally in 
 9 
 
194 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 proof that the race, taken collectively, is not fitted 
 for self-government. 
 
 Humane individuals have, from time to time, 
 freed their slaves. In this way a large number 
 has been accumulated. There is not a county in 
 an}^ one of the older States in which there are 
 not many, and in some a large number. In this 
 experiment we have a full test of what the African 
 is in the enjoyment of civil liberty, or of his capa- 
 city for self-government, at least in the midst of a 
 people with whom he cannot amalgamate. The 
 result is daily before our eyes, and may be known 
 and read of all men. After a few honorable ex- 
 ceptions, the multitude are by no means as weU 
 fed or clothed, and otherwise provided for, as the 
 slaves in their vicinity. They make but little 
 provision against the inclemency of winter, and in 
 sickness are often the objects of public charity. 
 A disposition to live by petty depredations upon 
 society, instead of by honest industry, and a gen- 
 eral depravation of morals, are characteristic of 
 the caste. Their retrograde tendency is so obvious, 
 that no doubt is entertained among men of reflec- 
 tion that, but for the props and checks thrown 
 around them by the laws and usages of civiliza- 
 tion, they would soon relapse into the savage 
 sta,te. These fiicts are so obvious as long since 
 to have engaged the attention of our domestics. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 195 
 
 Among them, the term '^'free nigger" is one of 
 deepest reproach. Those who respect themselves, 
 it is well known, form no matrimonial alliance 
 w^ith them, from sheer contempt of their degrada- 
 tion. I have freqnently met, in my travels, with 
 old men, in independent circumstances, who by 
 the doctrines of the pulpit, enforced by the per- 
 sonal influence of a favorite minister in private 
 life, were induced, in early life, to free theu^ 
 slaves, who now confess, wdth the result of their w 
 mistaken piety before their eyes, that they con- 
 ferred no boon upon them, but rather inflicted an 
 injury both upon them and upon society. They 
 console themselves with the reflection that they 
 intended all for the best. This picture is not sur- 
 charged. You will do me the justice to remember 
 that no dark picture can be drawn without dipping 
 the pencil in dark colors. 
 
 I have an interest in a slave, who is no doubt 
 in the moral condition of freedom, as before defined. 
 I have assured this man that he ought to go to 
 Liberia, in Africa, and have insisted on his con- 
 senting to go. But still I am so deeply convinced 
 of the truth and importance of the facts here 
 stated in regard to our free colored population, 
 that a sense of duty to him and to the community 
 forbid that he be placed among the number. 
 
 But it may be supposed that a popular feehng 
 
196 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 of selfish hostility serves to crush a people who 
 would otherwise rise at once in the scale of civil- 
 ization. But this is not so. I repeat, with con- 
 fidence, this is not so. The honorable exceptions, 
 to which allusion has already been made, are uni- 
 versally respected. '"John" (to use a general 
 title) " is as honest a man, and has as much self- 
 respect, as any man in the neighborhood," is a 
 meed of praise which is readily accorded to free 
 blacks, by all intelligent citizens, and with peculiar 
 satisfaction, whenever it can be done. Such men 
 of course enjoy the confidence and respect of their 
 white neighbors in a high degree. But, I repeat, 
 that examples of this kind are rare among our 
 free colored population. No ! an original cause 
 of this general degradation is found in the fact 
 stated, that is, that they are not prepared for self- 
 government, and therefore can derive but little, if 
 any, benefit from its political and social advantages. 
 The crushing weight of ages of barbarism still 
 presses heavily upon the intellect of the African, 
 and in his present circumstances, to say the least, he 
 is too feeble to rise. It is the accident of his posi- 
 tion that he is free, and not the law of his intellec- 
 tual and moral nature that makes him so. He is 
 a slave in fact ; and without the restraints of the 
 domestic system, the tendencies of his barbarous 
 nature are left, in a good degree, to take their 
 
OF SLAVERY. 1^7 
 
 downward way. In many counties within our 
 knowledge containing a large population of free 
 colored persons, I am satisfied that nothing but 
 the humanity developed by a high state of civil- 
 ization, prevents the adoption of a summary pro- 
 cess, by which the nuisance would be abated. 
 
 But if the oljjection I am combating be modi- 
 fied and restricted to the influence of that usage 
 which denies them social freedom, I will agree 
 that it has weight. It certainly retards the pro- 
 gress of those who are rising to the moral condi- 
 tion of freedom : hangs like an incubus upon those 
 who have already risen to that state, and effect- 
 ually shuts the door of enjoyment against them. 
 This is no doubt true. But why are they denied 
 social freedom? The answer is. Because they 
 cannot amalgamate by a spontaneous intermarriage 
 with the whites. But this is a disability under 
 which God, by the nature of their physical consti- 
 tution, has placed them, and which the progress 
 of civilization itself forbids the whites to disregard. 
 Therefore it is obvious that they never can be 
 free in a community of whites. Because, as there 
 is no essential freedom, but that which is insepa- 
 rable from social as well as political freedom, and 
 as there can be no social freedom, but that which 
 coincides with the law of amalgamation by inter- 
 marriage; and as Divine Providence has closed 
 
198 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the door against this, it follows that the African 
 never can be free in the midst of a community of 
 whites. 
 
 But still, that this is not the primary and essen- 
 tial cause of the extreme degradation of those 
 Africans upon whom the experiment of freedom 
 has been tried in this country and found to be a 
 failure, and that it is orioinallv traceable to the 
 fact that they are not, intellectually and morally, 
 prepared for self-government, is still more clearly 
 deducible from a 
 
 Third consideration — the colonization experi- 
 ment on the coast of Africa. 
 
 The colony of Liberia has already taken its 
 place among the nations of the earth as a free and 
 independent government. No colony has ever 
 prospered as that has done. As a rising nation, it 
 shares the sympathy of the civilized world. It is 
 destined to become the asylum of the Africans 
 of America, and the centre of civilization to the 
 long-benighted continent of Africa. Thither all 
 eyes are turned as the oasis of hope in her desert 
 history. 
 
 But let us briefly trace the progress of this 
 hopeful colony. How has it arisen to its present 
 position? It has been built up from the free 
 colored population of this country — colonized by 
 tlif^'r own consent. Herein Divine Providence has 
 
OF SLAVERY. 199 
 
 wisely discriniinated the proper suljects for this 
 p'eat eiiterprir<e. His own estaljlishecl order of 
 things has effected a judicious discrimination of 
 the proper persons for this work. The sacrifices 
 to be made were great. The chmate was inhosi)it- 
 able. Extreme hazard of life, in all cases, was to 
 be encountered in the process of acclimation. A 
 Pagan and savage population were to be encoun- 
 tered and subdued. Every thing gave undoubted 
 indications, that if ever the tree of African liberty 
 should be made to flourish upon that Pagan coast, 
 its roots must be watered by the blood of many 
 patriot martyrs. In these circumstances, it is 
 obvious that there would be no volunteers in this 
 work but men of the right stamp. Those only 
 whose intellects furnished the flint and steel from 
 which the spark of liberty could be struck, and 
 upon the altar of whose hearts the fires of freedom 
 could be kindled, to hght their pathway to that 
 far-off and inhospitable land, would embark in this 
 great work. Those who were in the condition of 
 freedom — whose hearts throbbed with the pulsa- 
 tions of liberty — were the first to embark in the 
 cause of African civilization. For several years 
 the Avork went on — slowly, but surely. Many 
 fell in the conflict. Still the work went on ! The 
 spirit which animated the patriot colonists is elo- 
 f[uently expressed in the dying words of the 
 
200 PHILOSOPHY .\ N D P 11 A C T I G E 
 
 immortal Cox : '' Let a thousand missionaries fall, 
 ere Africa be given up !" 
 
 Thus far the work went on in the order of 
 Divine Providence. The voluntary principle was 
 discriminating. Those who were in the moral 
 condition of freedom gladly embraced the oppor- 
 tunity. Those who were below that condition 
 were deaf to the call. But this divinely sanc- 
 tioned process was quite too slow for the fiery 
 zeal of emancipationists. The door of Providence 
 did not open fast enough ! Encouraged by past 
 successes, they attempted to hasten the work. 
 Forgetful of the original and avowed objects of 
 the Society — the colonization of the free people 
 of color, 2uith their otvn consent — the friends of 
 colonization began to preach manumission to the 
 owners of slaves. Many hearkened to the call as 
 a Macedonian appeal to their feelings of benevo- 
 lence. The slaves upon large plantations were 
 emancipated, and funds placed at the disposal of 
 the Society, to remove and settle them as free 
 citizens in the new colony. They were sent off 
 in considerable numbers, for several years. The 
 result was disastrous. It threatened speedily to 
 reduce the whole colony to a savage state. They 
 w^ere not in the moral condition of freedom — they 
 were not prepared for that degree or form of self- 
 a'overnment. Thev could not be absorbed bv the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 201 
 
 body politic, without imparting their character to 
 the body. The full measure of their golden 
 dreams was simply liberty to do nothing. We 
 need only glance at the results. Mr. Ashman, at 
 that time Governor of the colony, remonstrated, in 
 official communications, with the Colonization So- 
 ciety in this country : the officers generally, and 
 other eminent citizens, also remonstrated in private 
 letters to their friends — all begging to be spared 
 the calamities that awaited them from so great an 
 influx of population, evidently unprepared for 
 freedom, and praying that they might be strength- 
 ened, as heretofore, by a judicious selection of 
 persons in some degree, at least, quahfied for civil 
 liberty ! 
 
 If the colonization experiment has proved the 
 capacity of the African, under suitable develop- 
 ments, for self-government, (w^hich, in our view, 
 it has very satisfactorily done,) it has proved, 
 with equal clearness, that without those develop- 
 ments he is wholly unfit for it; and that the 
 masses of the race are, as yet, undeveloped, and 
 consequently unfit for political sovereignty. 
 
 These facts are open to the observation of all 
 men. They strongly rebuke the restless agitators 
 of the country. They clearly confirm our position 
 that the Africans in America are not, as yet, in 
 ihe moral condition for freedom. I have proved 
 
202 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 in a former lecture that political sovereignty is 
 not a natural but an acquired right. The facts 
 
 J here adduced demonstratively prove that they 
 have not yet accjuired this right, and that there- 
 fore it cannot be justly claimed for them. But 
 more than this — they aiTord the strongest pre- 
 sumption (and further than the presumption in its 
 favor, I do not design to notice this topic at this 
 time) that the emancipation of the slaves, in their 
 
 ^ present moral con^lition, confers no benefit upon 
 them, but is calculated to inflict a deep injury both 
 upon them and upon society. 
 
 It is a general, and indeed an almost universal 
 opinion in the South, that any thing like a system 
 of emancipation, whether direct or gradual, by 
 v;hich the number of free colored persons should 
 be materially increased in the Southern States, 
 would inevitably be followed by their indiscrimi- 
 nate massacre, as the only means of abating an 
 insufferable nuisance, unless the citizens w^ere to 
 forsake the soil in favor of a barbarous horde. 
 Such an opinion, (I may repeat,) so generally en- 
 tertained by so large a community of enlightened 
 and virtuous citizens, who are in immediate prox- 
 imity with the race, and acquainted with their 
 character from early life, taken in connection with 
 the historical facts here enumerated, affording to 
 any mind so clear a proof of the correctness of 
 
OF SLAVERY. 203 
 
 their opinion, should be admitted as an authorita- 
 tive settlement of the position I have taken on 
 this branch of the subject. Hence, we may con- 
 clude that the law of reciprocity and the law of 
 benevolence require that the Africans be continued 
 under an inferior and subordinate government. 
 
 The question again recurs, What form of gov- 
 ernment shall this be ? Of course, it must be a 
 modification of a military despotism, or a modifi- 
 cation of the patriarchal form of government. I 
 am free to say that I can conceive of none so 
 appropriate as that adopted by civilization, for 
 the purpose of controlling a barbarous or semi- 
 barbarous race (and especially such as could not 
 amalgamate) dw^elling in the midst of a civilized 
 community : that is, the system of domestic gov- 
 ernment now in operation in the Southern States. 
 If any shall devise another, it will, at least^ have 
 the merit of novelty to commend it to public 
 attention. 
 
 The correctness of the doctrine here assumed, 
 that domestic slavery is the appropriate form of 
 government for a people in the circumstances of 
 the Africans in America, is very strikingly exem- 
 plified by the history of the remnant of Canaan- 
 ites, who still dwelt in the land after its subjuga- 
 tion and settlement by the ancient Israehtes. An 
 inquiry into the Divine policy in regard to these 
 
204 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 heathen will fully vindicate this position. The 
 civil code of a nation is admitted to be the best 
 index of the habits and morals of the people. 
 This remark, however, cannot always be taken 
 without modification. We shall greatly underrate 
 the civilization of the Israelites, who first settled 
 the land of Canaan, if we judge them alone by 
 their civil code. Smiting and cursing father and 
 mother, brutal assaults upon pregnant married 
 women, digging pits to destroy neighbors' cattle, 
 (Ex. xxi.,) seduction, adultery, dealing with fa- 
 milic^r spirits and witchcraft, and various wicked- 
 ness which delicacy forbids to repeat, (see Lev. 
 xviii.,) unnatural marriages, such as with mothers, 
 sisters, children, and grandchildren, (Lev. xviii.,) 
 are all practices which are mentioned in a man- 
 ner that shows they were common in that day. 
 If we judge the morals of the Israelites by the 
 statutes here referred to, we shall certainly con- 
 clude that they had not the slightest claim to the 
 character of a civihzed people ; but it is equally 
 certain that such judgment would be wide of the 
 truth. For although in many respects the na- 
 tional morals and standard of public opinion and 
 feeling w^ere in a feeble condition, as seen in their 
 obvious prochvity to idolatry, still those laws are 
 far from being characteristic of the morals of the 
 nation. The Divine record does not leave us to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 205 
 
 oonjecture the cause for these laws. It is written, 
 Lev. xviii., '' Defile not ye yourselves in any of 
 these ; for in all these the nations are defiled 
 which I cast out before you. For all these abomi- 
 nations have the men of the land done, which 
 were before you, and the land is defiled ;" and, 
 '^ Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations 
 which I cast out before you ; for they com- 
 mitted all these things, and therefore I abhorred 
 them." 
 
 We can be at no loss to see that the remnant 
 of heathen who survived the slaughter, and still 
 dwelt in the land which the Israelites settled, 
 were in such power, and accustomed to such 
 opinions and habits of bestiality, as to render the 
 progress of civilization, in unrestrained contact 
 wnth them, at least a problem, if not an absolute 
 impossibility. 
 
 Equality of political and social condition with 
 the Jews would have made short work of civiliza- 
 tion in that age. Hence we find that bold lines 
 of demarcation were drawn between the Jews and 
 those depraved " strangers." Both political and 
 social equality were forbidden. The Jew^s were 
 authorized (Lev. xxv.) to make " bond-men and 
 bond-maids" in perpetuity (unlike the slavery of 
 their brethren, which was for a definite period) of 
 the " heathen that were round about them, and of 
 
206 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the children of the strangers that sojourned among 
 them; of them they should buy and of their fami- 
 lies that were with them, w^hich they begat in the 
 land" — '' they should take them as an inheritance 
 for their children, and they should be their bond- 
 men for ever." The theory of certain pseudo- 
 philanthropists of the present day, Avould have led 
 them to prate loudly in behalf of equality, and the 
 duty and practicability of speedily elevating this 
 people in the scale of civilization. But He who 
 was too wise to err and too good to do wrong, 
 knew better, and ordered differently. Barbarism 
 — long-continued barbarism — cannot be speedil}^ 
 elevated by any contact with the forms of civiliza- 
 tion. He who denied them political sovereignty, 
 (except on certain conditions, which clearly indi- 
 cated such an appreciation of the privilege as pro- 
 perly entitled them to the right,) at the same time 
 provided that they be denied social equality, and 
 reduced to a state of absolute slavery — they w^ere 
 made bond-slaves in perpetuity. Herein they were 
 placed under the ban of social as well as pohtical 
 proscription — a position in which they could do 
 the least possible mischief to the progress of civil- 
 ization, but would contribute greatly to its ad- 
 vancement, and thereby promote their own im- 
 provement much beyond any thing they could have 
 attained in their original heathen state. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 207 
 
 The Africans when first brought hi to this coun- 
 try were not a whit better in morals, and Avere 
 greatly inferior in intellect to the ancient inhabit- 
 ants of Canaan. And, although it be admitted 
 that they have improved, the facts given clearly 
 prove that they are still incompetent to self- 
 government. They are, therefore, no more en- 
 titled to the right of political sovereignty than the 
 Canaanites were. But more than this, the Can- 
 aanites did not materially differ from the Jews in 
 their physical condition. There were no physical 
 reasons a2:ainst amalsfamation. Intermarria2:e, it 
 is true, was forbidden, but it w^as for reasons 
 growing out of their heathen state alone. Whilst 
 that state should last, the common interests of each 
 in civilization forbade such social equality ; but 
 this cause out of the way, the Canaanites could be 
 absorbed and lost in the stream of posterity. But 
 not so with the African, as we have shown. He 
 is destined to exist as a separate people. We do 
 not say he shall not, but he cannot to any mate- 
 rial extent amal2;amate with the Caucasian race. 
 If, therefore, it was proper for the Jews to make 
 slaves of the Canaanites, for a much stronger 
 reason it is now right for us to retain the African 
 in a similar state, and until such time as Provi- 
 dence shall — if ever — open the door for his return 
 to his fatherland. 
 
208 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 On the general question, Is the system of 
 domestic government existing amongst ns, and 
 involving the abstract principle of slavery, justi- 
 fied by the circumstances of the case, and there- 
 fore right ? we reach an affirmative conclusion, for 
 the reasons : 
 
 I. That the Africans are a distinct race of 
 people, who cannot amalgamate to any material 
 extent with the w^hites, and who, therefore, must 
 continue to exist as a separate class. 
 
 II. That they are, as a class, decidedly inferior 
 to the whites in point of intellectual and moral 
 development, so much so as to be incompetent 
 to self-government. Although they have shared 
 largely in the progress of civilization, they havt 
 not reached this point. The proof is : 
 
 1. Such is the almost universal opinion of the 
 most intelligent and pious communities throughoui 
 the whole Southern country, who certainly are well 
 acquainted with their character and capabilities, 
 and therefore fully competent to judge in their case. 
 
 2. The experiments at domestic colonization 
 which have been made in this country prove it. 
 
 3. The experiments in the case of the free 
 colored population spread through the country are 
 equally in proof 
 
 4. The colonization experiment on the coast of 
 Africa is still more conclusive. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 209 
 
 III. That domestic slavery is the appropriate 
 form of govermnent for a people in such circum- 
 stances, is fully exemphfied by the Divine pro- 
 cedure in the case of the heathen subdued by the 
 ancient Israelites. 
 
 We infer : 
 
 1. That they have no right to social equality or 
 to political sovereignty — that to accord them either, 
 in their present moral condition, would be a curse 
 instead of a blessing. It would in all probability 
 lead to the extermination of the race, and inflict a 
 deep injury both upon the moral and physical con- 
 dition of the whole country. 
 
 2. That every consideration of humanity and 
 prudence requires that, until a better form of sub- 
 ordinate government shall be devised, they must 
 be continued under the system of domestic slavery 
 now in operation. 
 
210 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 EMANCIPATION DOCTRINES DISCUSSED. 
 
 Gradual emancipation, the popular plan — It would operate to 
 collect the slaves into a few States, cut them off from contact 
 with civilization, and reduce them to barbarism — It would 
 make an opening for Northern farmers and their menials to 
 come into those States from which they retired — The modifica- 
 tions which the system of slavery has undergone within late 
 years — A comparison of the menials of the free and of the slave 
 States, and the only plan of emancipation admissible — The 
 gospel the only remedy for the evils of slavery — Paul's phil- 
 osophy and practice, 1 Tim. vi. 1-5. 
 
 Immediate emancipation is the scheme of the 
 abolitionists proper, whilst gradual emancipation 
 is the favorite plan of the anti-slavery party. The 
 ground we should take is this, that no plan of 
 emancipation, either immediate or gradual, is adapt- 
 ed to the present moral condition and relative cir- 
 cumstances of our African population. Nothing 
 of the kind could at this time be attended with 
 good, but only with evil. 
 
 I limit this discussion to the subject of gradual 
 
OF SLAVERY. 211 
 
 emancipation, because the reasons by which we 
 invalidate this doctrine will, a fortiori.^ disprove 
 the doctrine of immediate emancipation. 
 
 It is said that a system of gradual emancipa- 
 tion succeeded well in the Northern States, and 
 that it would succeed equally well in the Southern. 
 Bat I deny the assumption in each case. 
 
 There never w^as a large slave population in the 
 Northern States, owing to the unsuitableness of 
 the climate. The question arises. How did this 
 system operate with the few they had? It is 
 well known that the ovrners anticipated the time 
 appointed for the law of emancipation to go into 
 operation, and sold their slaves in the South ! 
 This law only operated to transfer the slaves, for 
 the most part, to a climate and soil more congenial 
 to their constitution and habits. The operation 
 of the scheme, therefore, resulted only in the 
 emancipation of a few of the whole number, (see 
 Lecture I., page 22;) and these few, as has been 
 proved, have, by the social, and, we may add, in 
 many instances, by the municipal regulations of 
 the States within which they reside, been essen- 
 tially injured by the change instead of benefited. 
 Hence the scheme did not succeed well in the 
 Northern States. And can it be assumed that it 
 w^ould succeed better in the Southern States ? On 
 the contrary, the result would be much more fatal 
 
 • 
 
212 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 in the Southern, for the reason that we have a 
 much larger African slave population than existed 
 in the Northern States at the time their emanci- 
 pation laws were adopted. Now, suppose (what, 
 however, can scarcely, if at all, be allowed a sup- 
 posable case) that all the Southern States should 
 simultaneously pass laws, providing for the gradual 
 emancipation of the slaves, and hence, ultimately, 
 effect their emancipation, as provided for by law, 
 for the reason that there would be no market 
 open for the sale of them, as was the case when 
 the scheme was attempted at the North : even in 
 such a state of things, you cannot fail to perceive 
 that the propriety of such a measure turns en- 
 tirely upon the truth or error of a position already 
 discussed. 
 
 If my position be correct, (and it is evidently 
 established by the facts adduced in the preceding 
 lecture,) that their mental imbecility and moral 
 degradation is such that, whilst it remains a fact 
 that for physical and uncontrollable causes they 
 cannot amalgamate, any material addition to our 
 present number of free colored population would 
 result in their extermination, humanity, leaving 
 all other reasons out of the account, would forbid 
 the measure ! Nor can I persuade myself that 
 there is an emancipationist, however fanatical, this 
 side the strange delirium of a deliberately wicked 
 
OF SLAVERY. 218 
 
 purpose f do wrong, who would not " pause upon 
 the brink of this Rubicon," when assured that the 
 Southern people generally believed that extermi- 
 nation would, in all probability, be the result of 
 his priceless experiment. 
 
 But it is extremely idle to suppose that all the 
 Southern States would simultaneously pass such 
 a law ; nor does the scheme assume that they 
 would do so. No : the plan advocated is, that the 
 District of Columbia, and the States of Delaware 
 and Maryland, should first emancipate their slaves ; 
 then Virginia, then Kentucky, then Missouri, and 
 so on, until the work should be consummated by 
 a gradual process, requiring several years in each 
 State. Let us now inquire what this plan pro- 
 mises. 
 
 If the owners of slaves in the States which first 
 in order passed such a law, did not anticipate the 
 time of its taking effect, (as in the case before 
 referred to,) and sell them in the States where 
 no such law had, as yet, been passed, the result 
 would be, as already stated, an accumulation of 
 free colored population, with its inevitable conse- 
 quences. But this would certainly not be the 
 general operation of such a law. For if cupidity 
 should not prompt a different course, the owners, 
 foreseeing the results of such an accumulation of 
 free colored population, both to the whites and 
 
214 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the blacks, would anticipate the law, in by far the 
 greater number of instances, and sell their slaves 
 in the States in which no such law had been 
 passed. Still, many, no doubt, would not take 
 this course : a want of forecast, and most generally 
 a mistaken notion of humanity, would prevent its 
 adoption. In this way, we cannot hesitate to 
 believe that the accumulation of free colored 
 population w^ould be so great as to induce their 
 extermination at no distant day. This calamity 
 could be averted only by a sale of the slaves into 
 some other State in anticipation of the laAv provid- 
 ing for their manumission. 
 
 Now, wdiatever of mere selfishness there may 
 be in the proposed measure, nothing is more cer- 
 tain than that it is entirely destitute of all human- 
 ity for the slave, and of all just regard to his 
 progress in civilization, and his more speedy eleva- 
 tion to moral fitness for freedom. For by the 
 time this work had progressed through the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, the States of Delaware, Mary- 
 land, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and, it might 
 be. North Carolina and Tennessee, the far greater 
 part of the numerous slave population of the wdiole 
 country would be accumulated in the remaining 
 States of the South and South-west. This would 
 be the inevitable result. For the free-soilers, it 
 seems, are determined, if the effect of agitation 
 
OF RL AVERT. 215 
 
 can accomplish it at the ballot-box, that there 
 shall be a cordon of free States, formed by the 
 newly acquired territory of New Mexico and Cali- 
 fornia ; and in this case there w^ould be no further 
 outlet for the retiring slave. 
 
 Let us now^ inquire what would be the effect of 
 the accumulation of the race within the limits of 
 a few States : 
 
 At present, that element of slavery which is 
 properly called domestic, confers incalculable ad- 
 vantages on the slave. By this feature of the 
 system, as it now operates, the slaves are distrib- 
 uted in small numbers in different families. There 
 they are brought, every one of them, into more or 
 less of immediate contact with a high state of 
 civilization. Many of them pass the early part 
 of their lives in the dweUing-houses, and around 
 the tables and firesides of their owners, and in the 
 midst of all the company visiting the house. 
 Others are engaged in field and mechanical pur- 
 suits, requiring frequent intercourse with the 
 whites. Their Sabbaths are often spent (and it 
 is daily becoming more and more so) in the midst 
 of our worshipping assemblies. In all these ways, 
 to go no farther, they enjoy the means of im- 
 provement, and are making daily progress in civil- 
 ization. This, without doubt, is the plan indicated 
 by Providence, as affording the most natural 
 
216 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 means of accomplishing their ultimate fitness for a 
 more desirable form of civil liberty. 
 
 That it cannot be said of any material portion 
 of them that they have thrown oiT the incubus of 
 preceding ages of barbarism, may be true ; yet it 
 is equally true that their progress in civihzation, 
 and that in an increasing ratio, is perfectly obvious 
 to any man whose age and acquaintance with the 
 race would entitle his opinion to credit. Any old 
 man amongst us is prepared to speak of the great 
 improvement of slaves within thirty or forty years 
 past. The domestic element of the system has 
 accomplished this improvement, and will certainly 
 in process of time greatly elevate the race above 
 what it now is ; and they are now a very different 
 people from their forefathers who first came into 
 this country. I have no hesitation in behoving 
 that it is the grand design of Providence that they 
 shall be thus fitted (the far greater portion of 
 them) for position in Africa as the source of civil- 
 ization to that long-benighted continent. 
 
 Now, to take from the present system its do- 
 mestic element, or, what is virtually the same 
 thing, to place it under such disabihties as t-o pre- 
 vent its benevolent results, w^ould arrest the progress 
 of African civihzation, and put off his moral eleva- 
 tion for ages to come. And this is precisely the 
 effect which the accumulation of all the slaves of 
 
OF SLAVERY. 21 » 
 
 the whole country within the limits of a few^ 
 States must have. The domestic element of the 
 system would be effectually crippled, if not entirely 
 destroyed. A large number of slaves w^ould be 
 congregated on single plantations. The whole 
 territory w^ould be in the possession of but a few 
 wealthy planters. They w^ould chiefly reside in 
 the cities and more healthy districts of the 
 country. Their plantations w^ould be under the 
 control of stewards. The steward and his family 
 (usually small) would constitute the w^hole white 
 population on a plantation, numbering, as would 
 often be the case, several hundred slaves ; and the 
 same state of things would exist, to a greater or less 
 extent, through large districts of country. This 
 would be a condition of the race essentially differ- 
 ent from that in which they are placed by the 
 present system ; and we cannot fail to perceive 
 that they would be well-nigh cut off from all con- 
 tact wdth civilization. Instead of continuing to 
 rise in the scale of civilization, as they Avill do 
 under the present system, they would begin at 
 once to relapse into the barbarism of their original 
 pagan state. This result w^ould be inevitable — 
 only so far as their dow^nward progress might be 
 arrested by the occasional voice of the self-sacri- 
 ficing missionary, calling to the altars of Christian 
 w^orship ! Would this 1)0 humane ? Rather, would 
 10 
 
218 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 it not be brutal ? Yet such would be the result 
 of the scheme of " gradual emancipation !" 
 
 There is, however, another result of this pseudo- 
 philanthropy that I need not omit to mention : 
 the removal of the slaves from the States named, 
 and the extermination of the remaining free 
 colored population, should they be found to exist 
 (as it is most likely they would) in numbers so 
 great as to constitute a nuisance requiring sum- 
 mary abatement, would make a fine opening for 
 the enterprising farmers of the Northern States 
 to come in and possess these fertile hills and val- 
 leys, abounding in wealth and blessed with a most 
 salubrious climate. It would also afford a fine 
 outlet for their own menial population, Avhich 
 threatens so many and serious results to them — 
 the papal vice and ignorance from Ireland and the 
 continent of Europe, which is now flooding the 
 free States. How far these lofty considerations 
 may constitute items in the catalogue of motives 
 which prompt the political agitators of the country 
 to press the subject of African emancipation, I 
 pretend not to say ! One thing, however, I may 
 say in behalf of the Southern people, and that is, 
 that as they have no idea of perpetrating these 
 cruel wrongs upon the unfortunate race which 
 Providence has thrown amongst them, so they 
 expect to have no use for those depraved and 
 
OF SLAVERY. 219 
 
 perishing menials. They prefer the slaves, in nny 
 view of the subject. We may conclude, then, that 
 the position estabUshed is not weakened in any 
 degree by considerations of either direct or gradual 
 emancipation. No : the emancipation and removal 
 to Africa of those, and those only, whose moral 
 and social condition entitles them to a higher form 
 of political freedom, as the voluntary act of the 
 individual owner, is the only natural and safe 
 method of emancipation. It affords the only hope 
 of Africa, and of the African in America. 
 
 The proposition discussed, and, I think, clearly 
 established, relates to the essential propriety and 
 the fitness of the system of domestic slavery as an 
 institution. Whether this institution is capable 
 of improvement, and, if so, what improvements 
 are demanded by the progress of civilization, are 
 questions quite independent of any thing yet dis- 
 cussed. These topics may engage our attention 
 at a future period in these lectures. I would only 
 remark, in this place, that the system has under- 
 gone great modifications since its adoption. Laws 
 and usages that were, no doubt, eminently adapted 
 to the extremely barbarous character of the race, 
 when first brought into the country, have lon*]^ 
 since become obsolete, and the same may be said 
 of many subsequent regulations. Even the strin- 
 gent measures adopted on the rise of abolition 
 
220 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 excitement in late years, have had but a brief 
 authority. The progress of civilization is the 
 same in its results in this case as in that of any 
 other people. As a state of barbarism yields to 
 the liaht of civihzation, men are more and more 
 disposed to do right, and the laws and usages 
 which were before necessary to compel them to 
 do right, are thereby superseded, and soon grow 
 into disuse. Hence, many of our Northern citi- 
 zens wdio form their opinions (as many do) of the 
 practical character of this institution at the present 
 day from the historical account of the laws and 
 usages of a former period, regardless of the fact 
 that they have become, for the most part, obso- 
 lete, entertain a very incorrect opinion. The in- 
 stitution at this day is a very different aflfliir, prac- 
 tically, from wdiat they suppose it to be, judging, 
 as they do, from the laws and usages appropriate 
 to a more barbarous condition of the race. 
 
 I have no hesitation in affirming that in by far 
 the greater number of instances, the condition of 
 Southern fimihes, embracing domestic slaves, is 
 much better (that is, both whites and blacks) than 
 that of the larger number of Northern families, 
 with hired domestics, on large farms. The labor 
 is much less severe, and the discipline much less 
 strict. The Northern family has more frequently 
 to appeal to the authority of civil law, and to the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 221 
 
 right of dismissing unfaithful servants, than the 
 Southern has to appeal to domestic discipline. 
 And still further, the Southern domestic is prac- 
 tically, in all respects save one, quite as much 
 upon a social footing with the white members of 
 the family as the Northern domestic is wdth the 
 family in which he is employed, wdiilst the sym- 
 pathy existing between these different castes in 
 the Southern family is much greater than that 
 which exists in the Northern. 
 
 I acknowledo^e but one difference in recfard to 
 practical social equahty between the domestics of 
 these flimilies. The white domestic, from the fact 
 that he belongs to the same race, is capable, by 
 industry and enterprise, of rising to an entire 
 social footing with his employer, whilst the Afri- 
 can domestic cannot do so. Although the civil 
 law should confer on hini the right to do so, the 
 paramount usages of civihzed life, founded upon 
 his physical condition, would forbid it. This ad- 
 vantage, we admit, is above all price ; but having 
 its foundation in the wdse and inscrutable provi- 
 dence of God, it is without remedy by any means 
 wdiich we can adopt ; and, indeed, why should we 
 wish even to alter a condition of thing's founded 
 in physical nature by Him '' who is too wise to 
 err and too good to do wrong," simply because to 
 our limited view of the Divine economy it pre- 
 
222 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 sents points of friction which, viewing them from 
 another stand-point, we should desire to avoid ! 
 But aside from this advantage, I feel free to affirm, 
 that in every neighborhood which is brought per- 
 manently under the influence of the apostolic pre- 
 cepts enjoining the relative duties of master and 
 slave, the practical working of the system secures 
 to the African a higher degree of essential happi- 
 ness than is found to exist with the whites wdio 
 fill the menial offices of society in the free States. 
 No white man can be satisfied with the position 
 of a menial in society. Perpetually chafed by the 
 chains which fetter all his attempts to rise in the 
 scale of social equality, he is the subject of a con- 
 stant and painful irritation. Every failure in an 
 enterprise which promised to elevate him to social 
 equality with those around him, is a new cause of 
 heart-burning and jealousy of all about him, and 
 often an overwhelming source of temptation, not 
 only to distrust the providence of God, but to em- 
 ploy the political franchise to unsettle the founda- 
 tions of society, by levelling down the whole to a 
 common platform. Hence the agrarian doctrines 
 Vv^hich find embodiment in various social or^aniza- 
 tions in the free States. Nothing but that rehgion 
 which both teaches the duty and imparts the 
 moral power to " be careful for nothing, but in 
 every thing to give thanks/' and in every condi- 
 
OF SLA V E R Y . 223 
 
 tion in whicli Divine Providence places us, '* tlieix- 
 witli to be content," can reconcile a white menial 
 to his condition in such a country as ours. The 
 government itself can only be secure in a republic 
 so long as a pure Christianity (for thrit only can do 
 it) operates to elevate the social condition of those 
 laboring classes who would otherwise be menials, 
 or reconcile them to a station to which the acci- 
 dent of birth, miscarriage in business, or inferiority 
 in intellect, inevitably consigns them in the com- 
 petition of business life ; or so long as pure religion 
 shall so operate as to leave the balance of political 
 power with those who are either so elevated or so 
 reconciled to an inferior condition. But httle, if 
 any thing, of all this, so far as it relates to our 
 colored menials, is to be found at the South. Al- 
 Avays conscious of their intellectual inferiority (I 
 speak of the masses) from constant contact with 
 the superior moral power of the whites, and equally 
 conscious that then' physical condition is an im- 
 passable bar to all social equality by marriage, 
 they not only do not aspire to it in their feelings, 
 but, in all cases in which they are treated as the 
 Scriptures require masters to treat their servants, 
 they learn to be contented with their lot, and, 
 looking to their owners as their lawful and safe 
 protectors, become affectionately attached to the 
 whole family, and, dismissing all care, are the most 
 
224 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 cheerful and, indeed, merry class of people we 
 have amongst us. A slave who did not think 
 more of himself, and feel himself to be better off, 
 in all respects, than the state which agreed with 
 his idea of what he calls " poor white folks" and 
 " free niggers," really would not be worth having 
 as a house servant in any Christian family of my 
 acquaintance. Indeed, in freedom from care, and 
 all the elements of a mere temporal happiness, the 
 slaves of an enlightened and well-ordered family 
 are often in a much more desirable situation than 
 the heads of the family, who are occupied with the 
 duty of caring for all and of providing for all. 
 For the master of such a family to plod his weary 
 way to daily labor on his farm, with a care-worn 
 countenance, which traces itself in his slow and 
 measured step, whilst the loud laugh of his merry- 
 hearted slaves is echoing around him, is no uncom 
 mon thing in the South. As to the corrodinj 
 cares which weigh down the spirits and often bring 
 on premature old age, the condition of heads of 
 families do not perhaps matenally differ in any 
 part of our country. But, I repeat, the dif 
 ference is very great between the menials of fjimi- 
 lies in the free and in the slave States, and 
 this difference is greatly in favor of the slaves of 
 the South. The one — especially in the cities — is 
 often oppressed by a grinding poverty, and an 
 
OF SLAVERY. 225 
 
 active discontent which is as corroding to the 
 heart as it is dangerous to the state ; Avliilst the 
 other is a stranger, for the most part, to real want 
 — is free from painful cares, contented and cheer- 
 ful in his condition — adding daily to the progress of 
 civihzation and the permanency of the government. 
 The emancipation and removal to Africa of those 
 whose progress in civihzation has so far developed 
 their minds as to constitute them exceptions to *"' 
 this remark, for the reason that they are by their 
 moral condition fitted for a higher form of civil 
 freedom, may be allowed as the voluntary act of 
 the owner. But all other schemes of emancipa- 
 tion, whether immediate or gradual, are totally 
 inadmissible. For if successful, for the reason 
 that they cannot share social equality with the 
 whites, they sink in the scale of civilization, and 
 become a nuisance in the community requiring 
 abatement ; and if the scheme should prove a fail- 
 ure, the result of the effort can only be, as we 
 have seen, to accumulate large bodies of slaves 
 within small districts of country, cut them off 
 from a more direct contact with civilization, and 
 arrest their progress in improvement. N^o : eman- 
 cipation in the popular sense offers no reUef to any : 
 of the evils, real or imaginary, of African slavery 
 in America; but rather aggravates all that now 
 exist, and threatens to multiply them a thousand- 
 10* 
 
226 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 fold. If any in the whole country be moved with 
 sympathy for the race — as many think themselves 
 to be — let them diffuse the chanties of a pure gos- 
 pel through the whole extent of our country. No 
 field Avas ever more '^ white to the harvest/' and 
 none perhaps in which laborers could be employed 
 to greater advantage in the cause of humanity. 
 They will promote a charity which shall save the 
 country from discord and civil war. They will 
 give efficiency to those precepts of the Scriptures 
 which enjoin the duties of masters and slaves. 
 By doing this they will lighten the task of mas- 
 ters, and, at the sam.e time, interest them more 
 deeply in all that concerns the w^elfare of the slave. 
 They will greatly improve the physical comfort of 
 the slaves, and, Avhat is of flir greater importance, 
 they wiil develop their moral natures, and therein 
 add to their present cheerful and contented state, 
 the enjoyment of that religion wdiich, as it fits 
 them for the higher walks of life on eartli, at the 
 same time fits them for the rest of heaven. In a 
 word, they w^ill effect all that the most devoted 
 friend of the slave can reasonably desire. For in 
 this state of advanced progress, whatever modifi- 
 cation of the system or change in either the con- 
 dition or location of the race may be demanded by 
 sound principles, will be readily adopted, and as 
 peaceably efiected. Thus the long-disputed prob- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 227 
 
 lem of emancipation will be found to solve itself 
 But instead of this active and efficient service in 
 the cause of humanity, to stand aloof and pro- 
 nounce silly and sluggish invectives — for such 
 they really are — against the South, for not follow- 
 ing the example of certain Northern States in 
 manumitting their slaves, — which, by the way, we 
 have shown they never did to any matei'ial ex- 
 tent, — is calculated only to produce an irritation 
 which must result in the most incurable preju- 
 dices. These invectives are often founded upon 
 certain abstract principles of political philosophy 
 which are usually misunderstood, and still more 
 frequently misapplied to the South. Such men, 
 together with the nature and results of their 
 labors, are graphically described by the Apostle 
 Paul, as ^' proud, knowing nothing, but doting 
 about questions and strifes of words, whereof 
 Cometh envy, strife, raihngs, evil-surmisings, per- 
 verse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and 
 destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is god- 
 liness." The wdiole paragraph from which this 
 quotation is made — 1 Tim. vi. 1-5 — is commended 
 to particular attention. And I submit, that if 
 the apostle understood the subject of domestic 
 slavery, either as a philosophical or a practical 
 question, the class of men now engaged in agitat- 
 ing our country on the subject do not ! 
 
228 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 TEACHING THE SLAVES TO READ AND WRITE. 
 
 Superiors frequently neglect inferiors — The policy of the South 
 vindicated by necessity — The results that would follow an 
 attempt to establish a system for instructing the blacks in 
 letters, and those which would follow the establishment of such 
 a system — The domestic element of the system of slavery in the 
 Southern States affords the means for their improvement 
 adapted to their condition and the circumstances of the country: 
 it affords the natural, the safe, and the effectual means of the 
 intellectual and moral elevation of the race — The prospects of 
 the Africans in this country, and their final removal to Africa — • 
 The country never will be entirely rid of them — The Southern 
 policy wise and humane. 
 
 One point remains to be considered to complete 
 a full and candid view of the institution of domes- 
 tic slavery. 
 
 It is erroneously said that '^ we 7ceej) the Afri- 
 can in a state of barbarism, and then plead that 
 barbarism in vindication of our policy." 
 
 Every thing is liable to abuse. I know that 
 there are instances in the South of great neglect 
 
OF SLAVERY. 229 
 
 of the slaves, both of their moral and physical 
 condition. The same may be said of individuals 
 at the North. Superiors often neglect their infe- 
 riors, and that, in many instances, to a very cul- 
 pable degree. I know no efficient remedy for 
 this, but that which the diffusion of a pure Chris- 
 tianity is calculated to afford. If any complain 
 of these neglects in a captious spirit, we have 
 nothing to hope from them. But from those who 
 claim to be sincere, we have a right to expect an 
 active and hearty cooperation in diffusing Chris- 
 tianity, as the only thing calculated to afford a 
 remedy. 
 
 But it is said that a feature of the system, as 
 established by law, necessarily produces this re- 
 sult : that is, the law which excludes the African 
 from the benefits of school instruction. 
 
 The term necemarily is in this instance certainly 
 misapplied. The barbarism in question is not the 
 result of this law, necessarily^ or otherwise. It 
 existed originally. It still exists, and to a great 
 extent, though greatly modified ; and in the pre- 
 sent circumstances of the race, an authorized sys- 
 tem of school instruction would cause it to con- 
 tinue to exist, and perhaps in a much greater 
 degree than it now does, and for a longer time 
 than it promises to do under the present system. 
 If this be so, it is the semi-barbarism that creates 
 
230 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 the necessity for the laii\ and not the law that 
 makes the barbarism the necessary result. 
 
 An unwieldy mass of semi-barbarism dwelling 
 in the midst of a civihzed community, Avith wdiom 
 they cannot amalgamate by intermarriage, will, at 
 all times, require a peculiar system of appliances 
 for their improvement, so as to make it consistent 
 ^Yith the common w^elflire. The principle of sla- 
 very must, of course, be kept in vigorous opera- 
 tion, and the means of improvement be wisely 
 adapted to the state of the pupil. Otherwise, 
 there may not only be a veiy improvident expen- 
 diture of means, but the most disastrous results. 
 The horn-book might be a valuable agent in the 
 hands of a child, but the instruments and agents 
 in a chemical laboratory might prove its ruin. 
 
 Should the time ever arrive (wdiich in the 
 opinion of some will be the case, at some distant 
 day) wdien the progress of African civihzation will 
 justify it ; and when an asylum in Africa is pro- 
 vided for them — together Avith the means of their 
 removal in large numbers — I have no doubt that 
 a system of popular education would not only be 
 indicated as proper, but afford one of the most 
 brilliant fields for the display of public and of 
 individual benevolence, that has ever yet presented 
 itself in behalf of that degraded race. But what 
 I have to say of this hypothesis is^ that if it ever 
 
OF SLAVERY. 231 
 
 should, the generations — both North and South — 
 that may then Kve, I have no doubt, will have 
 both sagacity enough to perceive it, and benevo- 
 lence enough to improve it to the mutual advan- 
 tage of themselves and the African race. But it 
 is very evident that neither of these conditions 
 has been fulfilled as yet. In this state of things, 
 it cannot be supposed that the Southern people 
 are prepared for any enterprise of the kind. I 
 cannot imagine that any public movement, having 
 for its object the instruction of the blacks in read- 
 ing and writing, could be made without involving 
 tlie most disastrous results. 
 
 Let us suppose that a majority in our legisla- 
 tive councils were in favor of such a measure, and 
 were actually to tax the people to support a sys- 
 tem of primary education ibr the blacks : any man 
 would certainly be excessively stupid vvdio would 
 not allow that a minority would, at all times, (in 
 the present state of public experience,) exist, who 
 d(iemed the law sufficiently oppressive to justify 
 repudiation and physical resistance. If this object 
 w^ere sought to be accomplished by individual 
 enterprise, the results could scarcely be less em- 
 barrassing. This will readily appear ; for it would 
 have to be effected either in the common schools 
 of the country, or by the establishment of sepa- 
 rate schools for the Africans. But I am not 
 
232 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 aware that the former is allowed to any materia] 
 extent even in the free States, where certainly, 
 if the scheme w^ere practicable, the free blacks 
 might be educated in the same schools with the 
 whites. The usage of civihzation, wdiich denies 
 them a social footing in so many other respects, 
 must, of course, so far deny them this privilege 
 as to render the scheme mainly ineffectual in the 
 accomplishment of good, or the usage is singularly 
 inconsistent with itself 
 
 And can it be supposed that such a scheme 
 would operate better in the South, where the 
 reasons against it are a thousand-fold stronger, 
 growing out of the large number of the African 
 IDopulation? Certainly nothing could be more 
 Utopian than an enterprise of this kind. Public 
 opinion would scarcely be sufficiently divided to 
 justify even the wildest schemer in making a 
 serious attempt to effect it. The latter plan might 
 perhaps be attempted, but, on account of the evils 
 it would involve, it would still be subject to im- 
 passable objections. 
 
 Slaves, though not owned by the poor, are held 
 for the most part by farmers and planters whose 
 pecuniary circumstances are what is called mode- 
 rate. There are exceptions. Occasionally, they 
 are held by men of wealth; but in the oldei 
 States particularly, (and of these I speak from 
 
OF SLAVERY. 233 
 
 personal knowledge,) the great mass of those who 
 own them cannot be said, in any popular sense of 
 the term, to be rich. Now, the habits of half- 
 labor, as any Northern man would regard them, 
 in which the slaves are usually indulged, would 
 put it quite out of the power of most of slave- 
 owners to afford the necessary support for such 
 schools, however favorable they might be to the 
 scheme. Withal, there is but little if any room 
 to doubt that a great many, both among the rich 
 as well as the poor, would oppose the measure, 
 for what appeared to them reasons of sound 
 policy. This would leave the scheme to be sup- 
 ported entirely by the few rich men, whose benev- 
 olence miaht lead them to overlook the strons; 
 popuLir objections against it. It requires no par- 
 ticular sagacity to foresee the practical mischiefs 
 wdiich would attend the efforts of a few rich men 
 who might attempt to override the popular feeling 
 on a subject of this kind. Public opinion would 
 put it down ! This would be the end of it in one 
 direction, but not in another. 
 
 The whole movement would be attended, from 
 first to last, with an irritation of the public mind 
 in the highest degree unfavorable, and, indeed, 
 dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the 
 commonwealth. All irritations of the public mind 
 in regard to the blacks, it is well known, result 
 
234 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 injuriously to them, generally abridging them of 
 their civil privileges and social comforts. In this 
 instance, viewing the subject as a practical ques- 
 tion, I cannot see that it would be attended Avith 
 a single redeeming virtue, so far as the blacks are 
 concerned. But to place it in the most favorable 
 light, let us suppose that, by some means, one or 
 the other of these plans had actually gone into 
 operation — which, by the w^ay, can scarcely be 
 conceived to be possible in the present state of 
 society — and had already made a decided impres- 
 sion upon the public mind of the Africans. Even 
 in this case it w^ould still be liable to strong and 
 impassable objections. It would be educating 
 them in advance of their circumstances and pro- 
 spects. In their circumstances, it would be even 
 more objectionable than it could be to take the 
 time and labor of a w^hite youth, which (we will 
 also suppose) were required for the immediate 
 support of himself and of those depending upon 
 his labor, and educate him for the learned pur- 
 suits of a Newton or a Macaulay, wdiilst at the 
 same time, for causes beyond his control, he w^as 
 doomed for the remainder of his days to work in 
 the mines of Cornwall or Chesterfield, by the light 
 of S\x Humphrey Davy's lamp ! Ko one of the 
 important objects of so high an education is acces- 
 sible to him. The least part of the objection to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 235 
 
 such a course as this is, that it would be a use- 
 less expenditure of time and labor. 
 
 But the reason is much stronger in the case of 
 the African. The civil offices are all closed agamst 
 him. Xo one of the learned professions is open to 
 him. The law of caste which forbids his amal- 
 gamation bars him out from every thing of the 
 kind. He is doomed to occupy, so long as he 
 remains in the midst of a v\diite community, the 
 position of an inferior. God himself has so ordered 
 it. The bold line of distinction he has drawn 
 between the races, is fully declarative of his will. 
 He only can reverse the decree, ^* The Ethiopian 
 cannot change his skin," any more than '-^ the 
 leopard can change his spots." In this state of 
 flicts, w^ould not the public mind — whose decisions 
 must be authoritative in the settlement of such a 
 question — very naturally inquire for the good 
 that it was thought might result from so material 
 a change in the circumstances of the institution ? 
 And is it not obvious that no answer could be 
 given that would insure satisfaction ? No power 
 of eloquence with which it is competent to enforce 
 the claims of education, could possibly move the 
 public mind from the sober conviction that the 
 advantages and privileges of education, so neces- 
 sary to a state of civil liberty, and so appropriate 
 in other respects to that state, could not, with any 
 
236 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 degree of propriety, be demanded in behalf of a 
 necessary condition of slavery ! 
 
 Thus far, the principles of political economy, 
 alone considered, would, in the public estimation, 
 fully settle this question. But this is not all 
 The question has much graver aspects than money 
 can possibly give it. The effect of generally en- 
 listing the African mind in Kterary pursuits and 
 inquiries, is too obvious either to be overlooked 
 or slightly regarded. A state of popular dis- 
 quietude must inevitably result, and this, too, at 
 a time when the door of Providence remains effec- 
 tually closed against his release from slavery and 
 his removal to Africa. This disquietude could not 
 fliil to lead to many fanatical and fruitless attempts 
 to effect a change in the political condition of the 
 race. Such a state of popular solicitude among 
 the blacks would of course be followed by much 
 greater sohcitude and even irritation on the part 
 of the whites. So potent a cause would certainly 
 precipitate its appropriate results. The oppressive 
 and, in some respects, the savage law^s by which 
 ancient Sparta, Greece, and Home governed their 
 slaves — some of Avhom were highly educated men 
 — would of necessity be reenacted in this country. 
 Our present mild form of slavery would be substi- 
 tuted by a form of oppression unknown to the 
 history of this country, even in the most barbar- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 237 
 
 ous condition of the African race. And thus 
 would end the chapter of abohtion benevolence in 
 behalf of the African race in the United States. 
 
 In view of these considerations, the pohcy of 
 the South on this subject, allow me to affirm, is 
 founded no less in benevolence to the African and 
 the peace of the commonwealth, than in the 
 soundest principles of political economy. It relies 
 upon the domestic element of the system of slavery, 
 as the natural J the only mfe^ and ultimately the 
 effectual means of the intellectual and moral eleva- 
 tion of the African — so fir as any means can be 
 effectual in the accomplishment of that object. 
 
 1. It is the natural w^ay — that is, the way 
 adapted to their condition as an inferior and natur- 
 ally distinct race, who, both on account of the 
 physical facts which constitute them a distinct 
 race, and the low state of civihzation (if it may be 
 called civilization at all) wdiich they have yet been 
 able to attain, should not be admitted to a social 
 footing by intermarriage with the superior race. 
 
 In a former lecture, it was demonstrated that 
 an uncivilized race, dwelling in the midst of a civil- 
 ized community, had no light to social equality, 
 and, for a still stronger reason, no right to political 
 sovereignty in such a community. It was also 
 shown that their natural rights entitled them to 
 frotectioiK and reasonable provision for their im- 
 
238 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 provement^ and, as in the case of minors, to such 
 ^' authoritative controV as is best calculated to 
 preserve their power of self-action — their power 
 of volition — from that enslavement to the baser 
 passions of depraved nature, which is destructive 
 of all true liberty, and the most degraded and 
 ruinous form of slavery — subjection to the devil; 
 in comparison with which, a physical subjection to 
 a fellow-man, in civilized life, with a power, defined 
 by law, only to control his time and labor to a 
 reasonable extent, is a paradise. These — we of 
 the South say — are their natural rights — the good 
 to wdiich they are entitled in virtue of their 
 humanity. Now as these rights are in their 
 nature relative, they imply the duijj on the part 
 of the civilized race amongst whom, in the provi- 
 dence of God, they dwell, to afford them both the 
 protection and control in question. Their duty, in 
 these respects, is clearly reciprocal with the rights 
 of the Africans. They can no more omit these 
 duties to the blacks with impunity, than they can 
 do so to the minors and imbeciles of their own 
 race. Now what form of control will more natur- 
 ally or appropriately fulfil the conditions of this 
 problem ? They are to exercise the sovereign con- 
 trol : all political freedom is denied the blacks by 
 their condition. They have no right to it. It is 
 not, to them, the essential good. Their rights lie, 
 
OF SLAVERY. 239 
 
 as in the case of imbeciles of any other race, in 
 being governed, not in governing themselveSj in 
 those matters which constitnte the objects of civil 
 aovernment. To exercise this sovereign control 
 of the blacks, and at the same time afford them 
 the protection and imjjy^ovement which are appro- 
 priate to a necessary condition of slavery, or state 
 of subjection to such sovereign control, is the 
 solemn didi/ of the superior race. The position 
 here advocated is, that the domestic element of the 
 present system in operation amongst us, affords a 
 more perfect guaranty that all the conditions of 
 this problem will be fulfilled, than could be effected 
 by any other system, or by the proposed modifi- 
 cation of the present system. The element in 
 question constitutes for them an invaluable school 
 of instruction — a school in which both the mental 
 and moral nature is developed. A school for the 
 formal instruction of the bhicks in letters, we have 
 seen would operate only to defeat the end proposed 
 by its establishment. To govern and protect 
 them, and at the same time make them useful to 
 themselves and to society, by a system of military 
 police, could find but few if any advocates, even 
 among the visionary. But what more natural 
 than to accomplish all these objects, by a system 
 which distributes them in small numbers through 
 the different fiimihes of civilized life ? Here thev 
 
240 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 are brouaht into immediate connection with much 
 that is calculated to develop the mind, cultivate 
 the moral sense, and train the will to the habit of 
 obedience to its high behests. The law confers 
 upon the head of the family the same right to 
 direct and appropriate the time and labor of the 
 blacks, that he enjoys in the case of his children — 
 and no more. The period of time to which this 
 authority extends, differs in the one case from 
 that of the other ; but this is the only difference 
 known to the law. Great abuses of this authority 
 sometimes occur in the case of the blacks ; but the 
 same is occasionally true of parental authority in 
 all parts of the civihzed world. The former may 
 furnish a fit theme for the perverted genius of 
 Mrs. Harriet Stowe. The fruit of such a genius 
 may have a poetry — of its kind ; but it can lay 
 claim to neither philosophy nor common sense. 
 The same force of logic which is hurled against 
 the authority of the master, rakes the authority 
 of the parent in the line of its fire, with an effect 
 no less destructive. Both are equally necessary ; 
 both are equally protected by law ; and both are 
 open to great abuses. The poetry which invests 
 these abuses Avith the show of argument ngainst 
 the authority of the master may cater to the cor- 
 rupt taste of both the '"great vulgar" and the 
 " little vulear ;" but it is the same cormorant 
 
OF SLAVERY. 241 
 
 appetite which is fed, that leads the 7nere ^* readers 
 and cipherers" of the land to turn aside from 
 those valuable productions so appropriate to their 
 real vrants, and delight themselves in tragic stories 
 of murder, arson, and rape, from the perusal of 
 which they rise with passions inflamed to crusade 
 against the morals of society. Christianity sternly 
 rebukes the abuses complained of; and equally 
 condemns that perversion of genius which employs 
 those abuses to corrupt the pubhc taste and the 
 public morals. As far as Christianity prevails, the 
 civil law wdiich requires humanity in the exercise 
 of domestic authority, no less in the case of the 
 slave than in the case of the child or the apprentice, 
 is sanctioned, and, in cases demanding it, is duly 
 enforced by public opinion and sentiment. In all 
 com.munities in which Christianity is the presiding 
 influence, African slavery must, therefore, be a 
 mild form of domestic servitude. It even contri- 
 butes in a measure to a knowled2:e of letters. 
 Many servants are raised by their associations 
 v/ith civihzed life to a desire to read the word of 
 God. The domestic relation often supphes them 
 w^ith the means of gratifying this desire. ]\iany 
 pious slaves read the word of God as a part of 
 their flxmily worship ; and instances are not want- 
 ing of those of wdiom it may be said, they " are 
 mighty in the Scriptures." Such are the ten- 
 U 
 
242 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 dencies and capabilities of domestic slavery as a 
 system recognized by law ; and apart from those 
 abuses which all good men deplore — no less in the 
 case of the slave than in the case of the child and 
 the apprentice, wdio are no further protected from 
 inhumanity by the provisions of law than is the 
 slave. Hence this system is the natural w^ay of 
 protecting, improving, and governing the African 
 for the mutual benefit of society. It is evidently 
 indicated by Providence. No other can be appro- 
 priate to a mass of population who can never be 
 politically free in our midst, for the reason that, 
 in the order of Divine Providence, they never can 
 amalgamate with us. But it is, 
 
 2. The only safe way. 
 
 It is slow, it is true, but it is for that reason 
 only the more safe. Its effects are, for the most 
 part, without observation. Hence, it produces no 
 irritation of the public mind. It develops the law 
 of sympathy on both sides in the ratio in which 
 it unfolds the intellectual and moral nature of the 
 subordinate race. It raises no visionary and 
 fanatical hopes in the one, nor excites any mor- 
 bid fears in the other. I say, its results march 
 forvrard without observation. A revenue tariff, 
 for example, affords a full support to the govern- 
 ment by a virtual tax upon the pockets of the 
 people ; and it does this at a time when they 
 
OP SLAVERY. 243 
 
 would not for a moment consent to pay that tax. 
 if it were made a direct tax, to be collected by the 
 authority of an exciseman. So, without observa- j 
 tion, the domestic element of slavery is accom- 
 plishing its results, with equal safety. Or, more 
 in point, perhaps, it is like the " kingdom of 
 heaven," which " comes without observation." 
 The " kingdom of heaven," in the form of princi- 
 2oles, diffuses itself through the mass of society, . 
 and ultimately works, as a legitimate result, the 
 boldest political revolutions. But by diffusing it- 
 self quietly, or " without observation," it prepares 
 the pubhc mind for its changes in the exact ratio 
 in which it effects them ; and thus accomphshes 
 that, by the popular will, the attempt to do which 
 in another Vv-ay would have razed the founda- 
 tions of civil society, and closed the history of 
 civilization for ages to come. So, this divine 
 agent — for such I must consider it — is working 
 constant changes. It is daily modifying the fea- 
 tures of the system, and so developing the moral 
 character of the African, as to throw him up, by 
 successive steps, higher and still higher on (lie 
 scale of civihzation. But this it does so quietly, 
 because naturally, that it actually works a specifio 
 result on the masters, and accomphshes its objects 
 by the consent of their wills and their own active 
 cooperation. 
 
244 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 All this, we see, is effected with entire safety. 
 Even in those instances — and they are numerous 
 — in which the working of the domestic element 
 of the system results in teaching the African to 
 read, we are not aw^are that it invoh^es, or even 
 threatens, society, with any of those evils which 
 it is so obvious a more formal system of school 
 instruction would precipitate. Slaves wdio are 
 below a certain point in civihzation, cannot be 
 induced, by any of the influences employed by 
 young masters and mistresses, (and they are often 
 specific,) to deal with the task of learning to read. 
 Only those who are so for raised in the scale of 
 civilization as to have awakened in them a hal- 
 lowed desire to learn more of the will of God, and 
 their duty as Christians, ever avail themselves of 
 the opportunities afforded them by their domestic 
 relations, and learn to read. These devote a por- 
 tion of their spare hours to reading the Bible ; and 
 a pious African, who reads his Bible, is always 
 known and appreciated as a better servant, as 
 w^ell as a better man. He enjoys the respect and 
 confidence of his owner, and is highly appreciated 
 by all the family. I have often known the prayer 
 of such a slave to be more relied on in times of 
 domestic affliction than that of any minister whose 
 services could be commanded. 
 
 But, move than this, the results which have 
 
OF SLAVERY. 245 
 
 been bronsrht to view are not onlv effected with 
 safety, but also vnth. a high degree of satisfliction 
 to the owners. Everywhere families may be met 
 with, who will call your attention with hallovv'ed 
 satisfjiction to what they have done for the im- 
 provement or comfort of their slaves. But it will 
 be found that this very good is just such that if 
 you had attempted to effect it by other means 
 than the quiet influences of the domestic element 
 of this system, you would, by a universal law 
 of our nature — self-preservation — have converted 
 each of those families into a kind of Roman 
 amphitheatre, and made the unhappy slaves the 
 chief victims of your rashness. Hence, it is not 
 without the gravest reasons that the intelligence 
 of the South rebukes the fanatical spirit of abo- 
 litionists, with the most solemn assurances that 
 they know not the things whereof they speak, 
 when they urge upon the Southern people the 
 duty of schooling and emancipating their slaves. 
 
 3. But I also afnrm that the feature of the sys- 
 tem under consideration will ultimately effect the y 
 moral elevation of the African, so far as any means 
 can be effectual in the accomplishment of this 
 object, whilst he remains in the bosom of a com- 
 munit}^ with which he cannot be admitted to a 
 social footing. 
 
246 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 So unobserved is the influence of this ehmerit, 
 that I find but few, even among inteUigent and 
 practical men, who, before their attention is par- 
 ticularl}^ called to the subject, are aware of what 
 it has already effected. But in numerous pubhc 
 addresses in the States of Virginia and North 
 Carolina, I have appealed to the oldest and most 
 observant men in large assemblies, and in no in- 
 stance have I met with a single individual who 
 did not concur in my statement that the present 
 race of Africans were very materially improved, 
 both in their moral and physical condition, above 
 what they were some twenty or forty years ago, 
 and that the change has been much greater with 
 the slaves than with the free colored population. 
 Now, it is obvious that this improvement will con- 
 tinue to go on, and in an increasing ratio. On 
 the same principle that labor applied to capital 
 is productive in an increasing ratio, the means in 
 operation for the improvement of the African will 
 greatly accelerate his progress. Hence, some 
 future period will present a generation of Africans 
 liighly improved above what they are now. Con- 
 sequently, there will arrive, at some distant day, 
 a period at which this people will have reached 
 that point of moral progress at which they will be 
 capable of appreciating, and, in a suitable fliy sicca 
 
OF SLAVE SY. 247 
 
 condition, adapting them to social cqnalitfj, will be 
 prepared to occupy and wisely impro^-e, the privi- 
 leges of civil liberty. 
 
 It is on this principle that the laws of all civil- 
 ized States confer the privilege of political free- 
 dom on the descendants of their free citizens. At 
 the age of twenty-one. they are made politically 
 free. The law assumes, w^hat is found generally 
 to be true, that previously to this period they are 
 incapable of using this privilege to the advantage 
 of themselves and of the community ; but that, at 
 this age, their capacities are sufficiently developed 
 to make a proper use of this privilege ; and as 
 neither their physical condition nor any accidents 
 of their position operate as a bar to their social 
 equality wdth other free citizens, it is conferred on 
 them. By analogy, therefore, we may infer, that 
 wd.ien the African in America shall have reached 
 a similar moral state, and w'hen his physical con- 
 dition and the accidents of his position shall fit 
 him for social equahty with other free citizens, 
 a similar right of political freedom will inure to 
 him. It will be to him the right — that is, the good 
 — which ought to be allowed him. To withhold 
 it would be despotism. Now, the former con- 
 dition of this problem, his moral state in this 
 country at some future day may fulfil ; but that 
 the latter can never be fulfdled in this country is 
 
 l- 
 
2-r8 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 obvious from the facts and reasonings already 
 adduced. But when in future tune his state shall 
 fulfil the first condition, it is a grave question 
 which we may safely anticipate, w^hether it whII 
 not be the duty of the superior race amongst 
 wdiom the Africans now dwell, to remove them to 
 a land Avhere they can enjoy social equality. We 
 hazard nothing in deciding this question in the 
 affirmative. E^ights and duties are reciprocal. 
 Then wdiatever it shall be the ridit of the African 
 to claim of their superiors, it will be their duty to 
 confer. That they would be entitled to removal 
 in large numbers, w^iil appear — 1. They will have 
 contributed largely to develop the resources of 
 the country, as the price of their civifization. 2. 
 It would be to them the good, without which 
 their civilization could but partially avail them. 
 Hence, it would be the duty of their superiors to 
 remove them in such numbers as their means of 
 doing so might allow. But more than this, it would 
 be a duty v/hich they owed themselves, even if 
 they w^ere under no obhgations to the inferior 
 race. For when a numerous population in our 
 midst, though confessedly inferior, shall arise to 
 the moral condition defined, the difficulties attend- 
 ing their longer continuance in a state of slavery, 
 domestic or otherwise, will be far too great to 
 justify the experiment. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 249 
 
 Hence I have long thought that there was usu- 
 ally a very unnecessary expenditure of symjDathy 
 on behalf of certain enslaved nations of Europe, as 
 well as the African of this country. A nation, the 
 masses of whom have arisen to the moral condition 
 of freedom, will assert their political rights ; and 
 they will usually do it on practicable grounds. It 
 is only at this point that they challenge public 
 sympathy. For the mind was never before suffi- 
 ciently free to make their situation an oppressive 
 one, assuming that their rulers do not abuse their 
 power. Before this period, their rights lay in 
 being governed — not in governing. Political free- 
 dom would be as dangerous intrusted to them, as 
 a razor would be in the hands of a child, and 
 should, for the same general reasons, be withheld 
 from them. But withheld by whom? asks the 
 philosophy of Dr. Way land. I answer, By those 
 who have the intelligence to do it. Both the 
 principle of benevolence and the law of recipro- 
 city recjuire this ; and that intelligence which im- 
 poses this duty, can never fail to supply the means 
 for the restraint of brute force. 
 
 Of the truth of this general position no people 
 appear to be more sensible than the aristocracy of 
 Europe. De Tocqueville clearly asserts this on 
 their behalf, when he states that the object of his 
 tour through the United States arose from the 
 11* 
 
250 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 necessity of becoming acquainted with the spirit 
 and character of democracy, that a proper direc- 
 tion might be given to it in Europe. To direct it 
 wisely might be done ; but to crush it was utterly 
 impossible. Now if this author be correct in sup- 
 posing that the spirit of democracy is truly awake 
 among the masses of European population, and 
 that consequently they are asserting their right to 
 freedom — not from the abuse of legitimate power, 
 which calls for reform merely, but from the power 
 itself, which their improved moral and social con- 
 dition has rendered no longer appropriate, and 
 which, therefore, they now sensibly feel to be an 
 oppression, calling for revolution — they are foiiov\^- 
 ing the indications of nature, and there is no power 
 in those nations that can shut the door of Provi- 
 dence against them. An obedient child will cheer- 
 fully submit to the reasonable though siringent 
 desjjotism exercised over him by his parent, and 
 even look back upon it in after hfe with the highest 
 pleasure. Nevertheless, on reaching his maturity, 
 he will refuse to submit to it any longer, and even 
 feel an attempt to force it upon him as an oppres- 
 sion too intolerable to be borne. So, by parity of 
 reasoning, will the masses of these nations demand 
 an entire abolition of the existing modes of govern- 
 ment, and claim such as are adapted to their state 
 of maturity. But, on the other hand, if the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 251 
 
 movements in question are the work of only a few 
 master-spirits who have mistaken the actual con- 
 dition of the masses, who have not yet risen to 
 the moral condition of freedom, they will be found 
 to be fighting against God. The door of his provi- 
 dence is closed against them. There are no means 
 in the compass of their power by which they can 
 force an entrance through this door. They may 
 shed oceans of blood, but it shall not avail. So, 
 in the former case, the aristocracy may exhaust 
 alike their treasures and their diplomatic resources, 
 but it can only be to fdl the land with desolation 
 and mourning. The enhghtened popular mind 
 and will must prevail. "Verily," a premature 
 resistance in either case " has its reward" — great 
 suffering, and a vast accumulation of guilt, but not 
 success. 
 
 These principles are not without their applica- 
 tion to the Africans in this country. Should the 
 remote period arrive when the state of the Afri- 
 cans fulfds the first condition of the problem laid 
 down, they will certainly feel their political condi- 
 tion in this country to be an oppressive one, and, 
 if necessary, assert their right to remove. I say, 
 issert their right to remove ; for in the mental 
 condition assumed, they would have far too much 
 good sense to do what many less quahfied to judge 
 than they would then be have done — ask for polir 
 
252 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 tical equality amongst a people with whom they 
 could never be on a footing of social equality. I 
 am equally satisfied that they would be under no 
 necessity to ask this. The intelligence and virtue, 
 no less than the interest, of that age, will forestall 
 such a necessity, by the measures which justice 
 and humanity will dictate as proper to meet the 
 circumstances of the case. 
 
 For my own part, I have no doubt that, under 
 that wise superintending Providence which has so 
 signally marked the progress of African civiliza- 
 tion, by introducing so large a portion of the race 
 into this country, that distant day, when it arrives, 
 will provide for itself. Anxious solicitude on the 
 part of the present age is not demanded. Neither 
 the intelligence nor the benevolence of that remote 
 age will be unequal to the task of providing for 
 the necessities of its times. Already, indeed, 
 " coming events cast their shadows before." The 
 elements have been long combining, both to usher 
 in and to dispose of those events. The domestic 
 element of slavery is, as we have seen, quietly 
 and effectually doing its work. God is raising up 
 a rast government on the coast of Africa, which 
 promises to reach a respectable station among the 
 civilized nations of the earth — in moral and physi- 
 cal resources. In the progress of events, there is 
 no ground to doubt that the abolition spirit, abroad 
 
OF SLAVERY. 25S 
 
 in so large a portion of our country, will have had 
 its day, and run its course through all the usual 
 stages and johases of fanaticism, and, giving place 
 to a sounder philanthropy and a purer benevolence, 
 those who now advocate it will be prepared to 
 unite with the philosophy of the South, and avail- 
 ing themselves of the vast resources of this great 
 country, and of those of the new government in 
 Africa, will transport large numbers to a com- 
 munity in wdiich their social equality will enable 
 them to enjoy the freedom for which they were 
 fitted in this country. Many of those who remain 
 wdll, no doubt, amalgamate w^ith the whites, how- 
 ever it may be in violation of the laws of civiliza- 
 tion. Those barriers which free-soiiism is now 
 erecting on our Southern border, w^ill ultimately 
 yield to a sounder policy, and many of our slaves 
 wall find their way to the remote South, where the 
 state of civihzation will admit of a more general 
 amalgamation, and be lost in the Mexican races ; 
 whilst the remainder — perhaps a large number — 
 will continue in the United States, but in a highly 
 improved condition, and under a form of civil 
 government which will not be felt by them as a 
 political oppression, and continue to bless the 
 country. I have no idea that the race vrill ever 
 become extinct in this country, or cease to exist 
 under a subordinate government of some kind. 
 
254 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 I would not claim entire accuracy for these 
 views of the distant future ; but of their general 
 accuracy I have no doubt. Future history Vv^ill, 
 doubtless, challenge the gratitude of the Christian 
 world for that wonderful providence by which the 
 residence of the African in this country was made 
 as the sojourn of Joseph in Egypt. As God sent 
 him before his brethren '^ to preserve hfe," so it 
 w^ill be found that he permitted the introduction 
 of the pagan African into this country, that he 
 might be raised by contact with civiHzation, re- 
 deemed by the genius of the gospel, and returned 
 to bless his kindred and his country. Thus all 
 Africa shall, sooner or later, share the blessings 
 of civihzation and religion. I am not able to see 
 any thing that can or will embarrass the progress 
 of this great Avork, but the spirit of a premature 
 abolition. The doctrines of emancipation and 
 school instruction may keep up an irritated state 
 of the public mind, that must act as a serious 
 check to the civilizing tendencies of the domestic 
 element of the system ; for the long-continued 
 agitation of these questions may excite fanatical 
 aspirants to attempt to pass limits which God has 
 declared to be impassable — that is, to procure 
 political freedom for a people Avho are not prepared 
 for it, and that in the midst of another people with 
 whom they can never generally amalgamate. All 
 
OF SLAVERY. 255 
 
 attempts of this sort, it is well known, are ex- 
 tremely hurtful to the pro2Tess of the African in 
 civilization. Every consideration, therefore, of 
 policy and of humanity forbids that these doctrines 
 should receive the siioiitest encourafrement from 
 an enlightened people. The race is not prepared 
 for the operation of either of these schemes. No 
 better evidence need be rec[uired by those not 
 personally acquainted with the character of the 
 Africans, than the flict that they have never once i/^ 
 attempted to assert a right to political freedom. 
 The fact that, nowhere throughout the Southern 
 States, can it be said of even a respectable minor- 
 ity of the race, that they have given the slightest 
 indication of such a disposition, is proof that they 
 have not yet risen to that mental state, and hence 
 are not entitled to the political privileges Avhich 
 are appropriate to it. It is vain to point to the 
 few attempts at local insurrection which have 
 occurred. The highest conception which the 
 masses have ever yet formed of political freedom 
 is simply liberty to do nothing. To win this cher- / 
 ished object of harharism — not of civilization — a 
 bare handful, on a few occasions, have concocted 
 plans as hopeless as the spirit in which they were 
 conceived was barbarian, and as visionary as the 
 dreams of Miller that he could make an intelli- 
 gent Christian people believe his vagaries ; or the 
 
256 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 leaders of the Mormon folly and wickedness, that 
 they could impose their grossly stupid imposture 
 upon the civilized world. 
 
 In view, therefore, of these facts and reasonings, 
 we conclude that the Southern people are not 
 obnoxious to the charge of keeping the Africans 
 in a state of barbarism, by their policy, either on 
 the subject of emancipation or of school instruc- 
 tion ; but that they are following the indications 
 of Divine Providence, and serving the cause of 
 humanity in the civilization of the African in 
 America, and the redemption of his fatherland. 
 
OF SLAYERY. 257 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE OF THE AFRICAN POPU- 
 LATION OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 Preliminary remarks — American party — The present and pro- 
 spective condition of our country — The large number of voters 
 in the free-soil States who will be under a foreign influence, 
 political and religious, inducing them to discard the Bible and 
 the right of private judgment — The freedom of the Southern 
 States from this anti-Christian a.nd anti-republican influence — 
 The presence of the African race in the Southern States secures 
 them this advantage — The unpatriotic policy of free-soilism 
 
 We have seen that nowhere throughout the 
 South have the masses of our African population 
 given evidence of the first intelh'gent conception 
 of pohtical freedom. As to insurrections, we are 
 freer from their disturbing: influences than are the 
 communities of many of the Northern States from 
 the progress of a no less dangerous influence — the 
 agrarian spirit which pervades a somewhat similar 
 portion of society. We of the South fear them 
 less; and we have less cause to fear them. On 
 
258 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 this score they make a useless expenditure of 
 sympathy on our behalf. It may be demon- 
 strated that; v/ithout a singular interposition of 
 Divine Providence, the South (using the term, as 
 I generally do, for all those States which main- 
 tain the system of domestic slavery) will, ere 
 long, be called upon to protect the liberties of the 
 North from the progress of agrarianism, whilst 
 there is not the remotest probabihty that these 
 will ever be called on to protect the South from 
 the insurrectionary movements of their blacks. 
 I repeat — no ! no people in the vv^hole country 
 who fill the menial ofhces of society are more 
 contented than our blacks, or as much so. 
 There are none who less feel their condition to be 
 oppressive, or vv^ho have as little cause to feel it so. 
 
 In discussing the proposition enunciated, it is 
 proper to premise, that if I should be found to 
 agree to any extent with the ^•'American party," 
 whose ^* councils" are now attracting so much 
 attention, as to the accumulation of a dangerous 
 influence in the country, I find the chief remedy 
 (whatever may or may not be true of those pro- 
 posed by this party) in a providential arrange- 
 ment Avhich seems not so much to have engaged 
 public attention. 
 
 I propose to submit a brief sketch of the 
 present and prospective condition of our country. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 259 
 
 We live in a country of vast geographical ex- 
 tent. A large portion of it is uninhabited. It is, 
 however, rapidly filling up. Immigrants from 
 every section of the civilized world are rapidly 
 arriving in our eastern cities, and spreading to 
 remote sections of our republic : men of every 
 conceivable variety of taste, disposition, and opin- 
 ion, both in politics and in religion. The fertihty 
 and abundance of our soil, and the variety of our 
 staple articles of produce, have attracted universal 
 activity and enterprise. To compare the civilized 
 world to one vast city, our republic seems destined 
 to become the great market or business-street of 
 it. Here, all is bustle and activity. Nowhere on 
 the face of the globe is so much energy of charac- 
 ter displayed. No attentive observer can fail to 
 perceive the tendency of all this to call off the 
 mind from tJiose moral and intellectual pursuits 
 that so eminently fit men for the sober duties of 
 life and the feUcities of heaven. The public mind 
 is already kept in a state of most unnatural ex- 
 citement, stimulated in the hidiest deerree to the 
 pursuits of wealth and political distinction, to the 
 almost entire neglect of every other interest. 
 This is daily becoming the supreme attraction, to 
 which the popular impulse yields as readily as the 
 unfortunate ship obeys the resistless circles of the 
 maelstrom. 
 
260 PHILOSOPHY AND PP AC TICS 
 
 Thus flir, it is trne, we have succeeded to " lay 
 that broad foundation of modern society which 
 promises the noble superstructure of rational 
 liberty. But regarding the tendencies of this 
 restless people^ looking at the growth of our own 
 improvidence, and at the copious additions which 
 overstocked and perishing Europe is daily sending 
 us, in multiplied forms of ignorance and super- 
 stition, insomuch that in many respects in our 
 Northern States our republican fabric is fast 
 changing and passing away before our very eyes, 
 who can exult in the certainty of success ! Who 
 will not despair, except so far as he may be 
 san2;uine that a tone and enera'v of moral effort 
 is put forth, equal to that which achieved our 
 national liberties ! For if this be not done, in a 
 day we may go down into hopeless bondage ! 
 The physical battle of our liberties has been 
 fought and won, and we are fast rushing up to 
 unparalleled eminence ; but from this dizzy 
 height, if we be not sustained by some conser^'a- 
 tive power, we shall go down in a moment to the 
 degradation of slavery. For let it be remem- 
 bered that whilst liberty may be achieved by the 
 sword, it cannot be maintained by the sword. 
 Enlightened principles and moral excellence alone 
 can maintain the liberty that force achieves." 
 
 I say nothing of that large class of foreign 
 
OF SLAVERY. 261 
 
 population whose education and pecuniary re- 
 sources enable them to come among us from a 
 choice of our institutions, and the other means of 
 happiness which this great country alTords. I 
 bid them all welcome. They add alike to the 
 permanency and strength of our institutions. 
 l\or do I say any thing against that unfortunate 
 multitude which accompanies these, whose igno- 
 rance and vice compel them, reluctantly or not, 
 to seek their bread in our fruitful country. So 
 far as we may be able to receive them, I rejoice 
 that we have a home for them. But it is obvious 
 that our safety can be found only in our ability 
 to absorb them into our political body, and impart 
 our character to them ; and in those providential 
 arrangements which shall sustain us through the 
 protracted process. Without these, there is no 
 ground to hope for success. For what power is 
 that which (in the language of another) '-has 
 been fitly styled the ^terror of Europe' — the 
 j)0wer that has sent earthquake after earthquake, 
 rolling under the deep foundations of governments, 
 till they have rocked to their basis, and tottered 
 to their fall ? It is the order, or rather the mass 
 of vicious ignorance and poverty which has there 
 accumulated for ages." This maniac power must 
 continue to work its extended desolations in 
 Europe, except so far as it may be enervated by 
 
262 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 expanding on the wilderness of North America. 
 It is fortunate for Europe that this enfeebhng 
 process is rapidly going forward ; but it is most 
 unfortunate for us that we are destined soon to 
 concentrate a power which Europe is so happily 
 expanding. We are destined, ere long, to become 
 a great manufacturing, as well as commercial and 
 agricultural people. Our condition is soon to con- 
 dense millions into cities and manufacturing dis- 
 tricts, where, as in Europe, from the class of 
 population flowing in upon us, a distinct class of 
 menial poverty will be formed, '* imbecile of mind, 
 and inapt but for one employment."* 
 
 Nor is this all. It la3''s no claim to prophetic 
 honor to venture the prediction, that the youth of 
 our country who shall survive the next half cen- 
 tury, will witness that which many will not be- 
 lieve, " though a man declare it unto them." 
 But reasoning from the past, or from well-estab- 
 lished principles of political economy, it is morally 
 certain that our present population of twenty- 
 three millions will then have swelled to near one 
 hundred millions. ^'Agriculture, commerce, and 
 manufactures will have expanded their resources 
 
 '^ Some years ago, a pamphlet fell into my hands, written by 
 some one whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten. I 
 think it likely that this language, or much of it, is to be credited 
 to that pamphlet. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 263 
 
 and powers of production to an inconceivable ex- 
 tent. The various portions of our country will 
 be linked together by railroads, canals," telegraphic 
 wires, and by some other — God knows what ! — 
 as yet undiscovered means of connection. Al- 
 ready, the cities of our Atlantic coast converse 
 freely, by means of "Hghtning post-boys," with 
 their next-door neighbors — the cities of the great 
 Mississippi valley ! '*' Flourishing cities are now 
 lifting their spires in the hitherto pathless wilds 
 of Iowa, Oregon," and California, and will soon be 
 in telegraphic connection with those of the East. 
 Who can doubt that in less than ten }'ears the 
 prediction of an eminent son of Virginia, J. E. 
 Heath, Esq., will be verified : '-American steam- 
 ships from the cities of our Western coast shall 
 strike off in the path of the setting sun, and fol- 
 lowing that burning luminary where he dips his 
 glowing axle in the waters of the Pacific, return 
 in the short space of thirty or forty days, laden 
 with the commerce and population of China, and 
 the isles of the remotest West !"'^' 
 
 Can any man doubt the political and commercial 
 changes that will then follow throughout the civil- 
 ized world ? But who can estimate the extent of 
 these changes ? Who can tell the result upon the 
 
 * Literary Messenger. 
 
26i PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 political and moral destiny of this great country? 
 Who can tell the end of that commercial revolu- 
 tion by which a large portion of the tea trade of 
 China, now in the hands of that greatest of all 
 monopolies — the British East India Company, con- 
 tributing largely to the support of the British 
 government — shall be transferred to American 
 bottoms, and flow into this country through our 
 cities on the Pacific coast ! Already the walls of 
 pagan China have bowed to the thunder of British 
 cannon, and the deep foundations of her ancient 
 government are destined at no distant day to 
 yield alike to American enterprise and American 
 liberty. Thousands of her perishing population — 
 indeed, already they come ! — shall, ere long, flow 
 in from the West, and meet the vast tide of papal 
 superstition and vice that has been long setting 
 in from Europe on the east. I am free to own 
 that I contemplate this period wdth profound 
 amazem^ent ! I know not the extent of the vision 
 that confounds me. And Avhen I turn my eyes to 
 the canvas of Divine inspiration, and decipher its 
 unerring pencillings, I cannot doubt that the 
 strange elements that even novv^ are so rapidly 
 combining, and that are soon to concentrate the 
 maddened powers of pagan ignorance, and papal 
 superstition and .vice, in th« heart of this repubhc, 
 are, ere long, to make my native land the great 
 
OFSLAVERY. 266 
 
 theatre of those eventfal battles — the conflicts of 
 truth and error in both politics and religion — so 
 graphically described in the apocalyptic vision of 
 John. And as I believe in the truth of the pro- 
 phecy, and confide in the promise of Heaven, I 
 cannot doubt the result. But mark you, "the 
 peril of our condition — the peril of that state of 
 things on which our children may be but just 
 entering !" This conflict is to be the more or less 
 fierce, the more or less disastrous to those who 
 shall immediately sustain its calamities, as they 
 shall be the more or less prepared for it. And 
 what are the great agencies that shall prepare us 
 for a successful conflict ? What is it that shall give 
 comparative mildness to this great moral and per- 
 haps physical conflict that awaits our children, or 
 the want of which shall arm it with all the terrors 
 of a barbarous warfare ? But one answer can be 
 given to these questions. The general education 
 of the sovereigns of the land, and the conservative 
 influence of our institutions, or perdition, is the 
 alternative. 
 
 Upon the importance of the great educational 
 movement of the country, I need not remark just 
 now ; nor need we notice in this connection the 
 conservative influence of our free institutions, or 
 rather the tendency of the great principle of lib- 
 erty, (as embodied in our civil and religious insti- 
 12 
 
266 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 tutions,) which, with all true Americans, is a kind 
 of instinctive belief, to diffuse itself through the 
 mass of society. The two together may justly be 
 regarded as forming a bulwark of American hberty, 
 upon which the intelligent mind of the country may 
 repose with great confidence. But still, history 
 scarcely leaves us room to doubt that a politico-reli' 
 gious priesthood, firmly established in the supersti- 
 tious devotions of a strong minority even oimenials^ 
 who at the same time are pohtical sovereigns, pre- 
 sents fearful odds in the strife of principles wdth 
 the " man of sin." Nor need we be surprised at 
 this. A large mass of our population — however 
 they may constitute but a minority of the whole 
 population — have been educated from their cradles 
 in the firm behef that it is a sin, involving the 
 damnation of the soul, to read God's word, or 
 to exercise private judgment upon any matters 
 which such a priesthood may choose to affirm are 
 taught therein, and who are equally established in 
 a superstitious opinion and feeling of devotion and 
 submission, not only to its right to decide all 
 such matters, but also its authority to punish 
 w^ith the highest spiritual torments all who shall 
 heretically disregard its decisions. This power has 
 ])roved itself an overmatch for the genius of liberty 
 in the states of Europe. Thrones and kingdoms 
 have fiillen before it. To this day the despots of 
 
OF SLAVERY. 267 
 
 Europe hold their sceptres in virtue of a league 
 with it. Louis Napoleon exercises despotic 
 sway over a large portion of as free a people 
 in their opinions and sentiments on all sub- 
 jects without the range of priestly dictation and 
 dogmatism as can be found on the globe. But 
 how does he do it ? He crushed the measures of 
 liberty in Italy, and restored the Pope to his 
 throne. And why ? Not only because a republic 
 in Italy would be a dangerous neighbor, but also 
 because he needed the authority of the priesthood 
 to enforce the politico-rehgious dogmas upon which 
 alone his despotic throne could repose with safety ! 
 Thus a large community who are among the most 
 enlightened and devoted friends of liberty, are 
 ruled by a grinding despotism ; and this is only 
 an instance in which the genius of liberty is 
 crushed and trodden under foot by the " man of 
 sin." Education and the genius of liberty have 
 done much in Europe, and are daily struggling 
 against fearful odds ; and may do much more in 
 this country to modify and restrain this power, 
 but they are impotent to its destruction. It is, 
 in itself, so entirely contradictory of all liberty, 
 and at the same time so full of vitality, that God in 
 mercy has only relieved the despair of the world 
 by the assurance that he would destroy it. Thus 
 Paul says : ''The man of sin^ who opposeth and 
 
268 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 exaltetli himself above all that is called God, or that 
 is worshipped ; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple 
 of God, shoioing himself that he is God — whom the 
 
 LOKD SHALL CONSUME WITH THE SPIRIT OF HIS MOUTH, 
 AND SHALL DESTROY WITH THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS COM- 
 ING." 2 Thess. ii. 1-12. The world has no hope 
 of relief from the oppression of this nightmare of 
 superstition, but that which is found in this promise 
 of God, that the w^ord of his truth shall overthrow 
 and utterly destroy this monster powder, which for 
 so many ages has been the terror and the scourge 
 of the civilized world. The Bible — the w^ord of 
 God — freely circulated, read, and expounded, and 
 freely judged of by all who read or hear, according 
 io the dictates of their own judgments and con- 
 iciences — this is the religion of Protestants ! in 
 exact antasfonism to the teachins^s of the '^ man of 
 sin.'' The triumph of the Bible is the overthrow 
 of his power. 
 
 Now, the Bible is not only being circulated, and 
 its truths enforced from the pulpit, but a great 
 many arrangements of Divine Providence are in 
 constant operation, not only to secure the preva- 
 lence of Bible truths in our land, but also to place 
 these truths in such circumstances as shall secure 
 the permanent establishment of civil and religious 
 liberty. Of these arrangements of Divine Provi- 
 dence, we may select as germane to the general 
 
' OF SLAVERY. 269 
 
 subject of discussion, the conservative influence of 
 the sydem of domestic slaverij. 
 
 That providence of God, by which so large a 
 number of the States of this Union have been 
 supphed with a population who cannot be absorbed 
 by the body politic, but must exist among us, and 
 for so long a time, in a distinct and menial posi- 
 tion, provided the means of safety to the whole 
 Union in the coming conflict which is already 
 awakening the fears of the country. If we do 
 not greatly mistake the signs of the times, it is to 
 these States that all eyes and all hopes will be 
 turned as the great bulwarks of American liberty. 
 The African race in these States will give them 
 this advantage of position. 
 
 Review the facts of the case. As to that class 
 of population coming into the country with that 
 liberty of choice which intelhgence and pecuniary 
 means afford them, the whole land is before them, 
 and few are more welcome than they, whatever 
 may be their errors in rehgion. But relatively, 
 they make but a small portion of the whole num- 
 ber. The great mass of this coming population 
 necessarily seek the menial offices of society as 
 the only means of living. This evil is already 
 sorely felt in some portions of our country ; and 
 as our unoccupied lands shall be filled up by 
 Western as well as Eastern immigration, this will 
 
270 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 be still more generally and deeply felt. For all 
 these are absorbed by the body poHtic, and form 
 a part of the sovereignty of the country. 
 
 But what portion of our country is it which 
 now suffers, and is chiefly threatened in future 
 with this heavy calamity ? Not the South ! This 
 is evident. Our menial offices are already occu- 
 pied by a race which cannot be absorbed, and who 
 therefore can never form a part of the sovereignty 
 of the country. Hence, there is no room for the 
 menials of either Europe or China. The door of 
 Providence is closed against their admission. The 
 foreign population which finds its way into the 
 South are, for the most part, a valued and wel- 
 come class of society. No : it is in the midst of 
 the Northern States, and those new States which 
 repudiate the African race, that these shoals of 
 vice, superstition, and ignorance — these hordes of 
 modern Canaanites — are gathering, " thick as the 
 frogs and flies of Egypt." Upon these States, 
 and not upon the South, this great and increasing 
 calamity is to display its strength. Are they 
 destined to control the iwimary schools to a great 
 extent, from which they exclude the Bible, and 
 educate a large mass of the population to abandon 
 the inherent right of private judgment on all 
 matters which the priesthood may please to define 
 — whether correctly or not — as matters of re- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 271 
 
 ligion : that is, to abandon those rights of con- 
 science which are guaranteed to every citizen by 
 the constitution of our country ? Ah'eady, many 
 of these schools are thus controlled, and a large 
 portion of the citizens are thus being educated in 
 the city and State of New York, and other places ! 
 But nothing of this sort can exist to any extent 
 in the Southern States. So flir as popular educa- 
 tion is promoted in these States, it must be 
 strictly Protestant education — Protestant, at least, 
 in its main feature : that is, every citizen brought 
 up among us grows up in the educated belief that, 
 whatever aid he may seek or derive from a gospel 
 ministry, he is still individually and personally 
 responsible to God and his country, for his opin- 
 ions and his practices, both as to politics and re- 
 ligion. He should, therefore, read, reflect, and 
 judge for himself. No '^ man of sin," in the 
 shape of pope, bishop, priest, minister, or preacher 
 of the gospel, or with any other title, has author- 
 ity to " oppose and exalt himself above all that is 
 called God, or that is worshi/jped,'' by dispensing 
 either political or religious beliefs ; " so that he, as 
 God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself 
 that he is God ;" enforcing his right to control the 
 consciences of men, by severe spiritual and tem- 
 poral penalties — reaching even to " anathema 
 maranatha r No material portion of Southern 
 
272 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 sovereigns can ever grow up in such an utter 
 abandonment of all liberty, whilst the African race 
 shall fill the menial offices of society. All this, 
 however, and perhaps much more, is reserved for 
 those States which repudiate this race. And 
 still further, Is all this calculated to corrupt the 
 purity of elections, as it has done in many sections 
 of New England and the State of New York, and 
 eminently so in the cities of New York and Cin- 
 cinnati ? — and is thfs evil also destined to reach 
 the national Legislature, either directly, as the 
 result of numerical strength, or indirectly, as the 
 action of a powerful minority, holding the balance 
 of power betAveen contending political parties, 
 and, in either case, sooner or later, seriously 
 threatening if not precipitating evils upon the 
 whole country, of which the oppressions of many 
 of the States of Europe now furnish us the mourn- 
 ful examples ! But no such influence can ever 
 reach, to any material extent, the ballot-boxes of 
 the South. With an educated sovereignty, we 
 have only to consummate our triumph over intem- 
 perance, and our elections are at once fair expo- 
 nents of the will of an enhghtened people. Our 
 people may err in opinion, but, always right in 
 sentiment, and with no motive to stay wrong, they 
 may, in due time, be put right in opinion also. 
 The Southern States may be labored by the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 273 
 
 tempests that shall break upon them from other 
 sources, but not from this, which its history in 
 Europe shows to be the most terrible calamity 
 that ever scourged humanity. AVith their ships 
 w^ell trimmed and their sails well set, and both 
 worked and governed by an educated sovereignty, 
 it is morally impossible that they should founder 
 in the open sea of free discussion. These States. 
 therefore, will remain, and shall ever remain, 
 through all this fierce conflict, free to settle the 
 great quarrel of the country between light and 
 darkness, between religion and a vile superstition ! 
 Upon these States will devolve the^ duty of hold- 
 ing the balance of power between these great con- 
 tending forces, and of preserving the ark of 
 American liberty in the politico-religious storms 
 that are to sweep over the land, and shake the 
 foundations of our confederacy. 
 
 In view of all the facts, we are at no loss to 
 account for the agrarian doctrines and organiza- 
 tions which are already so common in the North- 
 ern States, and which are essentially so entirely 
 subversive of all true liberty. Nor are we at a 
 loss to account for the fact that the Southern 
 States have always, to the present time, stood 
 forth as the authors and uniform expounders of 
 the soundest democratic principles of republican 
 freedom. They owe it, and will for ages to come 
 12* 
 
27-i PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 continue to owe it, not so much to any superioi 
 devotion to sound principles above that of their 
 intelhgent and unbiased brethren of other States, 
 but to the flict that only a small portion of their 
 menial population are, or ever can be, sovereigns. 
 The great mass of their menials belong to a dis- 
 tinct and inferior race, who never can be absorbed, 
 and who, therefore, are not and never can become 
 sovereigns of the land. The conservative influ- 
 ence, therefore, of the African race in the South- 
 ern States, I set down as a fixed fact, for which, 
 in the prospective condition of the country, we 
 have abundant cause to be devoutly thankful to 
 Almighty God. 
 
 In view, therefore, of the condition of the Afri- 
 cans themselves, as well as the calamities wdiich 
 overhang the country, how idly do they talk who 
 w^ould expel the Africans from these States ! How 
 madly do they reason who, by a cordon of free- 
 soil States, on the West and South, would shut 
 up the Southern States — as if, wdth bolts and 
 bars, they would cage a savage beast ! False 
 philosophers ! Enemies alike to justice and hu- 
 manity ! Worse than Nadab and Abihu, in the 
 republic of Moses ! Kindred to Ahithophel and 
 Judas, and, in later days, to Benedict Arnold ! 
 The day will come — passing events cast their long 
 ''iihadows before" — when history will record the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 275 
 
 civilization of all Africa, and the final solution of 
 the problem, and the permanent establishment of 
 American liberty. A sound philosophy will be at 
 no loss to trace both one and the other to the 
 agency, and that in no small degree, of that won- 
 derful scheme of Divine Providence, by which so 
 large a number of Africans were introduced into 
 so many of the States of North America. Ay ! 
 and long before that day, the North w^ill learn to 
 do justice to their brethren of the South. When 
 the fight shall wax w^arm, and the " battle-cry" 
 shall be heard throughout all their coasts, then 
 will it be seen and acknowledged that the Southern 
 States — always great in the counsels of the nation 
 — are always, and everywhere, the true friends 
 and invincible supporters of Protestant freedom, 
 or the rights of conscience ; and then shall they 
 do justice to these States as the chief bulwarks of 
 American liberty, and equal honor to that wonder- 
 ful providence which has so signally marked their 
 history, for good to the whole country, as well as 
 to the continent of Africa. 
 
276 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 THE DUTY OF MASTERS TO SLAVES. 
 
 " Masters, give unto your servants ((JoiJAotf , slaves) that which is just and equal, 
 knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." — CoL. iv. 1. 
 
 The duty of masters and the rights of slaves reciprocal. 
 
 1. The duty of masters to their slaves considered as ''their 
 money" — in regard to working, resting, feeding, clothing, 
 housing, and the employment of persons over them ; also to 
 the sick and the aged. 
 
 2. Their duty to their slaves considered as social beings. 
 Punishments and the social principle discussed. 
 
 3. Their duty to their slaves considered as religious beings. 
 Public instruction on the Sabbath, and at other times, and 
 the opportunity of attending. The employment of preach- 
 ers, and the religious instruction of children. 
 
 It has been shown in previous lectures that the 
 principle of slavery accords fully with the doctrine 
 of abstract rights, civil and social ; and that a sys- 
 tem of domestic slavery in the United States is 
 demanded by the circumstances of the African 
 population in the country. But it by no means 
 follows that the conduct of all masters, in the exer- 
 cise of their functions as masters, is proper, any 
 
OF SLAYERY. 277 
 
 more than that the conduct of all parents, or the 
 owners of apprentices, is such as it should be. 
 The opinion is entertained that the domestic gov- 
 ernment of children does not more than approxi- 
 mate propriety as a general thing; and that the 
 government of apprentices and of African slaves 
 falls far short of what is proper. In this lecture 
 it is proposed to deal with the relations of masters 
 to slaves, that is, the duties they owe them. The 
 doctrine that the system of domestic slavery as- 
 sumes that the slave is a '^ mere machine — a chat- 
 tel," has been fully exploded. The Bible particu- 
 larly regards the slave an accountable being. It 
 requires him to yield a w^illing obedience to his 
 master, and teaches him that such service is ac- 
 cepted of the Lord as service done unto himself, 
 Ephesians vi. 5-8 ; and in the 9 th verse, the mas- 
 ter is required to " do the same things unto them, 
 forbearing threatening : knowing that 3'our Master 
 also is in heaven." And again, (Colossians iv. 1,) 
 '' Masters, give unto your servants that which is 
 just and equal." Hence, in the strictest sense, 
 religion holds the scales of justice between masters 
 and slaves. Each one is held to a strict account- 
 ability for the faithful performance of his duty, 
 the one to the other^ — " for there is no respect of 
 persons with God." 
 
 It behooves us, then, who are masters, or who 
 
27§ PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 expect to become masters, to inquire into the 
 duties of this relation. The master who does not 
 inform himself on this subject, and endeavor con- 
 scientiously to do his duty, is strangely wanting 
 in important elements of Christian character, and, 
 indeed, even in some of those attributes which 
 enter materially into the character of a good 
 citizen. 
 
 A most fanatical spirit is abroad in the land on 
 the subject of domestic slavery. The inhumanity 
 of masters at the South is greatly exaggerated. 
 (Instances in which the institution of slavery is 
 abused no doubt contribute to this excitement.) 
 Even those who are deficient in the duties they 
 ow^e their domestics and apprentices — quite as 
 much so as is common at the South with the mas- 
 ters of African slaves — lend a willing ear to poli- 
 tical demagogues and fanatical party-leaders in 
 their denunciations of the South. Want of sym- 
 pathy for hired servants, and instances in w^hich 
 they are overreached and oppressed beyond the 
 means of legal redress, are as common in certain 
 quarters as are the cases of inhumanity to the 
 slaves at the South. But this does not help the 
 matter. Evils of this kind are to be deplored 
 whether they occur at* the North or the South. 
 The injunction of the apostle reaches every case 
 of the kind — " Masters, give unto your servants 
 
OF SLAVERY. 279 
 
 that which is just and equal : knowing that ye 
 also have a Master in heaven." 
 
 But what may the apostle mean by this pre- 
 cept? The view before taken of the right will 
 justify a departure from the usual line of thought 
 on this subject. To give any one that which is 
 just is to confer upon him that which is his right. 
 To give that which is just and equal, is a form of 
 expression that may limit the term "just" to its 
 legal sense, that is, confer on him all the rights 
 guaranteed to him by law. There is a special 
 necessity for this command in any state of society. 
 For whatever advantages the law might confer on 
 the slave, his subordinate relation, and the supe- 
 rior position and authority of the master, will of 
 necessity place it in his power to defeat the pro- 
 visions of the law in favor of the slave. But the 
 command goes farther than this : Give unto your 
 servants that which is equal, equitable, that is, jus- 
 tice in a moral sense, or that which is right — good 
 in itself. Whatever provision the law might make 
 for the benefit of the slave, as a slave, might be 
 secured to him by his master, and yet many of his 
 natural and acquired rights might be overlooked, and 
 the claims of Christian charity annulled. To ful- 
 fil the command, however, we must give the slave 
 equity, as well as legal justice : we must do unto 
 the slave what we would have the slave to do 
 
280 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 unto US, on a change of relations. It is needless 
 to repeat the discussion of this topic in a former 
 lecture. Suffice it to say, that the master is not 
 required to give to his slave (any more than the 
 parent is required to give to his child) whatever 
 he might wish, but whatever justice and equity 
 claim for him, that is, whatever is right or good in 
 itself; or, if you please, accord to him all his 
 natural and acquired rights, as a slave. For this 
 is precisely that, and no more, to which the mas- 
 ter would be entitled on a change of relations. 
 
 We now meet the question — What are the 
 rights of the slave ? The duties of the master 
 are reciprocal of these. Those Avho believe, witt 
 Channing, that the relation they sustain as mas- 
 ters assumes that their slaves have no rights, we 
 may consider are beyond the reach of reason. If 
 the master owes any duties to his slave, it is be- 
 cause the rights of the slave entitle him to the 
 benefit of the faithful performance of these duties 
 on the part of his master. No point is more fully 
 settled in Scripture than this : masters are held 
 to a strict accountabihty to God for the faithful 
 performance of certain duties to their slaves. The 
 Bible puts it beyond all dispute that " the master 
 stands to his bond-servant, one bought with his 
 money or born in his house, in a relation widely 
 different from that which he sustains to the hired 
 
OF SLAVERY. 281 
 
 servant, or the stranger within his gates, or the 
 neighbor without them." And as he may be a 
 good neighbor, and yet at fault as a husband and 
 father, so he may be a good husband, a good 
 father, and yet a bad master. 
 
 The duties which the master owes the slave 
 are as binding on the conscience as those which 
 the slave ow^es the master. To neglect either 
 involves the party so neglecting in sin. Indeed, 
 the duties of the master are as binding as those 
 of any relation in life. On many accounts, they 
 are peculiarly solemn. They are duties owed to 
 inferiors, and inferiors in a helpless condition. 
 They appeal to the m.agnanimity of the master. 
 He w^ho disregards this appeal, not only violates 
 duty, but betrays a want of magnanimity, border- 
 ing upon that meanness of spirit which dehghts 
 to oppress an inferior, w^hilst it cowers before an 
 equal. A brave man is always magnanimous, and 
 a magnanimous man will rarely fail to respect the 
 rights of the helpless. Guardianship, as well as 
 authority, enters as an element into the idea of 
 master. Masters are not only rulers, but protec- 
 tors. If the servant is defrauded of his own, if 
 his wants are not regarded and his grievances 
 redressed, or he is otherwise oppressed, to whom 
 can he complain ? True, his miseries are noi 
 voiceless. His cries " enter into the ears of the 
 
 / 
 
282 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 Lord of sabaoth." But his only earthly appeal lies 
 to his master. He has permitted or done this 
 thing, and it is laid upon the conscience of the slave 
 to submit, " not answering again." His master 
 is his only earthly protector. His guaranty that 
 his master will protect him, is that he too has a 
 " Master in heaven," who is no respecter of per- 
 sons, and that to him belongeth vengeance. 
 
 According to principles established in the fourth 
 and fifth lectures, the Africans of this country, in 
 common wdth minors, imbeciles, and uncivilized 
 persons, have a right to be governed and protected, 
 and to such means of physical comfort and moral 
 improvement as are necessary and compatible with 
 their providential condition. That w^hich it is 
 their right to have as slaves, it is the duty of 
 masters to secure to them. Superior positions 
 devolve higher and more important duties. The 
 master who ignores these claims, and affects to be 
 offended with any who may assert them on behalf 
 of the slave, will do w^ell to consider that the 
 " cries of those who have reaped down their 
 fields," that is, the claims of those wdio have 
 labored for them, and have no earthly friend to 
 vindicate their rights, are heard by Him who has 
 said, " Vengeance is mine : I will repay, saith 
 the Lord." But Christian masters, or even men of 
 religious, sentiments, who always respect the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 283 
 
 claims of the poor, find pleasure in attending to 
 the wants of the helpless, and to none more than 
 those of their own slaves. 
 
 Humanity, the claims of religion, and the pecu- 
 niary interest of the master, all unite to enforce 
 the claims of the slave. The physical and the 
 moral man are so nicely blended, and the duties 
 we owe the one run so naturally into those we 
 owe the other, that it is difficult to make a w^ell- 
 defined classification, especially in the case of 
 either slaves or children. The following will be 
 found sufficiently accurate for all practical pur- 
 poses : 
 
 I. The duties of masters to their slaves, con- 
 sidered as " their money :" such as relate to judi- 
 cious labor, and reasonable time for rest, habita- 
 tions, clothing, food, arrangements for sickness, 
 their ow^n time, and stewards or overseers. 
 
 II. The duties of masters to slaves, considered 
 as social beings : such as relate to moral treat- 
 ment, punishments, matrimonial alliances, fiimily 
 connections, and duties relating to women, children, 
 and the aged. 
 
 III. The duties of masters to slaves, considered 
 as religious beings : such as relate to the domestic 
 and public instruction of their slaves in the princi- 
 pies and duties of religion. 
 
 I. The duties of masters to their slaves^ con- 
 
284 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 SIDERED AS " THEIR MOxNEY :" ''for Iw ts h/'s mone//,'' 
 Ex. xxi. 21. 
 
 1. Slaves should be subjected to reasonable labor. 
 Instances are to be found in which ignorance with 
 a natural tendency to idleness, or vast wealth, 
 joined with a kind of sentimental religion, which 
 exhausts itself in a morbid sympathy for the poor, 
 leads to a disregard of that great law of nature 
 under which slaves should be subjected to labor. 
 Many are indulged in idleness. Idleness is a 
 crime in any one. Even those whose wealth and 
 social position in society enable them to indulge 
 in idleness without incurring the ordinary penal- 
 ties, inflict a great evil upon society thereby. 
 And for those who can only be occupied in the 
 menial offices of society to be indulged in idleness 
 is to create a nuisance. There are families in the 
 Southern country whose slaves can only be re- 
 garded as nuisances. Sometimes the ignorance, 
 but more frequently the dissipated habits of the 
 master, lead to this. Again, in some cases, 
 widows with large fortunes in slaves furnish ex- 
 amples of the same. They are not generally in 
 circumstances to manage a farm, without the aid 
 of an intelligent and judicious steward. But a 
 morbid sympathy, joined, perhaps, with parsi- 
 mony, prevents the employment of such a one. 
 The consequence is, the slaves are indulged in 
 
OP SLAVERY. 285 
 
 great idleness. Families are sometimes broken 
 up from these causes, and the slaves sold under 
 the hammer. The separation of family ties, 
 which under given circumstances is a cause for so 
 much regret, is often to be traced to these sources. 
 But long before this result, the slaves are con- 
 sidered and felt to be a nuisance in the neighbor- 
 hood. Many intelligent and humane neighbors, 
 who deplore the dissolution of the family and the 
 separations consequent upon it, are bound to 
 admit that these disasters after all are the least 
 of evils. Hence, slaves should be subjected to 
 physical labor. '^If amj man vnll not tvorJc^ neither 
 shall he eat'' — so God has said, and the master 
 who disregards it either for himself or his slaves 
 shall come to poverty ; and this shall be the least 
 part of the evil. 
 
 But slaves should he subjected only to reasonable 
 lahor. There is an excess of physical exertion 
 w^hich the constitution cannot bear. The laws of 
 nature cannot be violated with impunity. Sooner 
 or later the effects will follow. Excessive labor 
 will result in a peculiar liability to disease, in pre- 
 mature old age, or in death. For the reckless 
 industr}^ of a few years, all this pecuniary loss 
 and great moral evil follows. He who transcends 
 the limits which God has fixed to human labor, 
 pays the forfeit of health, if not of hfe. " To 
 
286 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 coax or bribe one's slave to go beyond this limit 
 is wretched economy : to force him to do it is 
 cruelty." The state of the weather is an import- 
 ant element in determining the amount of labor 
 that may be reasonably required. The extremes 
 of heat and cold, or inclement weather, rain or 
 snow, should always be regarded. African slaves 
 can do but little, comparatively, in very inclement 
 weather. A reasonable master will regard the 
 extremes of heat and cold, and especially the 
 latter. 
 
 Suitable tools or implements of labor constitute 
 another important item in determining the amount 
 of labor that may be reasonably demanded. It 
 was cruel in Pharaoh to lay upon the Israelites 
 the " same tale of brick," without supplying them 
 with the usual "quantity of straw." Ex. v. 7, 8. 
 It is equally unjust to require an ordinary day's 
 work of your slaves, if you fail to supply them 
 with the tools necessary to perform it. A dull 
 iron or an ill-shaped helve will require a much 
 greater outlay of physical strength to accomplish 
 a certain result. There is certainly an evil in 
 Southern society at this point. Many persons 
 are negligent of the kind and quality of their 
 farming implements. Their slaves do a reason- 
 able amount of labor, still the form does not pros- 
 per. A slave is occasionally sold to meet ex- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 287 
 
 penses. Humane persons struggle with what they 
 call misfortunes. Those who are less careful of 
 the claims of humanity make unreasonable exac- 
 tions of their laborers. They are sufficiently near 
 to certain neighbors to see that their lands are 
 well cultivated, their fencing is good, their stock 
 is in good condition, their houses neat and com- 
 fortable for both man and beast, and their farms 
 wear the appearance of thrift ; but they are not 
 sufficiently intimate to know that it is the intelli- 
 gence or good common sense that presides over 
 these farms, and not the extra amount of labor 
 exacted of the slaves, that makes the difference. 
 The slaves on these prosperous farms, although 
 they are made to observe great constancy and 
 system in their labor, are not subjected to the 
 same amount of hard labor as are those of many 
 less thrifty farmers. The achievements of science 
 in labor-saving machinery are very great. Man 
 is greatly aided in his labors by natural agents. 
 They accommodate his work to his physical 
 structure, reheve his posture, and lessen his 
 fatigue. With sharp instruments, and those of 
 the best kind, labor is no lon^rer such a drudorerv. 
 Indeed, labor is lightened by a thousand simple and 
 cheap arts. Science enables us to accomplish with 
 one man the labor of two or more men in almost 
 every pursuit of life. It is a great practical mis- 
 
288 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 take to suppose that this is only true of manufac- 
 turing estabhshments. It is equally so in the 
 improved methods of farming and the improved 
 implements by which the labor of the farm is 
 accompHshed. Farmers of enlightened views give 
 their laborers the benefit of the newest and best 
 improvements in their line. To attempt to rival the 
 productions of such farmers, by exacting extra labor 
 of the hands, is great injustice. For he who has 
 the same work to do as another, with only half his 
 means of doing it, has twice his work to do. " The 
 ease of the patent spring," and the ^'' speed of the 
 locomotive," are not more important to the com- 
 fort of the traveller and his economy of time, 
 which is money, in accomplishing his journey, 
 than are the improved methods and instruments 
 of farming to the ease, the economy, and the suc- 
 cess of the farmer. " But slaves are careless, 
 wasteful, and destructive." So they are, and so 
 perhaps would you be. There is but little differ- 
 ence between slaves and any others who labor for 
 us in menial offices. All such operatives require 
 a presiding mind to effect a proper division of 
 labor, and have its eye in every place and on 
 every thing. Without this, it is idle to prate 
 about the wastefulness of slaves. If the master 
 is himself too idle or improvident for this, he is 
 culpable : if he has no capacity for it, he is fit to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 289 
 
 labor under the direction of another — that is, he 
 is fit to be a slave ; but he is not quahfied to 
 direct the labor of others — that is, he is not fit to 
 be a master. 
 
 Slaves should he allotued reasonahle time for rest. 
 All animal nature requires the refreshment derived 
 from sleep. The muscular and nervous system 
 of man requires not less than seven hours in 
 twenty-four to repair the wastes of a day of active 
 labor. This is a general rule. Some do with 
 less : a few require more. But in every case 
 there is a limit beyond which we cannot habitually 
 go, without the sacrifice of health or life. The 
 constitutions of some laboring men can bear a 
 great loss of sleep ; but it is on the same princi- 
 ple that a few constitutions can, for a long time, 
 resist the effects of the daily use of alcohol. But 
 still dram-drinking Avill tell, and so will the loss ol 
 sleep. 
 
 We unyoke the ox, we stable the horse, and the 
 whole night is devoted to their repose. But this 
 is often not the case with the w^eary slave, who 
 toiled with them through the day. He is con- 
 venient to demands, and a great many extra jobs 
 may be found for him before he reposes. I say 
 " reposes," for sleep is not all that is required for 
 rest. There is a time of leisure, a waking repose, 
 which is as necessary as sleep. No reasonable 
 13 
 
290 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 man denies himself the benefit of this. The slave 
 is entitled to the early part of the night for this. 
 No one has a right to require him to take all his 
 rest with his eyes shut, and his senses locked up 
 in sleep. There is the refreshment of mind re- 
 sulting from repose from ordinary pursuits, and 
 occupation with things wdiich may please the 
 humor or minister to innocent gratification, by 
 wdiich, to a certain degree, the exhausted system 
 is restored as much as by sleep. Indeed, with- 
 out this, " balmy sleep" is not a '^ sweet restorer." 
 The man who works hard the six days of the 
 week, does not require to sleep all Sunday in 
 order to restore his w^asted system. There is a 
 transition of mental pursuits from business to 
 devotion, and there is to a virtuous mind the 
 hallov/ed cheerfulness of that holy day, which 
 contributes to restore the system, no less than 
 cessation from labor, and sleep. The slave, like 
 his master, is entitled to the night. What if he 
 do employ a reasonable part of it to turn a penny, 
 and in arranging for his personal comfort? It 
 gives repose to his mind : it ministers to his cheer- 
 fulness : along with sleep it reinvigorates his 
 whole system, and makes him a more valuable as 
 well as a more happy servant. Who, then, shall 
 deny him the boon ? Surely not the economist, 
 vvlio calls him his '" money," and who, by any 
 
OF SLAVERY. 201 
 
 other course, would be reducing the value of " his 
 money" below par ! 
 
 In Virginia — and we are not at liberty to think 
 it is materially different in other Southern States 
 — slaves are generally indulged with time for 
 repose at their day meals, and with the whole 
 night from early nightfall. A clear evidence of 
 the economy of this system is afforded by the 
 strikinsf contrast which in some cases is to be 
 
 a 
 
 found on plantations between slaves thus treated, 
 and masters of a certain description. The slaves 
 are fat, sleek, cheerful, and long-lived : spending 
 their leisure time in cheerful conversation, in 
 singing, or in those little personal offices which 
 give elasticity to mind and body. But not so 
 with some masters. They sleep as much — that 
 is, lie down as much — as their slaves ; but their 
 sleep is disturbed by an incoherent tracing of the 
 anxious thoughts of the troubled day. They are 
 not refreshed. Both mind and body are worn 
 down by excessive friction. They hasten to pre- 
 mature old age ; and the weary wheels of life 
 stand still long before the appointed time. Some 
 masters are personally very industrious and enter- 
 prising : they work side by side w^ith their slaves. 
 It is their boast that they require no more of their 
 slaves than they do themselves. Yea, they do 
 more than they, having the direction and care of 
 
292 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 all. Surely, say they, my slaves have no right 
 to complain. But this reasoning is not always 
 fair. It may be that the master overtasks him- 
 self. This does not give the right to overtask 
 his slaves. Withal, he brings to his task a physi- 
 cal system stimulated to a high degree by those 
 mental activities which push him forward to en- 
 terprise great things. He labors to exhaustion, 
 and enjoys his rest only the more for having 
 done so. Not so with the slave who works by 
 his side. When he yields to over-fatigue, his 
 thoughts administer no cordial to his weary limbs. 
 It is well if he have not intelligence enough to 
 make them a source of still further prostration. 
 
 Again, the man-servant and the maid-servant, 
 as well as the beast, are entitled to the rest of the 
 Sabbath. More than this, we are commanded to 
 ""remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." 
 The head of the family should not only do this 
 himself, but see that all his household observe the 
 Sabbath. It is not enough that the children and 
 servants be left free to keep the Sabbath. The 
 head of the fmiily should see that all the arrange- 
 ments necessary to promote the due observance 
 of the Sabbath are properly made, so that, whilst 
 he requires the observance of the Sabbath, all the 
 domestic arrangements invite to its observance. 
 
 There are certain individuals about many fami- 
 
OP SLAVERY. 293 
 
 lies whose offices are so difficult to be dispensed 
 with, because they are so necessary to self-indul- 
 gencCj that they are often deprived of the rest of 
 the Sabbath. Of this class there are two humble 
 but very important personages, which it is neither 
 beneath the subject nor the occasion to notice, 
 namely, the cook and the carriage-driver. To the 
 carriage-driver of some families, all days are alike 
 " days of rest." He is the most idle personage 
 about the premises. It is well if a farm-hand be 
 not presently sold to support his idleness. But 
 the carriage-driver of another family is himself also 
 a farm-hand. With him the case may be widely 
 different. He may toil on the farm six days in 
 the week, and spend the day of rest in burnishing 
 harness, and with carriage and horses. If he 
 drive to church, the care of his horses is at least 
 a pretext for neglecting the sermon; and if he 
 drive to spend the day with a neighbor, it is not 
 a day of rest, and may not be a day of enjoyment. 
 In either case, there is but little companionship, 
 but few church privileges, and still less opportu- 
 nity for rest. It may be no better with the cook, 
 and is often not so well. Indeed, the Sabbath is 
 seldom a day of rest with the cook. It is oftenei' 
 a day of much closer confinement. Stewing, 
 roasting, baking, and broihng the greater part of 
 the day on Sabbath, afford but little time for the 
 
294 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 repose for which the fourth commandment pro- 
 vides. These are evils in the land. It lies on 
 right-minded men to correct them. At the least, 
 they can correct their own practices, and in doing 
 this they will do much to reform the habits of 
 society. 
 
 2. Slaves should he furnished ivitli suitable hahita- 
 tions. We are considering slaves as property, and 
 the duty of masters as economists. On the prin- 
 ciple of good economy, slaves are entitled to habi- 
 tations sufficiently airy and cool in summer, close 
 and warm in winter. And as it costs no more, 
 why may not their houses be located with due re- 
 gard to their health, their convenience, and com- 
 fort ? Let them then be grouped together on the 
 gentle slope of a hill, and, as lime is cheap, let 
 them all be neatly whitewashed. Who could ob- 
 ject to a little garden spot attached to each ? And 
 why may there not be nice rows of shade trees, 
 and neat grass-plots upon which the children can 
 sport, and where the men and women can sit and 
 enjoy a delightful Sabbath evening? Economy 
 will not object to this. The miserable smoky 
 hovels in low damp situations, black and disagree- 
 able to the sight, in which, in some instances, 
 they are huddled together, cannot be too severely 
 condemned on the principles of economy, no less 
 than on those of good morals. For if the inhabit- 
 
OF SLAVERY. 295 
 
 ants of such buildings are not filthy, degraded, and 
 thievish to an extent that materially depreciates 
 their value, it can only be because they are extra- 
 ordinary examples of moral purity. 
 
 3. Slaves slioidd he comfortitbhj clothed. All 
 those families whose self-respect leads them to 
 regard their position in society, supply their 
 slaves with comfortable clothing, and pay particular 
 attention to the neatness as well as the comfort 
 of those kept about the house. It v/ould indicate 
 a very low state of civilization, if these things 
 should be generally neglected. The improvements 
 in the manufacture of cotton, w^ool, and leather 
 have been so great that nothing short of these 
 could be tolerated in decent society. Our slaves 
 are no doubt generally better fed, clothed, and 
 housed than are the menials in most of the nations 
 of Europe. Still, there are instances of neglect, 
 wdiich should be noticed. Those who pay but 
 little attention to their habitations, generally neg- 
 lect their clothing. Feet are to be found unshod 
 when frost is on the ground ; the head uncovered 
 in all weathers ; and the body for from being suit- 
 ably protected. The color and tropical habitudes 
 of our slaves render them pecuharly hable to suffer 
 from cold. Health as w^ell as comfort requires 
 them to be warmly clad in cold weather. "A 
 shivering servant is a shame to any master." It 
 
296 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 is economy to sell a slave occasionally rather than 
 let all suffer for the want of clothing. But they 
 should also be supplied with suitable beds and 
 bedding. The expense is really so trifling, and the 
 economy so great, that masters entitled to respect 
 cannot be excused for the neglect of this duty 
 Shucks are plentiful on all farms, and cotton is 
 abundant on many, and can be easily had at cheap 
 rates on those on which it is not raised. These 
 articles make excellent mattresses, and the latter 
 makes most excellent comforts. Those rainy days 
 on which slaves should not be allowed to work 
 out, should be employed in providing these articles. 
 Health and life are often thus preserved. To allow 
 slaves to labor in filth and rags through the week, 
 and lie about or stroll about on the Sabbath in 
 their umvashed rags, should be severely censured. 
 It does not help the matter a great deal to throw 
 them a thin blanket occasionally, w^ith liberty to 
 take repose wherever they can find it. Such mas- 
 ters pay more in doctors' bills than it would cost 
 to make their slaves as comfortable as those of 
 their more prudent neighbors. It is a shame to 
 them. We cannot give them any more credit for 
 practical sense than for good morals. 
 
 4. Slaves sJioidd he tuell fed. The quality, the 
 quantity of food, and reasonable time to eat it and 
 refresh themselves, are the ideas wdiich enter into 
 
OF SLAVERY. 297 
 
 this duty. A sufficient quantity of good substantial 
 food, well prepared, should be furnished. Meat 
 should form a fair proportion of the diet of a labor- 
 ing African. The Irish, it is true, eat but little 
 meat, and do well, — that is, such as do not perish, 
 — but the African constitution in this climate 
 requires meat, and they must have it if they do 
 full labor. Their food should be well prepared. 
 To secure this, it should be prepared by a cook, 
 and eaten at a common table. To put laboring 
 farm-hands off with an allowance of meat and meal, 
 to prepare it or seek its preparation as they may, 
 is too obviously wrong to require argument. The 
 force of habit is exceedingly stubborn in the Afri- 
 can. To eat a piece of meat exhausted of its 
 nutriment by being crisped on the coals, is very 
 much to the taste of those accustomed to it : 
 they will yield with great reluctance. But still, 
 this plan should give place to the better prepara- 
 tion of the public table. An excellent habit of 
 the slaves is to eat slowly. Usually something 
 like two hours in the long days is allowed them to 
 eat and refresh themselves at noon. It is not too 
 much to allow. An hour's repose after a meat 
 dinner should be allowed to all laborers in the 
 heat of summer. Again, they are entitled to such 
 variety as the season affords. The early roasting 
 ear, the ripe fruit, the melons, the potatoes, the 
 
208 PHILOSOPHY AND PKACTICE 
 
 iiit stock, all enter of right in due season and 
 limited proportions into their bill of fare. Better 
 do all this than pay doctors' bills, or tempt them 
 to steal. Nor do I fall out with the custom of 
 some of our better families, to supply their tables 
 with a portion of all the delicacies of the " great 
 house," on particular occasions. Some may think 
 this too much for slaves ! But the attachment of 
 Southern slaves to the famihes in which they were 
 born and brought up is proverbial. And let 
 Northern fanatics believe and prate whjit they 
 will, it is still true that the practical workings of 
 the system generally, on the basis of the duties 
 here inculcated, is in a good degree the cause of 
 this attachment. Every right-minded master con- 
 templates the phi/sique of his servants with emo- 
 tions of pride and pleasure. Their looks reflect 
 his character. A gang of half-starved, meanly- 
 clad, overvrorked slaves, with no heart to laugh 
 or sing, and even without that attachment for their 
 owners which the ox and the ass have for theirs, 
 is a disgusting spectacle, and as revolting to every 
 feeling of humanity as it is in violation of every 
 principle of economy. 
 
 5. Provmon should he made for slaves in times 
 of sickness. Each of the topics discussed derives 
 much of its importance from its connection with 
 this. Reasonable labor, time for repose and sleep^ 
 
OF SLAVERY. 299 
 
 habitations, clothing, and food, are each and all of 
 them provisions against the occurrence of sickness. 
 Still, the topic deserves a more special notice. 
 All famihes should have such domestic provisions 
 as anticipate sickness by suitable arrangements 
 for it when it comes — such as comfortable apart- 
 ments and the ordinary conveniences for nursing. 
 All flimihes and manufactories employing a suffi- 
 cient number of slaves to require it, should have a 
 hospital : that is, a house so situated as to loca- 
 tion and internal arrangements as to be a conve- 
 nient and comfortable place for the sick, and 
 equally convenient to those who may have to 
 nurse the sick, or to overlook those who do. The 
 economy of such an arrangement on large farms 
 commends itself to approbation. So far from 
 encouraging a well-known disposition among 
 slaves of a certain character to lie by for trifling 
 causes, it will contribute very much to discourage 
 such habits. If slaves are permitted to lounge 
 about their own houses when sick, they may often 
 elude observation, and spend their time in idle- 
 ness, when they should be at w^ork ; and in cases 
 of actual sickness, they are liable to suffer for 
 want of attention. On the hospital plan, the case 
 will be very different with each of these. If all 
 who are sick have to go to the hospital, and take 
 physic, the former will not be so likely to feign 
 
300 PHILOSOPHY AXD PRACTICE 
 
 sickness, and the really sick will be better at- 
 tended to. 
 
 6. What is usually called their own time should 
 he strictly alloived them. Besides Christmas, there 
 are frequent holiday occasions through the year, 
 and still oftener a Saturday afternoon at particular 
 seasons, which usage has secured to them as theii 
 oivn time. This time is usually employed by the 
 more provident in cultivating a garden, in mend- 
 ing their clothes, cleansing about their houses, or 
 in various ways earning a few dollars with w^hich 
 to purchase little articles of fancy or comfort in 
 the way of furniture or dress, such as masters do 
 not usually furnish. Some masters obviate the 
 necessity for a portion of this, by cultivating a 
 part of the crop, and dividing the proceeds of its 
 sale among them for their exclusive benefit. 
 None but a tyrant, who is always a bad economist, 
 will disregard their claims to what is known as 
 their own time. Any other man who should 
 attempt it, would soon be taught to feel that the 
 force of public opinion, even among slaves, well 
 sustained as it is on these points, is a matter not 
 to be despised. The claims of slaves and the 
 rights of the public coincide. Plantation slaves 
 who may be no less than a body of ragamuffins, 
 carrying on petty depredations upon the rights 
 of property in the neighborhood, are a serious 
 
OF SLAVERY. 301 
 
 nuisance. Public opinion will not tolerate it. The 
 economy of such a master is as bad as his injust- 
 ice to his neighbors is oppressive. 
 
 7. Stewards or overseers. The duty Avhich the 
 master owes his slaves in the selection of a person 
 to be over them is often embarrassing, and at all 
 times important. That which a farmer has time 
 and ability to do for himself, he should not employ 
 an agent to do for him. He has more interest in 
 it than any one else, and will observe more fidelity 
 ill its performance. No economist will employ a 
 steward to manage his farm if he can prudently 
 supply his place by his own personal attentions. 
 Some employ them that they may with less loss 
 indulge in idleness : others, because they distrust 
 their own experience in farming ; and others again, 
 because more important duties put it out of their 
 power to give the necessary personal attention to 
 their farms. But whether from the one cause or 
 the other, the master owes certain duties to his 
 slave as well as to himself in selecting an individ- 
 ual to take his place over them. Economically 
 considered, the rights of the slave and the inter- 
 ests of the master coincide. Many overlook this. 
 An industrious but heartless business man may be 
 found to act as steward, who, Avith an interest in 
 the crop, will stir late and early, and drive hard all 
 the day ; but the great laws which regulate the 
 
302 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 reci2)rocal operations of labor, sleep, and repose 
 will be strangely disregarded by such a man. He 
 may succeed in a crop for a year, perhaps for a 
 series of years ; but the value of the personal 
 property as well as of the lands will be annually 
 depreciating. There is no economy in employing 
 an agent of this class. A plantation is an empire 
 within itself. If the territory be large, and the 
 subjects numerous, the mind that presides, whether 
 as master or steward, must be competent to direct 
 a proper division of labor, and to govern on the 
 principles of justice and equity. In such an 
 empire, talents of a peculiar kind are required. It 
 is only the income from such estates that wiU 
 justify the employment of the best talents, for 
 these will always command high prices. Mas- 
 ters with less income cannot command the best 
 talents. But, in either case, due regard should 
 be paid to the moral character of the man put 
 over slaves. The authority committed to him is 
 necessarily extensive. Though industrious, he 
 need not be cruel. He should be fully capable 
 of sympathizing with the semi-barbarous subjects 
 of his empire. Industry, good moral habits, and 
 common sense, are essential qualities in an over- 
 seer. To be wanting in any of these, constitutes 
 an entire disqualification for the office. To be 
 himself immoral, and to contribute to corrupt the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 303 
 
 morals of those under hinij involves the master 
 Avho employs him in the guilt of sin, as well as 
 depreciates the value of his property. When a 
 man of industry, common sense, and virtue is 
 found, pains should be taken to attach him to the 
 estate. If he be a single man, he should be 
 encouraged to marry. His situation should be 
 made as permanent as possible. The man of 
 common sense, who well understands that nothing 
 but industry, carefulness or prudence, and virtue, 
 will secure his situation, will, one year with 
 another, make as good crops as it would be 
 reasonable to expect. More than a fair crop, like 
 all other unfair operations, impHes unfairness 
 somewhere. If it be in the voiceless woes of the ^ 
 slave, the master is sadly the loser in the end. 
 He who retains his steward with a view to extra 
 crops by such means, may be likened to a barba- 
 rian king in Africa, but does not deserve to be 
 ranked among masters in civilized life. All mas- 
 ters, I should think, owe it to themselves and to 
 their slaves to give a great deal of personal atten- 
 'tion to their farms.^*' 
 
 * I take this occasion to call your attention to a little volume 
 on the "Duties of Masters to Servants/' three premium essa3-s, 
 by the Rev. Messrs. H. N. McTyeire, C. F. Sturgis, and A. T. 
 Holmes, published by the Southern Baptist Publication Society, 
 Charleston, S. C, to which I acknowledge myself indebted for 
 several suggestions on this topic. Read the book. 
 
304 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 II. The duties of masters to slaves, as social 
 
 BEINGS. 
 
 They are entitled to the restraints, the protec- 
 tion, and the encouragement, which a prudent 
 administration of a system of good laws is calcu- 
 lated to afford. A part of this is secured to them 
 by the civil government ; but a large part is left 
 to the discretion and fidehty of the master. The 
 civil government assumes that the pecuniary in- 
 terest of the master and the duty which he owes 
 his slaves coincide so perfectly, that the perform- 
 ance of certain duties may with propriety be left 
 to him. He is the patriarch of his whole house. 
 His family is his empire, subordinate, it is true, 
 to the civil government, but still an empire. He 
 commands the time and labor of his children and 
 his slaves — the one for a definite period in life, 
 the other for an indefinite period. He gives law 
 to the one and to the other. So long as he does 
 not violate the constitution and laws of the politi- 
 cal commonwealth of which he is himself a subject, 
 his authority is absolute. All the rights of his 
 children and his servants appeal to him. He is 
 responsible to the civil government not to violate 
 its provisions, and he is responsible to God for the 
 fiiithful performance of his duties to his children 
 and his servants ; for the sin of omitting to do 
 
OF SLAVERY. 305 
 
 his duty to his children or servants could rarely 
 be reached by the civil authority. 
 
 The duty of the master to his slaves as social 
 beings is to give them laws within the limits pre- 
 scribed by the civil government^ and to govern 
 them according to the principles of justice and 
 equity. 
 
 As his empire is constantly under his eye, or 
 the eye of his immediate agent, it is not necessary 
 that he have recourse to a code of laws definitely 
 drawn up and formally announced. As the teacher 
 in his room, and the mother in her nursery, may 
 have their rules, and have them obeyed without 
 these formahties, so may the master. But these 
 rules should not relate merely to the economical 
 use of the slave's time and labor, but should be 
 adapted to his character as a social being. Hence, 
 it is not proposed to give a code of laws for the 
 plantation, but to discuss certain principles which 
 should influence the conduct of the master in the 
 government of his domestic empire. 
 
 1. In regard to imnishmenU. Neither the 
 magistrate, the parent, nor the master, should 
 bear the sword in vain. Disobedience, which, in 
 all wise governments, is wickedness, must be re- 
 strained, and in extreme cases by severe punish- 
 ments. It w^ould be great vreakness to forbear. 
 But one law, however, should govern in the in- 
 
B06 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 fliction of punishments. They should be inflicted 
 for the purpose of correction, or as " a terror to 
 evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well," and 
 not to gratify passion or resentment. Punish- 
 ments inflicted from motives of resentment merely, 
 and often repeated, tend directly to cow the spirit, 
 stultify the intellect, destroy self-respect, and 
 greatly weaken the power of arbitrary volition. 
 Such a man approximates the nature of a brute, 
 and is, in fact, scarcely of the value of a common 
 horse. He is a human being, but in circumstances 
 in which he has few motives of action above those 
 which influence a brute — namely, the indulgence 
 of his animal nature, restrained only by the fear 
 of present punishment. He is not as serviceable 
 as a brute, and is far more dangerous than a brute. 
 A slave to wdiose sense of what is right and 
 proper to be done nothing can be trusted, and 
 from whom nothing can be gotten but that which 
 is extorted from his fears, is of no value unless 
 it be to a master of the same genus — that is, like 
 himself, a brute. The prodigality as well as 
 w^ickedness of this course requires no comment. 
 There is a more excellent way of maintaining 
 authority, and it lies -upon the conscience of every 
 master no less than upon his purse to observe it 
 as a duty : it is to punish for the ^^urpose of cor- 
 rection only — not to destroy, hut to save. 
 
OP SLAVERY. 307 
 
 Punishments can only be salutary as a means 
 of moral discipline in the measure in which they y 
 produce shame and mortification. But one who 
 has no self-respect can have no shame. / The effect 
 of punishment in such a case is lost only so far as 
 it may help to brutalize him. A desire to secure 
 the fVivor and preserve the confidence of those 
 upon whom we are dependent is the highest guar- 
 anty for fiiithfulness. But he only who respects 
 himself will value the respect and confidence of 
 others. And it is difficult for any man to retain 
 his self-respect when he knows that no one re- 
 spects him. It is not impossible to be done ; but 
 only men of great moral firmness and conscious 
 integrity succeed in doing it. We have no right 
 to expect it from slaves. They universally con- 
 cede the superior intelligence of the whites. /And 
 for one of these, accustomed from early childhood 
 to hear himself disparaged in company, and de- v 
 graded by harsh epithets for his stupidity and 
 disobedience by those whom he thinks to be supe- 
 rior in every thing, to grow up with the necessary 
 self-respect, is not to be expected. It would be 
 singular, indeed, even if one who had been better 
 brought up should be able to retain his self-respect 
 under this kind of treatment. And without self- 
 respect, punishment can have no moral effect. 
 Why then should we thus sin against God ? How 
 
308 PHILOSOPHY AND PKACTICE 
 
 much better to regard the counsel of Paul : '^And 
 ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing 
 threatening: hiowing that your Master also is in 
 heaven!' Ephesians vi. 9. He hath enjoined upon 
 servants to serve then- '' masters in singleness of 
 heart as unto Christ^' '^ with good will doing service 
 as to the Lord, and not to men.'' blasters are then 
 commanded to " do the same things unto them, for- 
 bearing threatening ;" that is, carefully avoiding all 
 those hasty, unjust, and petulant censures, which 
 display themselves in idle threatenings, or scold- 
 ings, do your duty to your servants as an act of 
 duty to God ; or, with a idew to his approbation, 
 /govern them according to the principles of justice, 
 equity, and kindness — remembering that your 
 Master is in heaven, from whose forbearance you 
 may have need of more than you now extend to 
 your servants. 
 
 " I desire to be kind to my servants ; but they 
 are often so perverse, they will not allow me to 
 make their situation as comfortable as I would." 
 We sometimes meet with these remarks. There 
 is often a great deal of reason for them. Our 
 slaves have many faults. They are ignorant, 
 careless, slothful, and sometimes perverse. These 
 things are at all times vexatious, and sometimes a 
 great temptation to sin. But then it should not 
 be forgotten that our children sometimes give us 
 
OFSLAYERY. 309 
 
 more trouble, and furnish stronger temptations to 
 sin, than our slaves could possibly do. Having all 
 the perverseness of the slave, their superior intel- 
 ligence may make them much more potent for evil. 
 But still they are our children. The wisest and 
 best parents will have to be blind to a great many 
 faults, and ultimately bear in silence with a great 
 deal v;hich cannot be concealed. The parent that 
 does his best, and commits results to God, will 
 find in the end that things turn out a great deal 
 better than his fears dictated they would do. So 
 our slaves are ours still. They are God's poor, 
 committed to us. We must control and protect 
 them for their profit, as well as work them for our 
 mutual profit. They have great fliults. Still, they 
 are our heritage both for good and for evil. We 
 may not dissolve the relation between us and them, 
 any more than that between us and our children. 
 We dare not turn them loose in the savage wilds of 
 Africa, any more than we dare allow them to be 
 hunted down as wild beasts by the advances of a 
 superior race, with w^hom they cannot be permitted 
 to amalgamate. To govern as well as work them, 
 is, then, a moral necessity. We cannot fulfil our 
 duty without perhaps a great deal of trouble in 
 given cases. At all times we must be blind to 
 many faults, and bear with some others which 
 carnot be concealed. , There is no release from 
 
310 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 this war. Penalties, severe penalties must be 
 inflicted occasionally. Every steady government 
 will sometimes have to wield authority with a 
 strong hand. This is a source of trouble to all, 
 and often of great pain to good people. Still, there 
 are views to be taken of the condition of the Afri- 
 can which go far to reheve the whole subject of its 
 difficulties. Many of those faults which are sources 
 of so much annoyance are to be traced to ignoi^ance 
 and a tvant of self-respect, and these are oftentimes 
 their infirmities. They are by nature slow to 
 learn, and hence their ignorance ; and few perhaps 
 have taken pains to cultivate in them much self- 
 respect. Do not these facts plead in their behalf? 
 Again, what master who desires to do justly can 
 be wholly indifferent to their good qualities ? For 
 a more docile and kind-hearted race of people are 
 not to be found than the Africans of the Southern 
 States. Readiness to forgive, gratitude in their 
 rude notions of it, hospitality to strangers, and 
 affection for friends, are characteristics of the race. 
 Cases of ingratitude and resentment are the excep- 
 tions, not the rule. Confide, then, in your slaves, as 
 far as these qualities will allow you to do it. They 
 will not disappoint your confidence, as seriously, at 
 least, as many others with the same opportunities 
 would probably do it. Give attention to their 
 comfort in little things. This will not cost you 
 
OF SLAVERY. 311 
 
 much, and will show your care for them. Pay 
 due respect to then- feehngs and then' reputation. 
 This may cost you no more than a pleasant look 
 or a kind word. Never be backward under proper 
 circumstances to trust them in any thing in which 
 it is proper to trust persons in a menial position. 
 iThis course will not be without its effect. Con- 
 fidence will beget confidence. For one to be 
 respected by others, goes f^ir to beget respect in 
 one's self. With a reasonable degree of self-respect 
 in the slave, and confidence in the kindness and 
 justice of his master, his discipline cannot fail to 
 be salutary. He may punish in cases of disobe- 
 dience with great firmness, and to a merited ex- 
 tent, and it will not fail to produce shame and 
 mortification. His authority will be '' a terror to 
 evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well." 
 The public opinion of his little commonwealth 
 will fully sustain his administration. The counsels 
 of age, the cutting jokes of early manhood, and 
 the merry laugh of the young, will all unite to 
 teach the offender a valuable lesson. He who 
 governs a plantation of slaves without the aid of a 
 certain measure of pubhc opinion, is a loser in the 
 end. Some masters affect to despise this. Brute 
 force may sustain them ; but the public opinion 
 even of so humble a commonwealth as a plantation 
 of slaves is not to be despised. The sensible and 
 
312 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 humane master, who would ohey the apostohc 
 preceptj and maintain a sound and judicious disci- 
 phne among his slaves, will obey what is equally 
 imphed in another injunction, and entitle himself 
 to the respect and confidence of his subjects. 
 Tyrants who have operated upon wider and nobler 
 fields have affected to despise public opinion, and 
 lost their crowns. The petty tyrants of whom we 
 treat cannot fiiil to lose the respect of their neigh- 
 bors. It is impossible to respect a man whose 
 policy infests the neighborhood with a band of 
 freebooters, and this policy will rarely fail to re- 
 duce such a man to poverty also. 
 
 2. In regard to the social frincipJe. They are 
 social beings. There are among them those great 
 impulses of our nature, general love for society, 
 and attachment to the sexes, out of which arise 
 the afiection of husband and wife, the love of 
 parents to children, and children to parents, and 
 all the various modifications of affection, resulting 
 from collateral and more distant relationships. 
 Besides these, there is the feehng of friendship 
 between individuals of similar habits and corre- 
 sponding pursuits. All these social principles are 
 common to our African population. Any evidence 
 to the contrary is only a proof of a low state of 
 civilization. Now, it is an easy matter for some 
 minds to overlook the fact that they are i^ocial 
 
OF SLAVERY. 313 
 
 and not mere sentient beings. But all the ele- 
 ments of simple society are to be found among 
 them. They associate together as other races. 
 It is not pecuhar to them to wish to be together 
 and to find pleasure in each other's society. They 
 obey the common law of humanity. These ele- 
 ments of the social nature give rise to various rela- 
 tions and duties among themselves. They do not 
 operate mechanically, but morally. Hence their 
 society is subject to all the mutations, the conflict 
 of rights and the violation of duties, of any other 
 simple society, under like restrictions. As in any 
 other society, these relations must be understood 
 and made to operate within certain limits. These 
 rights must be guarded and protected by the ob- 
 servance of certain duties enforced by certain pen- 
 alties. Otherwise they may herd together, as in 
 the wilds of Africa; but they cannot dwell to- 
 gether as rational beings. For the impulses of 
 nature are not fulfilled when they are permitted 
 merely to herd together. At this point, the mas- 
 ter owes an important duty to his slaves. Its ob- 
 servance will greatly promote their progress in 
 civilization, and enhance the value of his property. 
 He is their civil lawgiver, and the judge in all the 
 grave controversies which arise among them. / He 
 should not be derehct in duty. He should not 
 think it beneath him to arrest their broils bv 
 14 
 
314 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 authority^ and settle their controversies by a kiud 
 of judicial decision. A sensible man will not con- 
 tent himself by saying : " There were no bones 
 broken : no one was killed or crippled/' or, "A fine 
 child is born." These are not the only things 
 which concern his interest or his duty. It is not 
 doing as he would be done by. The civil govern- 
 ment which protects him w^ould not be worth a 
 tithe of the taxes, if it concerned itself no further 
 to protect his rights of property and his happiness. 
 /His decisions, therefore, should regulate the rela- 
 tions of this society, should protect such rights of 
 property as he allows among them, and enforce 
 the observance of such contracts as he allows 
 them to negotiate either among their own fellow- 
 servants or those of another plantation. At the 
 same time that he sees that they keep themselves 
 within the position which they hold in the great 
 community of w^hites,/in which they are subordi- 
 nate members, he should see that they are not 
 overborne and oppressed by their superiors. 
 / The first and most important of all the social 
 relations is the marriage relation. The civil gov- 
 ernment has not thought it wise to interfere with 
 this. It leaves this to the control of the master. 
 His interest and his duty afford a high guaranty 
 that he will consult the interests of his slaves in 
 this matter. He should encourage the young to 
 
OF SLAVERY. 315 
 
 marry. He should not only positively forbid the 
 herding together in indiscriminate intercourse, but 
 he should promote marriage by all suitable arrange- 
 ments and influences. . It is an important interest 
 and duty with him to have his slaves suitably 
 married and at home. He should not scruple to 
 buy and to sell to effect proper marriages among 
 the slaves of his own plantation. And when this 
 cannot be done, he should permit his slaves to 
 intermarry with those of a neighboring plantation. 
 There should be in all cases separate apartments ' 
 for families, and separate houses as soon as they 
 can be provided. 
 
 From causes which need not be enumerated, 
 they are peculiarly addicted to hcentious indul- 
 gences, and particularly disposed to violate the 
 marriage-bed. No master is at liberty to neglect 
 or overlook these immoralities. He should not 
 allow any to marry without understanding the 
 obligations of the relation, and he should enforce, 
 as far as his discipline can reach the case, the 
 obhgations of the marriage-bed. /The custom of 
 leaving one wife and taking another, should be 
 positively prohibited. Those masters whose 
 policy actually makes this custom in a good 
 degree necessary, cannot be too severely cen- 
 sured. If slaves were mere chattels, as abolition- 
 ists affirm they are, there might be an apology 
 
316 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 for this. But as it is, there is no apology for it. 
 The custom of separating man and wife is the 
 remnant of a barbarous age : any gentleman should 
 be ashamed of it. The civilization of the age may 
 not be expected to countenance it. Those who 
 think to maintain the institution of slavery under 
 so palpable a violation of the laws of morality, 
 may expect to meet the unqualified censure of 
 the civilized world./ No: the marriage relation 
 must be maintained. To be maintained, it must 
 be respected. Indiscriminate intercourse should 
 be restrained. Those masters whose policy ren- 
 ders this custom in a good degree necessary should 
 revise their system, and they must revise their 
 system unless they would continue to outrage 
 the moral sense of their felloAV-citizens. For my- 
 self, I do not feel at liberty — and I speak as a 
 citizen — to treat the marriage relation among 
 slaves other than as a most sacred relation. Those 
 marriages which are maintained in good faith, no 
 master should feel himself at liberty to violate. 
 Nothing but conjugal infidelity or some capital 
 offence which subjects the party offending to im- 
 prisonment for life, to banishment, or to death, 
 can dissolve the marriage obligation. " Those 
 whom God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder." 
 
 I have said that the Africans are a kind and 
 
OF SLAVERY. 317 
 
 docile race of people ; but still it is true of them, 
 as of all other barbarous people, that they have 
 but httle conception of moral influence as an ele- 
 ment of government. Fear is the motive to 
 which in all cases they appeal — and with the best 
 intentions. They have but little idea of any thing 
 else. Whatever authority, therefore, is placed in 
 their hands is hkely to be exercised with great 
 harshness, perhaps with cruelty. Many masters 
 avail themselves of the services of an intelligent 
 servant, and make him "head-man," instead of 
 incurring the expense of an overseer. In many 
 cases the plan succeeds remarkably well. But in 
 most cases of the kind, the master owes an import- 
 ant duty to his other slaves : it is to overlook the 
 exercise of the delegated authority, and restrain 
 the tendency to excessive severity. 
 
 There are other points at which this tendency 
 is liable to display itself The husband is likely 
 to exhibit it in the authority exercised over the 
 wife, and both the husband and the wife in the 
 authority exercised over the children. The hus- 
 Dand is often found to beat and otherwise maltreat 
 the wife. In fits of passion, some of them are 
 extremely cruel. The children are brought up in 
 the same way. They are often subjected to cruel 
 treatment. Impatience, fretfulness, and stunning 
 blows, make up the system of cabin-discipline. 
 
 U- 
 
318 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 The child is often stultified in early life, and, with- 
 out self-respectj grows up a stupid, slovenly, and 
 insufferable eye-servant. Thus, that which made 
 the young slave a source of so much annoyance in 
 the kitchen, the chamber, and the dining-room, 
 began in the discipline of the cabin, and with 
 those who themselves were good servants, and 
 who, for the most part, intended to do their duty 
 in their humble way to their children. Now, 
 there are many families of great moral worth 
 among us who entirely neglect the discipline of 
 the cabin. They take no account of the young 
 negro, nor do they inquire into the treatment of 
 wives. This is a fault — a great fault. It presses 
 with great force upon the interests of the master, 
 as well as upon the domestic happiness of the 
 African family and the moral character of the 
 rising generation. The duty of the master is 
 urgent. He should restrain the exercise of 
 cruelty to wives. He should do the same in 
 behalf of the children. Both his example and 
 his precepts should unite to introduce a sounder 
 system of discipline. A well-trained slave, who 
 respects himself, is far more valuable in any view 
 than a stupid eye-servant. The master who will 
 not condescend to pay some attention to the 
 discipline of the cabin must content himself with 
 the latter. 
 
OF SLAVERY. 319 
 
 The sick and the aged should be suitably cared 
 for. It is not enough that provision be made for 
 these : the master owes them a duty in the kind 
 of provision which he makes for them. The regu- 
 lar nurse can serve them with a Httle medicine, a 
 cup of water, and help them to the couch of straw, 
 or support their heads in death ; but they are 
 social beings : their claims reach far beyond these 
 things, and the duty of the master is imperative. 
 It certainly should not come short of the service 
 rendered by the good Samaritan. He who can 
 free his conscience short of this, is low enough in 
 the scale of civilization to change places with 
 many slaves of our acquaintance. Humanity 
 claims something for the sick and aged on the 
 score of comfort as well as necessity. Why may 
 they not be frequently ministered unto by their 
 friends ? Do we think that the laws of friendship 
 and consanguinity do not operate among them ? 
 If so, we are mistaken ; for they are social beings, 
 as w^e are. Why, then, deny them this boon, 
 when it can be afforded them, as it often can, at 
 so small a cost ? I do not scruple to say that 
 there are many circumstances in which any 
 humane man would allow the husband and the 
 child to quit even the harvest-field to minister 
 as occasion might demand to the sick wife and 
 mother, and to soothe her sorrows in a dying- 
 
320 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 hour. And the aged father ! Shall no child or 
 grandchild support his tottering limbs to his 
 couch, and lay him doAvn to die in peace ? Shall 
 all these delicate services, if performed at all, bo 
 left to stranger hands ? Shall those who never 
 knew mother, who never cared for grandfather, or 
 who were never reckoned among their friends, be 
 left to perform these last services ? There may 
 be masters whose business or whose want of 
 thought may lead them to be inattentive to the 
 social sorrows of the sick and the aged ; but they 
 should remember that " they also have a blaster in 
 heavenT Would they have Him to be as inatten- 
 tive to their sorrows in sickness and in age ? Let 
 them beware " lest the same measure they mete he 
 measured to them again /" 
 
 III. The duties of masters to slaves as re- 
 ligious BEINGS. 
 
 There are no duties which we owe our slaves as 
 " our money," or as social beings, which do not 
 derive additional weight and importance from the 
 fact that they are religious beings, and that, as 
 such, we OAve them all these duties, and still 
 higher and more solemn duties. " But I am not 
 a Christian, and therefore am not concerned in the 
 discussion of this topic." But I am not aware 
 that to omit to profess to be an honest man, or to 
 neglect to strive to be an honest man, absolves 
 
OF SLAVERY. 321 
 
 one from the obligation to be honest : so neither 
 will a failure to profess Christianity free any one 
 from the duty of being a Christian. Both you 
 and your slaves are religious beings ; and if you 
 are not a Christian, you ought to be, and God will 
 hold you to account for all the duties of a Chris- 
 tian life, whether in this w^orld you acknowledge 
 the obhgation or not. Your slaves are entitled 
 to the rio'hts which belons; to rehaious beings in 
 their circumstances; and it is your duty to treat 
 them as such ; nor is there a single master who 
 w^ill not be held to a strict account for the faithful 
 performance of these duties to his slaves. 
 
 The rehgious sentiment is strong in the Afri- 
 can. Both his mind and his heart respond readily 
 to the fear of God, the love of virtue, and the 
 hope of heaven. But they are religious beings in 
 a low state of civilization. Their intellects are 
 usually dull. They are subject to wild, extrava- 
 gant, and superstitious opinions, and consequently 
 to strong and violent religious emotions. They 
 do not, as some suppose, have stronger feelings 
 naturally than others. They do not differ in this 
 respect from barbarians of any other race of 
 people; but they have a low grade of mental 
 development. Their wills, therefore, are not 
 supplied with those motives which would enable 
 them to hold their attention to views of truth 
 14* 
 
322 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 such as produce a more chastened, substantial, 
 and elevated tone of Christian feeling. For the 
 want of enlightened views, the religious senti- 
 ment displays itself in superstitious conceits, 
 which usually lead to wild and sometimes frantic 
 feelings. We need not dwell upon the evils of 
 this state of things. They are too obvious, in 
 their influence upon the blacks, and oftentimes 
 through them upon the nursery of white children, 
 to require discussion. That which demands atten- 
 tion is this : it is a duty which the master owes 
 his slave to pursue that course in the government 
 of his domestic empire which shall contribute to 
 correct these evils, and to fit his slaves for their 
 destiny in the spirit-world, where the distinction 
 of master and slave will no longer exist. Aside, 
 then, from other and less important objects in that 
 Divine economy which introduced the African into 
 this country, God has thereby committed to you 
 these ignorant, these suffering poor. He requires 
 you to care for their souls as well as their bodies. 
 The latter of these duties you may fulfil for your 
 own interests merely. But each one of them you 
 ought fliithfully to perform, both for God's sake 
 and for the common interests of yourselves and 
 your slaves. '-And ye masters, do the same 
 things unto them :" that is, as the context shows, 
 serve their interests faithfully, and that for the 
 
OF SLAVERY. 323 
 
 sake of Christ, as they are reqmred to serve your 
 commands faithfully, and that for the sake of 
 Christ. But how may you do this ? 
 
 You should provide for them the means of 
 public religious instruction. The owner of a large 
 plantation of slaves should charge himself with 
 the expense of a minister of the gospel for his 
 slaves. Smaller plantations should unite to em- 
 ploy the services of a minister. The owners of 
 still smaller plantations in thinly settled communi- 
 ties of whites, should see that the usual supply 
 of ministerial service for the neighborhood is suffi- 
 cient to meet the demands of their slaves. Those 
 who employ a minister, or those who unite with 
 others to employ one to devote himself to the 
 religious instruction of their slaves, should see 
 that he is a man of blameless life, of sound, prac- 
 tical Christian experience, simple in his language, 
 familiar in his manners, and fervent in spirit. lie 
 should devote himself to teach the children the 
 oral catechism, to visit the sick, to bury the dead, 
 and preach the gospel regularly on the Sabbath. 
 On all occasions of pubhc worship on the Sabbath, 
 both old and young should be required to be pre- 
 sent, and in their best clothes. Masters should 
 occasionally attend all these meetings. Our mis- 
 sions on plantations are fine examples of the sys- 
 tem here recommended. The Sabbath — the 
 
324 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 Christian Sabbath — is the great civihzer of men. 
 The clean skin, the Sunday suit, the companion- 
 ship of friends, all unite with the sound instruction 
 of the pulpit, and the warm-hearted reception of 
 the truth, to raise man in the scale of being, to 
 make him a better servant, and a better citizen — 
 an heir, together with the master, of the inherit- 
 ance of the saints in light. 
 
 Those more densely populated white communi- 
 ties which are well supplied with the Christian 
 ministry should afford ample accommodations to 
 the colored population to hear the w^ord of life, 
 and share the blessings of the holy Sabbath. 
 Masters should see to this. They have not done 
 their duty when they subscribe to build a church 
 in the neighborhood, and pay a trifle to the 
 preacher. Their slaves should also be jDrovided 
 for. If they will not go to heaven themselves, 
 their slaves can go there, and many of them de- 
 sire to go there. Their masters unjustly with- 
 hold the means. In many instances, suitable pro- 
 vision is not made. The houses are small. The 
 slaves are crowded out. They hear but little ; at 
 least, they are not instructed. A still greater 
 defect of this system in Virginia is, the slaves are 
 but poorly suppHed with pastoral labor out of the 
 pulpit. The sick are seldom visited. The dead 
 are only buried in crowds. There is great room 
 
OF SLAVERY. 325 
 
 then, for improvement. Why may not the mas- 
 ters of a neighborhood engage the services of their 
 minister to have a regular appointment for an 
 afternoon on tlie plantation of some one, for the 
 benefit of the slaves of the neighborhood, and to 
 visit their sick ? I know many masters who are 
 always ready to subscribe liberally to their minis- 
 ter if he would engage in this service. Why 
 should he not do it ? Perhaps some do. I should 
 rejoice to see this system more generally adopted, 
 and by our circuit preachers especially. They 
 would accomplish great good. I doubt if a better 
 remedy for the wants of the African population in 
 such communities can be found. 
 
 But not only to help supply this deficiency, but 
 also on the score of its own intrinsic value, each 
 family should contribute their personal attention 
 to supply the rehgious wants of their slaves. The 
 Sabbath should be a day of rest, of companion- 
 ship, and of religious instruction and enjoyment in 
 every family. From no part of these should the 
 slaves be excluded or overlooked in the domestic 
 arrangements. That slaves appear in their clean 
 Sunday-clothes, is the first duty. They should 
 all know that they are expected to be at church. 
 For the invalids and the aged, the means of con- 
 veyance should be provided. The old man, the 
 old woman who nursed your parents, and who 
 
326 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE 
 
 have descended to you as the heir-looms of an 
 ancient house ; or, it may be, who began life with 
 you, have nursed your children, and helped to 
 build up your house and your fortune — shall they 
 be forgotten in the feebleness of their age? Dc 
 they still stand to service, and help to make their 
 bread ; and when the merry crowd hies away " to 
 the Sabbath-meeting," shall the weight of theii 
 years make them turn to their seat, because they 
 shrink from the journey of a few miles on foot? 
 This should not be. We should provide for the 
 old and the infirm to ride to meeting. I wondei 
 some masters do not fear that an ungrateful sod 
 will one day feed them in their old age in a private 
 room and from a trencher, instead of at the family 
 table and around the domestic hearthstone ! To 
 the credit of our system, the old family servants 
 are generally honored. White and black do reve- 
 rence to their age and their position. This is right. 
 But why should the master think it beneath 
 him to call the young together on a Sabbath after- 
 noon, and invite the attendance of all the slaves, 
 and instruct them orally in the truths and lessons 
 of our holy religion : What God is : what the 
 Saviour is : what man is : what is to become of 
 us when we die ; and how we may be saved. 
 The simple forms of these truths as laid down in 
 our Catechism may by any one be made interest- 
 
OP SLAVERY. 32'( 
 
 ing to children and instructive to all. The child- 
 ren should he taught by being made to repeat 
 after us and respond all together. Their attention 
 will be aroused, and they will readily catch the 
 idea of a great many truths that may lead them to 
 fear God and desire to do right. Withal, it will 
 make them feel that you care for them. They 
 will think more of themselves. They will rise in 
 the scale of social being. They will be less trouble 
 to you. They will be more happy in themselves, 
 and ultimately share with you the joys of heaven. 
 Much of all that is here enjoined, an}^ gentleman 
 may do and ought to do, though he may not be a 
 Christian. He wnll himself be profited by the 
 exercise it w^ill give his mind on spiritual subjects. 
 I should not omit to notice, that in speaking of 
 the duty of the mmter^ I use the term generically 
 — I embrace the mistress. All the duties enjoined 
 require the cordial cooperation of the mistress. 
 Much of it, if done at all, must be done by her. 
 She oftener has a heart to do it. She can do it, 
 and, with a little encouragement, will do it, w^hen 
 other persons perhaps cannot or will not. If, 
 then, the master will not be the high-priest as 
 well as the law^giver of his house, let him, at least, 
 devolve a portion of the care for the rehgious in- 
 terest of the slaves upon his wife, and especially 
 that which relates to the instruction of the young. 
 
328 PHILOSOPHY OF SLAVERY. 
 
 She, also, can often employ her own children to 
 aid in this service. It will both interest and 
 instruct them. 
 
 So far as my observation goes, I am satisfied 
 that the Southern family in which a proper disci- 
 pline is maintained, and domestic religion, in that 
 wide sense which embraces both blacks and whites, 
 is duly cultivated, for good order, for peace and 
 quiet, for general morality and general prosperity, 
 in all that concerns the comfort and happiness of 
 a family, stands unrivalled in the history of the 
 country. 
 
 THE END. 
 
|jul)litiiti0iis 
 
 M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 
 
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ife: