r 
 
 
 i.i 
 
 [From iJie Southern Literary Messenger, December, 1858. | 
 
 IS WWi CONSISTENT WITH NATOML LAW? 
 
 An Address delivered before the Virginia State Agricultural Society, at thh 
 Sixth Annual Exhibition, at Petersburg, 4th November, 1858. 
 
 BY JAMES P. HOLCOMBE. 
 
 Mr. President, and 
 
 Gentlemen of the Agrktdtural Society: 
 It seems to me eminently proper, to 
 connect with these imposing exhibitions 
 of the trophies of your agricultural skill, 
 a discussion of the whole bearings and 
 relations, jural, moral, social, and eco- 
 nomical, of that peculiar industrial sys- 
 tem to which we are so largely indebted 
 for the results that have awakened our 
 pride and gratification. No class in the 
 community has so many and such large 
 interests gathered up in the safety and 
 permanence of that system, as the Far- 
 mers of the State. The main-wheel and 
 spring of your material prosperity, inter- 
 woven with the entire texture of your 
 social life, underlying the very founda- 
 tions of the public strength and renown, 
 to lay upon it any rash liand would put 
 in peril whatever you value ; the security 
 of your property, the peace of your so- 
 ciety, the well-being — if not the exist- 
 ence of that dependent race which Pro- 
 vidence has committed to your guardian- 
 ship — the stability of your government, 
 the preservation in your midst of union, 
 liberty, and civilization. By the intro- 
 duction of elements of such inexpressi- 
 ble magnitude, the politics of our coun- 
 try have been invested with the grandeur 
 and significance which belong to those 
 great struggles upon which depend the 
 
 destinies of nations. The mad outbreaks 
 of popular passion, the rapid spread of 
 anarchical opinions, the mournful decay 
 of ancient patriotism, the wide disruption 
 of Christian unity, which have marked 
 the progress, and disclosed the power, 
 purpose and spirit of this agitation, come 
 home to your business and bosoms with 
 impressive emphasis of warning and in- 
 struction. No pause in a strife around 
 which cluster all the hopes and fears of 
 freemen, can give any earnest of endur- 
 ing peace, until the principles of law and 
 order which cover with sustaining sanc- 
 tion all the relations of our society, have 
 obtained their rightful ascendency over 
 the reason and conscience of the Christian 
 world. 
 
 The most instructive chapters in history 
 are those of opinions. The decisive bat- 
 tle-fields of the world, furnish but vulgar 
 and deceptive indices of human progresa. 
 Its true eras are marked by transitions of 
 sentiment and opinion. Those invisible 
 moral forces that emanate from the minds 
 of the great thinkers of the race, rule the 
 courses of history. The recent awaken- 
 ing of our Southern mind upon the ques- 
 tion of African Slavery, has been fol- 
 lowed by a victory of peace, which we 
 trust, will embrace within its beneficent 
 influence generations and empires yet un- 
 born. Such was the strength of anti- 
 
Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Late ? 
 
 slavery feeling within our own borders, 
 that scarcely a quarter of a century has 
 elapsed since an Act of Emancipation 
 ■was almost consummated, under the aus- 
 pices of our most intelligent and patriotic 
 citizens; a measure which probably all 
 would now admit bore in its womb ele- 
 ments of private distress and public 
 calamity, that must have impressed upon 
 our history, through ages of expanding 
 desolation, the lines of fire and blood. 
 But 
 
 "Whirlwinds fitliest scatter pestilence." 
 
 Nothing less than an extremity of peril 
 could have induced a general revision of 
 long-standing opinions, intrenched in 
 formidable prejudices, and sanctioned by 
 the most venerable authority. Slavery 
 •was explored, for the first time, with 
 the forward and reverted eye of true 
 statesmanship, under all the lights of 
 history — of social and political philoso- 
 phy — of natural and Divine law. Public 
 sentiment rapidly changed its face. Every 
 year of controversy has encouraged the 
 advocates of " discountenanced truth" by 
 the fresh accessions it has brought to 
 their numbers, whilst no desertions have 
 thinned the enlarging ranks. The cele- 
 brated declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that 
 he knew no attribute of the Almighty 
 which would take the side of the master 
 in a contest with his slave, is so far from 
 commanding the assent of the intelligent 
 slaveholders of this generation, that the 
 justice, the humanity, and the policy of 
 the relation as it exists with us, has be- 
 come the prevailing conviction of our peo- 
 ple. Public honours, and gratitude, are the 
 fitting meed of the statesmen, whether liv- 
 ing or dead, (and amongst them I recall no 
 names more eminent than those associated 
 with the proudest traditions of this hospi- 
 table and patriotic city, Leigh, Gholson, 
 and Brown,) who threw themselves into 
 this imminent and deadly breacli, and 
 grappling with an uninformed and unre- 
 flecting sentiment, delivered the common- 
 wealth, when in the very jaws of death, 
 from moral, social and political ruin. 
 Permit me to premise some words of 
 explanation as to the meaning and extent 
 
 of the subject upon which I have been 
 invited to address this meeting. It pre- 
 sents no question of municipal or inter- 
 national law. It raises no inquiry as to 
 the rightfulness of the means by which 
 slavery Avas introduced into this conti- 
 nent, nor into the nature of the legal sanc- 
 tion.s under which it now exists. There 
 can be no doubt that slavery, for more 
 than a century after it was established in 
 the English colonies, was in entire har- 
 mony with the Common Law, as it was 
 expounded by the highest judicial au- 
 thorities, and with the principles of the 
 Law of Nations, and of Natural Law as 
 laid down in the writings of the most 
 eminent publicists. At the commence- 
 ment of our Revolution men were living 
 who remembered the Treaty of Utrecht, by 
 which, in the language of Lord Brougham, 
 all the glories of Bamillies and Blenheim 
 were bartered for a larger share in the lu- 
 crative commerce of the slave trade. But 
 whatever may be our present opinions upon 
 these subjects, the black race now consti- 
 tutes an integral part of our community, as 
 much so as the white, and the authority of 
 the State to adjust their mutual relations 
 can in no manner depend upon the method 
 by which either was brought within its 
 jurisdiction. The State in every age must 
 provide a constitution and laws, if it does 
 not find them in existence, adapted to its 
 special wants and circumstances. Afri- 
 can Slavery in the United States is con- 
 sistent with Natural Law, because if all 
 the bonds of public authority were sud- 
 denly dissolved, and the community called 
 upon to reconstruct its social and political 
 system, the relations of the two races re- 
 maining in other respects unaltered, it 
 would be our right and duty to reduce 
 the negro to subjection. To the phrase 
 Natural Law, I shall attach in this dis- 
 cussion the signification in which it is 
 generally used, and consider it as synony- 
 mous with justice; not that imperfect 
 justice which may be discerned by the 
 savage mind, but those ethical rules, or 
 principles of right, which, upon the 
 grounds of their own fitness and pro- 
 priety, and irrespective of the sanction 
 of Divine authority, commend themselves 
 to the most cultivated human reason. 
 
Is Slavery Consistent tcWi Natural Lata? 
 
 Slavery we may define, so as to embrace 
 all the elements that properly belong to 
 it, as a condition or relation in -which one 
 man is charged -with the protection and 
 support of another, and invested with an 
 absolute property in his labour, and such 
 a degree of authority over his person as 
 may be requisite to enforce its enjoyment. 
 It is a form of involuntary restraint, ex- 
 tending to the personal as well as politi- 
 cal liberty of the subject. The slave has 
 sometimes, as at one period under the 
 Roman jurisprudence, been reduced to a 
 mere chattel, the power of the master 
 over the person of the slave being as 
 absolute as his property in his labour. 
 •^ This harsh and unnatural feature has 
 never deformed the relation in any Chris- 
 -tain country. In the United States the 
 double character of the slave, as a moral 
 person and as a subject of property, has 
 been universally acknowledged, and to a 
 greater or less degree protected, both by 
 public sentiment and by the law of the 
 land. It furnishes a key to the under- 
 standing of one of the most celebrated 
 clauses in our Federal Constitution, as all 
 know who are familiar with the luminous 
 exposition, given by Mr. Madison in the 
 Federalist, of its origin and meaning. In 
 our own State, amongst other proofs of 
 its recognition, we may point to the pri- 
 vilege conferred upon the master of eman- 
 cipating his slave, and to the obligation 
 imposed upon him of providing for his 
 support when old, infirm, or insane ; to 
 the enactments which punish injuries to 
 the slave, whether from a master or stran- 
 ger, as offences of the same nature as if 
 inflicted upon a white person, and to the 
 construction placed by our courts upon 
 the general language of criminal statutes, 
 by which the slave, as a person, has been 
 embraced within the range of their pro- 
 tection ; to the regulations for the trial of 
 slaves charged with the commission of 
 crime, which, whilst they exact the re- 
 sponsibilities of moral agents, temper the 
 administration of justice with mercy, and 
 to the exemption from labour on the 
 Lord's Day, an exemption which is shown 
 by the provision for the Christian slave of 
 a Jewish master, to have been established 
 as a security for a right of conscience. 
 
 Indeed, he scarcely labours under any 
 personal disability, to which we may not 
 find a counterpart, in those which attach 
 to other incompetent classes — the minor, 
 the lunatic, and the married woman. 
 The statement of my subject presup- 
 poses the existence of the State. It thus 
 assumes that there are involuntary re- 
 straints which may be rightfully impos- 
 ed upon men, for the State itself is but 
 the sum and expression of innumerable 
 forms of restraint by which the life, lib- 
 erty, and faculties of individuals are 
 placed under the control of an authority 
 independent of their volition ? The 
 truth that the selfishness of human na- 
 ture, forces upon us the necessity of sub- 
 mitting to the discipline of law, or living 
 in the license of anarchy, is too obvious 
 to have required any argument in its 
 support, in this presence. Until man be- 
 comes a law unto himself, society through »X 
 a political organization must supply his 
 want of self-control. Whether it may 
 establish such a form of restraint, as 
 personal slavery, cannot be determined 
 until the principles upon which its au- 
 thority should be exercised, have been 
 settled, and the boundaries traced be- 
 tween private right and public power. 
 The authority of the State must be com- 
 mensurate with the objects for which it 
 was established. Its function is, to re- 
 concile the conflicting rights, and oppos- 
 ing interests, and jarring passions of in- 
 dividuals, so as to secure the general 
 peace and progress. It proceeds upon 
 the postulate, that societyis our state of 
 nature, and that men by the primary law 
 of their being, are bound to live and perfect 
 themselves in fellowship with each other. 
 As God does not ordain contradictory 
 and therefore impossible things, men 
 can derive no rights from him which are 
 inconsistent with the duration and per- 
 fection of society. The rights of the 
 individual are not such as would belong 
 to him, if he stood upon the earth like 
 Campbell's imaginary "Last Man," 
 amidst unbroken solitude, but such only 
 as when balanced with the equal rights 
 of other men, may be accorded to each, 
 without injury to the rest. The neces- 
 sities of social existence, then, not in the 
 
Is Slavery Consistent loitTi Natural Law? 
 
 rudeness of the savage state, but under 
 those complex and refined forms which 
 have been developed by Christian civili- 
 zation, constitute a horizon by which the 
 unbounded liberty of nature is spanned 
 and circumscribed. 
 
 This is no theory of social absolutism. 
 It does not make society the source of 
 our rights, which therefore might be con- 
 ferred or withheld at its caprice or dis- 
 cretion, but it does regard the just wants 
 of society, as the measure and practical 
 expression of their extent. It is no re- 
 production of the exploded error of the 
 ancient statesmen, who inverting the 
 natural relations of the parties, consid- 
 ered the aggrandizement of the State, 
 without reference to the units of which 
 it was composed, as the end of social 
 union. The State was made for man, 
 and not man for the State, but the coop- 
 eration of the State is yet so necessary 
 to the perfection of his nature, that his 
 interests require the renunciation of any 
 claim inconsistent with its existence, or 
 its value as an agency of civilization. It 
 invades no province sacred to the indi- 
 vidual, because the Divine Being who 
 has rendered government a necessity, has 
 made it a universal blessing, by ordain- 
 ing a preestablished harmony between 
 the welfare of the individual and tlie re- 
 straints which are requisite to the well- 
 being of society. 
 
 Unless there is some fatal flaw in this 
 reasoning, men have no rights wliich 
 cannot be reconciled with the possession 
 of a restraining power by the State, 
 large enough to embrace every variety 
 of injustice and oppression, for which 
 society may furnish the occasion or the 
 opportunity. The social union brings 
 with it dangers and temptations, as well 
 as blessings and pleasures— and men can- 
 not fulfil the law and purpose of their 
 being, unless the State has authority to 
 ^ protect the community from the tumul- 
 tuous and outbreaking passions of its 
 members, and to protect individuals as 
 far as it can be accomplished without 
 prejudice to the community from the 
 consequences of their own incompetence, 
 improvidence and folly. Such are the 
 natural differences between men in char- 
 
 acter and capacity, that without a steady 
 and judicious effort by the State to re- 
 dress the balance of privilege and oppor- 
 tunity which these inequalities constantly 
 derange, the rich must grow richer, and 
 the poor poorer, until even anarchy would 
 be a relief to the masses, from the suffer- 
 ing and oppression of societ3^ Owing 
 likewise to this variety of condition, and 
 of moral and intellectual endowment, it 
 is impossible to prescribe any stereotype 
 forms admitting of universal application, 
 under which the restraining discipline of 
 law should be exercised. The ends of 
 social union remain the same through all 
 ages, but the means of realizing those 
 ends must be adapted to successive 
 stages of advancement, and change with 
 the varying, intelligence and virtue of in- 
 dividuals, and classes, and races, and 
 the local circumstances of different coun- 
 tries. The object being supreme in im- 
 portance must carry with it as an inci- 
 dent, the right to employ the means 
 which may be requisite to its attainment. 
 The individual must yield property, lib- 
 erty, life itself when necessary to pre- 
 serve the life, as it were, of the collec- 
 tive humanity. To these principles, every 
 enlightened government in the world, 
 conforms its practice, protecting men not 
 only from each other, but from themselves, 
 graduating its restraints according to the 
 character of the subject, and multiplying 
 them with the increase of society in 
 wealth, population and refinement. We 
 cannot look into English or American 
 jurisprudence without discovering innu- 
 merable forms of restraint upon rights 
 of persons as well as rights of pro- 
 perty, as in that absolute subordi- 
 nation of all personal rights to the gen- 
 eral welfare, which lies at the foundation 
 of the law for the public defence, the 
 law to punish crimes, and the law to sup- 
 press vagrancy: or in those qualified re- 
 straints by which the administration of 
 justice between individuals, has been 
 sometimes enforced, as in imprisonment 
 for debt : or in that partial and tempora- 
 ry subjection of one person to the con- 
 trol of another, either for the benefit of 
 the former, or upon grounds of pub- 
 lic policy, presented in the law of 
 
Is Slavery Consistent icilh Natural Late? 
 
 parent and child, guardian and ward, 
 master and apprentice, lunatic and com- 
 mittee, husband and •wife, officer and sol- 
 diers (if the army, captain and mariners 
 of the ship. Whether we proceed in 
 search of a general principle, which may 
 ascertain the extent of the public authority 
 byacourse of inductive reasoning, or by an 
 observation of the practice of civilized 
 communities, we reach the same conclu- 
 sion. The State must possess the power 
 of imposing any restraint without regard 
 to its form, which can be shown by an 
 <i enlarged view of social expediency, or 
 upon an indulgent consideration for hu- 
 man infirmity, to be beneficial to its sub- 
 ject, or necessary to the general well-being. 
 In the legislation of Congress for the 
 Indian tribes within our territory, and in 
 that of Great Britain for the alien and 
 dependent nations under her jurisdiction, 
 we see how the public authority, as flexi- 
 ble as comprehensive in its grasp, accom- 
 modates itself to the weakness and infir- 
 mity of races, as well as of individuals. 
 Upon what principles is the British gov- 
 ernment administered in the East? In 
 1833, on the application of the East ludia 
 Company for a renewal of its charter, 
 they were explained and defended by 
 Macaulay in a speech which would have 
 delighted Burke, as much by its practi- 
 cal wisdom, as its glittering i-hetorio. An 
 immense society was placed under the 
 almost despotic rule of a few strangers. 
 No securities were provided for liberty or 
 property, which an Euglisman would 
 have valued. This system of servitude 
 I was vindicated, not on the grounds of ab- 
 stract propriety, but of its adaptation to 
 the wants and circumstances of those 
 upon whom it was imposed. India, it 
 was urged, constituted a vast exception 
 to all those general rules of political sci- 
 ence which might be deduced from the 
 experience of Europe. Her population 
 was disqualified by character and habit, 
 for the rights and privileges of British 
 1 freemen. In their moral and sociixl ame- 
 lioration, under British rule, was to be 
 found the best proof of its justice and 
 policy. It was a despotism no doubt, but 
 it was a mild and paternal one; ani no 
 form of restraint less stringent could be 
 
 substituted with equal advantage to those 
 upon whom it was to operate. It has of- 
 ten occurred to me in reading those fervid 
 declamations upon Southern slavery, with 
 which this great orator has inflamed 
 the sensibilities of the British public, that 
 his lessons of sober and practical states- 
 manship, from which no Englisli ministry 
 has ever departed, might be turned with 
 irresistible recoil upon their author. Was 
 American slavery introduced b}^ wrong 
 and violence? India was "stripped of 
 her plumed and jewelled turban," by ra- 
 pine and injustice. Are the relations of 
 England to India, so anomalous that it 
 would be unsafe to accept generalizations 
 drawn from the experience of other com- 
 munities? History might be interroga- 
 ted in vain, for a parallel to the condition 
 of our Southern society. Are the Hin- 
 doos unfit for liberty ? Not more so than 
 the African. Is despotism necessary in 
 India, because it is problematical whether 
 crime could be repressed, or social order 
 preserved undermore liberal institutions? 
 The danger of license and anarchy would 
 be far more imminent, from an emanci- 
 pation of our slaves. If the statesman 
 despairs of making brick without straw 
 in the East, can he expect to find the pro- 
 blem easier in the West ? Has the Hin- 
 doo improved in arts and morals under 
 the beneficent sway of his British mas- 
 ter ? In the transformation of the Afri- 
 can savage into the Christian slave, the 
 relative advance has been immeasurably 
 greater. The truth is, that the principles 
 which lie at the foundation of all politi- 
 cal restraint, may make it the duty of the V 
 State under certain circumstances, to es- 
 tablish the relation of personal servitude. 
 All forms of restraint involve the exer- 
 cise of power over the individual without 
 his consent. All are inconsistent with 
 any theory of natural right which claims 
 for man, a larger measure of liberty than 
 can be reconciled with the peace and pro- 
 gress of the society in which he lives. 
 All operate harshly at times upon indi- 
 viduals. All are reflections upon human 
 nature, and alike wrong in the abstract. 
 Any is right in the- concrete, when neces- 
 sary to the welfare of the community in 
 which it exists, or beneficial to the sub- 
 
Is Slavery Consistent iciih Natural Laiv ? 
 
 ject upon whom it is imposed. If society 
 may establish the institution of private 
 property, involving restrictions by which 
 the majority of mankind are shut out 
 from all access to that great domain which 
 the author of nature has stocked with the 
 means of subsistence for his children, 
 and justify a restraint so Comprehensive 
 and onerous, by its tendency to promote 
 civilization ; if it may discriminate be- 
 tween classes and individuals, and appor- 
 tion to some a larger measure of political 
 liberty than it does to others; if it may 
 take away life, liberty or property when 
 demanded by the public good : if, as in 
 various personal relations, it may protect 
 the helpless and incompetent, by placing 
 them under a guardianship proportioned 
 in the term and extent of its authority to 
 the degree and duration of the infirmity; 
 why if a commensurate necessity arises, 
 S and the same great ends are to be accom- 
 plished, is its claim to impose upon an infe- 
 rior race the degree of personal restraint 
 which may be requisite to coerce and di- 
 rect its labour, to be treated as a usurpa- 
 tion ? The authority of the State under 
 proper circumstances to establish a sys- 
 tem of slavery, is one question ; the ex- 
 istence of those circumstances, or the ex- 
 pediency of such legislation is another 
 and entirely distinct question. No doubt 
 ^ a much smaller capacity for self-control, 
 and a much lower degree of Intelligence 
 must concur, to justify personal slavery, 
 than would be sufficient to impart validi- 
 ty to other forms of subordination. No 
 doubt the public authority upon this as 
 upon every other subject, may be abused 
 by the selfish passions and interests of 
 men. Byt once acknowledge the right of 
 society to establish a government of pains 
 and penalties, for the protection of the 
 individual and the promotion of the gen- 
 eral welfare, then unless it can be shown 
 that slavery can in no instance be neces- 
 sary to the well being of the community, 
 or conducive to the happiness of the sub- 
 ject, (a proposition which is inconsistent 
 j with the admission of all respectable 
 
 British and American abolitionists that 
 any plan of emancipation in the Southern 
 States, should be gradual and not imme- 
 diate;) once make this fundamental con- 
 
 cession, and the rightfulness of slavery, 
 like that of every other form of restraint, 
 becomes a question of time, place, men 
 and circumstances. 
 
 The people of the United States ac- 
 cepting without much reflection, those 
 expositions of human rights embodied in 
 the infidel philosophy of France, and glow- 
 ing with that generous enthusiasm to 
 communicate the blessings of liberty 
 which is always inspired by its posses- 
 sion, have been disposed to look with com- 
 mon aversion upon all forms of unequal 
 restraint. Ravished by the divine airs 
 of their own freedom, they have imag- 
 ined that its strains, like those heard by 
 the spirit in Comus, might create a soul 
 under the ribs of death. Forgetting the 
 ages through whose long night their 
 fathers wrestled for this blessing, they 
 have regarded an equal liberty, as the 
 universal birth-rightof humanity. Hence, 
 as they have witnessed nation after nation 
 throwing off its old political bondage, 
 and in the first transports of emotion, 
 " shedding the grateful tears of new-born 
 freedom" over the broken chains of ser- 
 vitude, they have welcomed them into 
 the glorious fellowship of republican 
 States, with plaudit, and sympathy, and 
 benediction. But, alas! the crimes which 
 have been committed in the name of lib- 
 erty, the social disorder and political 
 convulsion which have attended its pro- 
 gress, if they have not broken the power 
 of its spells over the heart, have dispersed 
 the illusions of our understanding. What 
 has become of France, Italy, Greece, 
 Mexico, Spanish America ? that stately 
 fleet of freedom, whichwhen first launched 
 upon the seas of time, with all its brave- 
 ry on, was " courted by every wind that 
 held it play." A part has be:n swal- 
 lowed up in the gulfs of anarchy and 
 despotism — the rest still float above the 
 wave, but with rudder and anchor gone, 
 stripped of every bellying sail and steady- 
 ing spar, they only serve, 
 
 ■' Like ocean wrecks, to illuminate the 
 storm." 
 
 The melancholy experience of both 
 hemispheres has compelled all but the 
 projectors of revolution to acknowledge, 
 
In Slaveri/ Consistent with Natural Law f 
 
 that the forms of liberty are valueless 
 without its spirit, and that an attempt to 
 . outstrip the march of Providence, by 
 conferring it on a people unprepared for 
 its enjoyments by habit, tradition, or 
 character, is an indescribable fdly — 
 ■which instead of establishing peace, order, 
 and justice, will be more likely to inau- 
 gurate a reign of terror and crime in 
 which civilization itself may perish. 
 
 If the justice or fitness of slavery is 
 to be determined, like other forms of in- 
 
 . voluntary restraint, not by speculative 
 abstractions, but by reference to its adap- 
 tation to the wants and circumstances of 
 the community in which it id established; 
 and especially of the people over whom 
 it is imposed, it only remains that we 
 should apply these principles to the ques- 
 tion of African Slavery in the United 
 States. I shall not defend it as the only 
 relation between the races, in which the 
 
 \ superior can preserve the civilization that 
 renders life dear and valuable. Tiiis 
 proposition can indeed be demonstrated 
 by plenary evidence, and it is sufficient 
 by itself to acquit the slaveholder of all 
 guilt in the eye of morals. But if the 
 system could be vindicated upon no 
 higher ground, every generous spirit 
 
 J would grieve over the mournful necessity 
 which rendered the degradation of the 
 black man indispensable to the advance- 
 ment of the white. Providence has con- 
 demned us to no such cruel and unhappy 
 f;\te. The relation in our society is de- 
 
 i manded by the highest and most endu- 
 ring interests of the slave, as well as the 
 master. It exists and must be preserved 
 for the benefit of both parties. Duty is 
 indeed the tenure of the master's right. 
 Upon him there rests a moral obligation 
 to make such provision for the comfort 
 of the slave, as after proper consideration 
 of the burthens and casualties of the 
 service, can be deemed a fair compensa- 
 tion for his labour ; to allow every inno- 
 cent gratification compatible with the 
 steady, though mild discipline, as neces- 
 
 li sary to the happiness as the value of the 
 slave ; to furnish the means and facilities 
 for religious instruction ; and to contri- 
 bute, as far and fast as a proper regard 
 to the public safety will permit, to his 
 
 r 
 
 general elevation and improvement. For 
 oppression or injustice, allow me to say, 
 I have no excuse to ofi'er. I am willing 
 to accept the sentiment of the heathen 
 philosopher, and to regard a man's treat- 
 ment of his slaves as a test of his virtue. 
 And whenever a slaveholder is found who 
 so fiir forgets the sentiments of humanity, 
 the feelings of the gentleman, and the 
 principles of the Christian, as to abuse 
 the authority which the law gives him 
 over his slaves, I trust that a righteous 
 and avenging public sentiment will pur- 
 sue him with the scorn and degradation 
 which attend the husband or father, 
 who by cruel usage makes home intolera- 
 ble to wife or child. 
 
 Personal and political liberty are both 
 requisite to develope the highest stjde of 
 man. They furnish the amplest oppor- 
 tunities for the exercise of that self-con- ^ 
 trol which is the germ and essence of 
 every virtue, and for that expansive and 
 ameliorating culture by which our whole 
 nature is exalted in the scale of being, 
 and clothed with the grace, dignity and 
 authority, becoming the lords of creation. 
 Whenever the population of a State is 
 homogeneous, although slavery may per- 
 form some important functions in quick- 
 ening the otherwise tardy processes of 
 civilization, it ought to be regarded as a 
 temporary and provisional relation. If 
 there are no radical difi'erences of physi- 
 cal organization or moral character, the 
 barriers between classes are not insur- 
 mountable. The discipline of education 
 and liberal institutions, may raise the serf 
 to the level of the baron. Against any 
 artificial circumscription seeking to ar- 
 rest that tendency to freedom which is 
 the normal state of every society of 
 equals, human nature would constantly 
 rise in rebellion. But where two distinct 
 races are collected upon the same terri- \r 
 tory, incapable from any cause of fusion 
 or severance, the one being as much su" 
 perior to the other in strength and intel- 
 ligence as the man to the child, there the 
 rightful relation between them is that of 
 authority upon the one side, and subor- 
 dination in some form, upon the other. 
 Equality, personal and political, could 
 not be established without inflicting the 
 
Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law ? 
 
 climax of injustice upon the superior, 
 and of cruelty on the inferior race: for 
 if it were possible to preserve such an 
 arrangement, it would wrest the scep- 
 tre of doniiuion from the wisdom and 
 
 '' strength of society, and surrender it to 
 its weakness and folly. " Of all rights 
 of man," says Carlyle, " the right of 
 the ignorant man to be guided by the 
 ■wiser, to be gently and firmly held in the 
 true course, is the indispensablest. Na- 
 ture has ordained it from the first. So- 
 ciety struggles towards perfection by con- 
 forming to and accomplishing it, more 
 and more. If freedom have any mean- 
 ing, it means enjoyment of this right, in 
 ■which all other rights are enjoyed. It is 
 a divine right and duty on both sides, 
 and the sum of all social duties between 
 the two." Under the circumstances I 
 have supposed, no intelligent man could 
 hesitate, except as to the form of subor- 
 
 -i dination : nor has entire equality been 
 ever allowed in society where the infe- 
 rior race constituted an element of any 
 magnitude. 
 
 Personal servitude is generally the 
 harshest and most objectionable form of 
 restraint, exposing its subjects to an 
 abuse of power involving greater sufier- 
 ing than any other. But this is not an 
 invariable law, even in a homogeneous 
 society. The most recent researches into 
 the condition of the labouring classes of 
 Europe, the descendants of the emanci- 
 pated serfs, have satisfied all candid in- 
 quirers after truth that a large number 
 have sunk below the level of their an- 
 cient slavery, and would be thankful to 
 belong to any master who would furnish 
 them with food, clothing and shelter. 
 But when we are settling the law of a 
 society embracing in its bosom distinct 
 and unequal races, the problem is com- 
 plicated by elements which create the 
 gravest doubt whether personal liberty 
 will prove a blessing or a curse. It may 
 become a question between the slavery, 
 and the extinction or further deteriora- 
 tion of the inferior race. Thus, if it is 
 difficult to procure the means of subsis- 
 tence from density of population or other 
 cause, and if the inferior race is incapa- 
 ble of sustaining a competition with the 
 
 superior in the industrial pursuits of life, 
 a condition of freedom which would in- 
 volve such competition, must either ter- 
 minate in its destruction, or consign it 
 to hopeless degradation. If, under the.«e 
 circumstances, a system of personal serv- 
 itude gave reasonable assurance of pre- 
 serving the inferior race, and gradually 
 imparting to it the amelioration of a 
 higher civilization, no Christian states- 
 man could mistake the path of duty. 
 Natural law, illuminated in its decision 
 by History, Philosophy, and Religion^ 
 w(juld not only clothe the relation with 
 the sanction of justice, but lend to it the 
 lustre, of mercy. It will not, I appre- 
 hend, be difficult to show that all thes^o 
 conditions apply to African slavery iii 
 the United States. Look at the races 
 which have been brought face to face in 
 nnmanageable masses, upon this conti- 
 nent, and it is impossible to mistake their 
 relative position. The one still filling 
 that humble and subordinate place, which 
 as the pictured monuments of Egppt 
 attest, it has occupied since the dawn of 
 history ; a race which during the long- 
 revolving cycles of intervening time has 
 founded no empire, built no towered city, 
 invented no art, discovered no truth, be- 
 queathed no everlasting possession to the 
 future, through law-giver, hero, bard, or 
 benefactor of mankind : a race which, 
 though lifted immeasurably above its na- 
 tive barbarism by the refining influence 
 of Christian servitude has yet given no 
 signs of living and self-sustaining cul- 
 ture. The other, a great composite race 
 which has incorporated into its bosom all 
 the vital elements of human progress; 
 which, crowned with the traditions of his- 
 tory and bearing in its hands the most 
 precious trophies of civilization, still re- 
 joices in the overflowing energy, the 
 abounding strength, the unconquerablo 
 will which have made it " the heir of all 
 the ages ;" and which with aspirations un- 
 satisfied by centuries of toil and achieve- 
 ment, still vexes sea and land with its 
 busy industry, binds coy nature faster in 
 its chains, embellishes life more prodi- 
 gally with its arts, kindles a wider 
 inspiration from the fountain lights of 
 freedom, follows knowledge 
 
Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law f 
 
 9 
 
 "like a sinking star, 
 Beyond the utmost bound of human 
 thought,'' 
 
 and pushing its unresting columns still 
 further into the regions of eldest Night, 
 in lands more remote than any over 
 which Roman eagles ever flevr, " to the 
 farthest verge of the green earth," plants 
 the conquering banner of the Cross, 
 
 "Encircling continents and oceans vast, 
 In one humanity." 
 
 It is impossible to believe that the su- 
 premacy in which the Caucasian has 
 towered over the African through all the 
 past can be shaken, or that the black 
 man can ever successfully dispute the 
 preeminence with his white brother as 
 members of the same community, in the 
 arts and business of life. Could such 
 races be mated with each other ? It is 
 unnecessary to refer to Egypt or Central 
 America, where a mongrel population, 
 monumenta veneris nefandce, exhibit 
 the deteriorating influence of a similar 
 fusion. If there were no broad and in- 
 delible dividing lines of colour and phys- 
 ical organization to keep the black and 
 white races apart, their respective tra- 
 ditions, extremes of moral and intellec- 
 tual advancement, and unequal aptitudes, 
 if not capacities for higher civilization, 
 separate them by an impassible gulf. 
 That feeble remnant of our kindred, who, 
 surrounded by hordes of barbarian?, yet 
 linger among the deserted seats of West 
 India civilization, may forget the dignity 
 of Anglo-Saxon manhood, in the despair 
 and poverty to which they have been re- 
 duced by British injustice ; but we, 
 " sprung of earth's first blood," and 
 "foremost in the files of time," who un- 
 der Providence are masters of our des- 
 tiny, will never permit the generations 
 of American history to be bound to- 
 gether by links of shame. Is the de- 
 portation of the African race practicable ? 
 ^ A more extravagant project was never 
 seriously entertained by the human un- 
 derstanding. There are economical con- 
 siderations alone, which would render it 
 utterly hopeless. The removal of our 
 
 black population would create a gap in 
 the industry of the world, which no white 
 emigration could fill. It would bring 
 over the general prosperity of the coun- 
 try a blight and ruin, that would dry up v 
 all the sources of revenue on which the 
 success of the measure would depend. 
 Its consequences would not terminate 
 with this continent. The great wheel 
 which moves the commerce and manu- 
 factures of the world, would be arrested 
 in its revolutions. General bankruptcy 
 would follow a shock, besides which the 
 accumulated financial crises of centuries 
 would be unfelt. In the recklessness 
 and despair of crime and famine thus 
 induced, the ancient landmarks of em- 
 pire might be disturbed, and all existing 
 governments shaken to their foundation. 
 No favourable inference can be drawn 
 from the immense emigration, which, 
 like the swell of a mighty sea, is pouring 
 upon our shores. It comes from regions 
 where population is too dense for sub- 
 sistence, and where a vacant space is 
 closed as soon as it is opened. It is im- 
 pelled by double influences, neither of 
 which can operate to any extent upon 
 the American slave, want and wretch- 
 edness at home, and all material and 
 moral attractions abroad. It is compos- 
 ed of men accustomed at least to personal 
 freedom, and belonging to races en- 
 dowed with far more energy and intelli- 
 gence than the African. It is received 
 into a community, whose strength and 
 vitality enable it to absorb and assimilate 
 a much larger foreign element than any 
 of which history has any record. If the 
 black man was able and willing to re- 
 turn to his native land, he must carry 
 with him the habits and feelings of the 
 slave. Can it be supposed that such a 
 living cloud, as the annual increase of 
 our slaves, could discharge its contents 
 into the bosom of any African society, 
 without blighting in the license of their 
 first emancipation from all restraint, 
 whatever promise of civilization it might 
 have held out ? 
 
 If we must accept the permanent res- 
 idence of this race upon our soil, as a 
 providential arrangement beyond human 
 control, it only remains to adjust the 
 
10 
 
 Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Laio? 
 
 form of its subordination. Should it em- 
 brace personal, as well as political servi- 
 tude ? Personal slavery surrounds the 
 black man with a protection and saluta- 
 ry control which his own reason and en- 
 ergies are incapable of supplying, and 
 by converting elements of destruction 
 into sources of progress, promotes his 
 physical comfort, his intellectual culture, 
 and his moral amelioration. Emancipa- 
 tion upon the other hand in any form, 
 gradual or immediate, would either de- 
 stroy the race through a wasting pro- 
 cess of poverty, vice, and crime, or sink 
 it into an irrecoverable deep of savage 
 degradation. What Homer has said may 
 be true, that a free man loses half his 
 value the day he becomes a slave ; but 
 it is quite as true, that the slave who is 
 converted into a freeman, is more likely 
 to lose the remaining half than to re- 
 cover what is gone. There are no ra- 
 tional grounds upon which we could an- 
 ticipate for our slaves, an advancing civ- 
 ilization if they were emancipated, or 
 upon which we could expect them to 
 preserve their contented temper, their 
 material comfort, their industrious hab- 
 its, and their general morality. The ne- 
 gro has learned much in contact with 
 the white man, but he is yet igno- 
 rant of that great art which is the 
 guardian of all acquisition, the art 
 of self-government. The superiority of 
 the white man in skill, energy, foresight, 
 providence, aptitude for improvement, 
 and control over the lower appetites and 
 passions, would give him a decisive and 
 fatal advantage in the pitiless competi- 
 tion of life. The light which history 
 sheds around this problem, is broad and 
 unchanging. Wherever unequal races 
 are brought together, unless reduced by 
 despotism to an indiscriminate servitude, 
 or mingled by a deteriorating and de- 
 moralizingfusion, theinferior must choose 
 between slavery and extinction. Upon 
 these principles only can we explain the 
 preservation of the Indian inhabitants 
 of Spanish America, and the destruction 
 of the aboriginal races which have cross- 
 ed the path of English colonization. 
 All the lower stages of civilization 
 are characterized by an improvidence of 
 
 the future and a predominance of the 
 animal nature, which increase the force 
 of temptation, and at the same time di- 
 minish the power of resistance. Hence 
 it is, that when an inferior race, anima- 
 ted by the ^passions of the savage, but 
 destitute of the restraining self-control 
 which is developed by civilization, is 
 brought in contact with a higher form of 
 social existence, where the stimulants 
 and facilities for sensual gratification are 
 multiplied, and the consequences of ex- 
 cess and improvidence are aggravated in 
 fatality, it is mown down by a mortality 
 more terrific than the widest waste of war. 
 Private charity and the influence of 
 Christianity upon individuals may retard 
 the operation of these causes, but destruc- 
 tion is only a question of time. With- 
 out a judicious husbandry of the surplus 
 proceeds of labour in the day of pros- 
 perity to meet the demands of age, sick- 
 ness and casualty, poverty alone with 
 the disease, sufi"ering and crime that at- 
 tend it, would wear out any labouring 
 population. The remnant of the Indian 
 tribes scattered along the lower banks of 
 the St. Lawrence, present an impressive 
 illustration of these simple political 
 truths. They manifest, says Professor 
 Bowen, sufficient industry when the re- 
 ward of labour is immediate : but sur- 
 rounded by an abundance of fertile and 
 cleared land, where others would grow 
 rich, they are rapidly perishing from im- 
 providence alone. 
 
 Even in England, in periods of man- 
 ufacturing prosperity, when wages are 
 high, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 reckons with as much confidence upon 
 the expenditure by the operatives of 
 their surplus profits, in spirits, tobacco, 
 and other hurtful stimulants, as upon the 
 proceeds of the income tax. And if the 
 working class of England, instead of be- 
 ing constantly recruited from a higher or- 
 der of society, consisted of an inferior race, 
 the annual losses from intemperance and 
 improvidence would soon carry it ofi". As 
 population becomes denser, our free blacks 
 are destined to exemplify the same great 
 law. In the free States, where an en- 
 croaching tide of white emigration is driv- 
 ing them from one field of industry after an- 
 
Is Slavery Consistent icith Natural Law f 
 
 11 
 
 other, they already stand, as the statistics 
 of population, disease and crime disclose, 
 upon the narrowest isthmus which can 
 divide life from death. AVhen we re- 
 member that the destructive agencies 
 which would be let loose amongst our 
 slaves, by emancipation, are as fatal to 
 morals as to life, and that the natural in- 
 equality between the races would be in- 
 creased by a constant accession of num- 
 bers to the white through emigration, it 
 is not extravagant to assert that extermina- 
 ting massacre would involve a swifter, 
 but scarcely more certain or more cruel 
 death. 
 
 If emancipation took place in a tropi- 
 cal region, where climate forbade the 
 competition of white labour, and the exu- 
 berance of nature supplied the means 
 of life without the necessity of intelli- 
 gent and systematic industry, there are 
 other causes which would remove from 
 the slave every safeguard of progress, 
 and render his relapse into barbarism 
 inevitable. Civilization depends upon 
 J activity, development, progress. It is 
 measured by our wants and our work. 
 Without indulging in any rash generali- 
 zations, we may safely affirm, that where 
 animal life can be sustained without la- 
 bour, and an enervating climate invites 
 to indolent repose, we cannot expect from 
 that class of society upon whom in every 
 country the cultivation of the soil de- 
 pends, any industrious emulation. So 
 powerful is the influence of these physi- 
 cal causes over barbarous tribes, that 
 under the torrid zone, as we are in- 
 formed by Humboldt, where a beneficent 
 hand has profusely scattered the seeds 
 of abundance, indolent and improvident 
 man experiences periodically a want of 
 subsistence which is unfelt in the sterile 
 regions of the North. As men increase 
 in virtue and intelligence, they become 
 more capable of resisting the operation of 
 climate and other natural laws, but some 
 form of slavery has been the only basis 
 upon which civilization has yet rested in 
 any tropical country. If it can be sus- 
 tained upon any other, it must be by a 
 race endowed with a larger fund of na- 
 tive energy than the African, or quick- 
 ened by the electric power of a higher 
 
 culture than he has ever possessed. His 
 moral and physical conformation pre- 
 dispose him to indolence. Ccsclum tiqu 
 anivium mutant, has been the law of his 
 history. Under the Code Rural of Hayti, 
 the harshest compulsion has been used to 
 subdue the sloth of barbarism, and to 
 compel the labour of the free black man, 
 but in vain. In the British West In- 
 dies, since emancipation, no expedients 
 have proven effectual to conquer this re- 
 pugnance to exertion. The English his- 
 torian, Alison, who whatever may be his 
 political sentiments, has no sympathies 
 with slavery, in his last volume, thus de- 
 scribes the result of the experiment. 
 "But disastrous as the results of the p- 
 change have been to British interests 
 both at home and in the West Indies, 
 they are as nothing to those which have 
 ensued to the negroes themselves, both in 
 their native seats and the Trans-Atlantic 
 Colonies. The fatal gift of premature 
 emancipation has proved as pernicious to 
 a race as it always does to an individual: 
 the boy of seventeen sent out into the 
 world, has continued a boy, and does as 
 other boys do. The diminution of the 
 agricultural exported produce of the 
 islands to less than a half, proves how 
 much their industry has declined. The 
 reduction of the consumption of their 
 British produce and manufactures in a 
 similar pftrportion, tells unequivocally 
 how much their means of comfort and 
 enjoyment have fallen off. Generally 
 speaking, the incipient civilization of 
 the negro has been arrested by his eman- 
 cipation : with the cessation of forced 
 labour, the habits which spring from 
 and compensate it, have disappeared, and 
 savage habits and pleasures have re- 
 sumed their ascendency over the sable 
 race. The attempts to instruct and civil- 
 ize them have, for the most part, proved 
 a failure; the dolce far niente equally 
 dear to the unlettered savage as to the 
 effeminate European, has resumed its 
 sway ; and the emancipated Africans dis- 
 persed in the woods, or in cabins erected 
 amidst the ruined plantations, are fast 
 relapsing into the state in which their 
 ancestors were when first torn from their 
 native seats by the rapacity of a Chris- 
 
12 
 
 Is Slave?-}/ Consistent ivith Natural Law? 
 
 tian avarice." A melancholy confirma- 
 tion of this statement is furnished by a 
 fact which I have learned from a reliable 
 private source, that the prevailing crimes 
 of this population have changed from 
 petty larceny to felonies of the highest 
 grades. But if the black race could 
 escape barbarism, or defy those destroy- 
 ing elements of society, poverty and 
 crime, there is a more comprehensive 
 political induction which establishes the 
 justice and expediency of its subjection 
 to servitude. If in any community there 
 is an inferior race which is condemned 
 by permanent and irresistible causes to 
 occupy the condition of a working class, 
 not as independent proprietors of the 
 8oil they till, but as labourers for hire, 
 then a system of personal slavery under 
 which the welfare of the slave could be 
 connected with the interest of the master, 
 would be far preferable to the collective 
 servitude of a degraded caste. This pro- 
 position supposes the existence, not of 
 an inferior class simply, but an inferior 
 race — which, as such, is condemned by 
 nature to wear the livery of servitude in 
 some form — which can never be quick- 
 ened or sustained by those animating 
 prospects of wealth, dignity and power 
 which, in a homogeneous community, 
 pour a renovating stream of moral 
 health through every vein and artery 
 of social life — which must earn a scanty 
 and precarious subsistence by a stern, un- 
 intermitting and unequal struggle with 
 selfish capital. Can any skepticism re- 
 sist the conviction that, under such cir- 
 cumstances, a social adjustment which 
 would engage the selfish passions of the 
 superior race to provide for the comfort 
 of the inferior, must be an arrangement 
 of mercy as well as of justice? Upon this 
 question the experience of England is 
 full of instruction. The abolition of 
 slavery upon the continent of Europe 
 gradually converted the original serfs 
 into owners of the soil. In England, it 
 terminated with personal manumission — 
 leaving the villein to work as a labourer 
 for wages, or to farm as a tenant upon 
 lease. What has been the effect of this 
 great social revolution? I do not refer to 
 that saturnalia of poverty, misery, va- 
 
 grancy, and crime which immediately 
 followed the disruption of the old feudal 
 bonds, and the adjustment of the new 
 relations of lord and vassal, by the " cold 
 justice of the laws of political economy." 
 What is the present condition of the Eng- 
 lish labourer? English writers, whose 
 fidelity and accuracy are above suspicion, 
 have almost exhausted the power of lan- 
 guage in describing his abject wretched- 
 ness and squalid misery. They have dis- 
 tributed their population into the rich, 
 the comfortable, the poor, and the perish- 
 ing. That " bold peasantry, their coun- 
 try's pride," has almost disappeared. 
 Every improvement in an industrial 
 process which diminishes the amount 
 of human labour, brings with it more 
 or less of suffering to the English opera- 
 tive. Every scarce harvest, every fluc- 
 tuation in trade, every financial crisis 
 exposes him to beggary or starvation. 
 In the selfish competition between the 
 capitalist and workman, says a distin- 
 guished christian philanthropist, " the 
 capitalist, whether farmer, merchant, or 
 manufacturer, plays the game, wins all 
 the high stakes, takes the lion's share of 
 the profits, and throws all the losses, 
 involving pauperism and despair, upon 
 the masses." Nothing can be more 
 hopeless than the condition of the agri- 
 cultural labourer. All the life of Eng- 
 land, says Bowen in his lectures on Politi- 
 cal Economy, "is in her commercial and 
 manufacturing classes. Outside of the 
 city walls, we are in the middle ages again. 
 There are the nobles and the serfs, true 
 castes, for nothing short of a miracle can 
 elevate or depress one who is born a mem- 
 ber of either." Moral and intellectual 
 culture cannot be connected with physi- 
 cal destitution and suffering. We are not 
 therefore surprised to learn, from a recent 
 British Quarterly, that there is an over- 
 whelming class of outcasts at the bottom 
 of their society whom the present system 
 of popular education does not reach, who 
 are below the influence of religious ordi- 
 nances, and scarcely operated upon by any 
 wholesome restraint of public opinion. 
 For the relief of this wretchedness an 
 immense pauper system has grown up, 
 as grinding in its exactions upon the rich, 
 
Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 
 
 13 
 
 as clemoralizlng in its bounties to the 
 poor. But even this frij^htful evil ap- 
 pears insignificant, in comparison with 
 that embittered and widening feud be- 
 tween the classes of society, which has 
 filled the most sanguine friends of hu- 
 man progress with the apprehension, that 
 England's greatest danger may spring 
 from the despair of her own children, the 
 beggars who gaze in idleness and misery 
 at her wealth, the savages who stand by 
 the side of her civilization, and the 
 heathen who have been nursed in the 
 bosom of her Christianity. Tiie intelli- 
 gent philanthropists of England, place 
 their whole hope of remedy in plans 
 of colonization — plans for substituting 
 cooperative associations for the system of 
 hired service — plans for increasing the 
 number of peasant proprietors, and thus 
 placing labour on a more independent 
 basis — for educating the working class, 
 and for legislation which will facilitate the 
 circulation of capital, and the more equal 
 distribution of property. But if this evil 
 working in the heart of the nation be 
 incurable, if the helotism of the working 
 classes should prove, as it has already 
 been pronounced, irretrievable, I am far 
 from advocating a reduction of the Eng- 
 lish labourer to slavery. There is no 
 radical distinction of race, between the 
 labourer and the capitalist. The latter 
 owes his superiority, not to nature, but 
 to the vantage ground of opportunity. 
 Nature has implanted a consciousness of 
 equality, so deeply in the bosom of the 
 labourer, that personal slavery would 
 bring with it a sense of degradation he 
 could never endure. Whatever the gene- 
 ral destitution and sufferings of his class, 
 an undying hope will ever whisper to 
 the individual that a happy fortune 
 may raise him to comfortable indepen- 
 dence, or social consideration. The very 
 thought, that from his loins may spring 
 some stately figure to tread, with dignity 
 the shining eminences of life, is able to 
 alleviate many hours of despondency. 
 But above all, an instinctive love of 
 liberty, such as was felt by the Spartan 
 when he compared it to the sun, the most 
 brilliant, and at the same time, the most 
 useful object in creation, cherished in the 
 
 Englishman by the traditions of centu- 
 ries of struggle in its achievement and 
 defence, cause him to echo the sentiment 
 of his own poet, 
 
 "Bondage is winter, darkness, death, des- 
 
 pair, '^ 
 
 Freedom, the sun, the sea, the mountains 
 and the air." 
 
 I fully subscribe to an opinion which 
 has been expressed by an accomplished 
 Southern writer, that an attempt to en- 
 slave the English labourer would equal, 
 though it could not exceed in folly, an 
 attempt to liberate the American slave — 
 either seriously attempted and with suffi- 
 cient power to oppose the natural current 
 of events would overwhelm the civiliza- 
 tion of the continent in which it occurred 
 in anarchy. But if the English labourer 
 belonged to a different race from his em- 
 ployer ; if they were separated by a moral 
 and intellectual disparity such as divides 
 the Southern slave from his master: if ^ 
 instead of the sentiments and traditions 
 of liberty which would make bondage 
 worse than death, he had the gentle, tract- 
 able and submissive temper that adapt 
 the African to servitude, who can doubt 
 that a slavery which would insure com- 
 fort and kindness, would improve his con- 
 dition in all its aspects ? 
 
 None of the circumstances w))ich pre- 
 vent the application of the general pro- 
 position we have been discussing to the 
 English labourer, extend to the American 
 slave— none of the plans which have been 
 suggested for the relief of the former 
 would offer any hope of amelioration to 
 the latter. No man who knows anything 
 of the negro character, can for a moment '^ 
 suppose that the land of the country, 
 could be distributed between them as teu- 
 ant proprietors. If it was given to them 
 to day, their improvidence would make it 
 the property of the white man tonmrrow. 
 Indeed the fact to which Mr. Webster 
 called attention, that the products of the 
 slave-holding States are destined mainly, 
 not for immediate consumption, but for 
 purposes of manufacture and commercial 
 exchange, exclude the possibility of an 
 extended system of tenant proprietorship, 
 and render cultivation and disposal by 
 
14 
 
 Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 
 
 capital upon a large scale indispensable. 
 The black man if emancipated must work 
 for hire. Would he be better able to hold 
 his own against the capitalist than the 
 English labourer ? Would not the misery 
 and degradation of the latter, but faintly 
 foreshadow the doom of the emancipated 
 Blave ? His days embittered and short- 
 ened by privation ; cheered by no hope of 
 a brighter future: the burthens of liber- 
 ty without its privileges ; the degradation 
 of bondage without its compensations ; 
 "the name of freedom graven on a heav- 
 ier chain ;" his root in the grave, the lib- 
 erated negro under the influence of moral 
 causes as irresistible as the laws of grav- 
 ity, -would moulder earthward. What is 
 thei-e, may I not ask, in the misery and 
 desolation of this collective servitude, to 
 compensate for the sympathy, kindness, 
 comfort, and protection which so generally 
 solace the suffering, and sweeten the toil, 
 and make tranquil the slumber, and con- 
 tented the spirits of the slave, whose lot 
 has been cast in the sheltering bosom of 
 a Southern home ? 
 
 The approximation to equality in num- 
 bers, which has been hastily supposed to 
 render emancipation safer than in the 
 West Indies, would give rise to our 
 greatest danger. It will not be long be- 
 fore the unmixed white population of the 
 West Indies will be reduced, by the com- 
 bined influences of emigration and amal- 
 gamation, to a few factors in the sea 
 ports. In the United States, not only 
 would the exodus of either race, or their 
 fusion, be impracticable, but the pride 
 of civilization, which now stoops with 
 alacrity to bind up the wounds of the 
 slave, would spurn the aspiring contact 
 of the free man. The points of sympa- 
 thy between master and slave may not 
 be as numerous or powerful as we could 
 desire, but between the white and the 
 black man, in any society in which they 
 ^ are recognised as equals, and in which 
 the latter are sufficiently numerous to 
 create apprehension as to the conse- 
 quences of distrust and aversion, a grow- 
 ing ill-will would deepen into irrecon- 
 cilable animosity. Look at the isolation 
 in which, notwithstanding their insignifi- 
 cance as a class, the free blacks of the 
 
 North now live. "The negro," says De 
 Tocqueville, "is free, but he can share 
 neither the rights, nor the pleasures, 
 nor the labour, nor the affections, ^ 
 nor the altar, nor the tomb of him 
 whose equal he has been declared to 
 be. lie meets the white man upon fair 
 terms, neither in life nor in death." 
 What could be expected from a down- 
 trodden race, existing in masses large 
 enough to be formidable, in whose bosoms 
 the law itself nourished a sense of 
 injustice by proclaiming an equality 
 which Xature and society alike denied, 
 with passions unrestrained by any stake 
 in the public peace, or any bonds of at- 
 tachment to the superior class, but that 
 it should seek in some frenzy of despair, 
 to shake off its doom of misery and deg- 
 radation ? Would not the atrocities which 
 have always distinguished a war of races, 
 be perpetrated on a grander and more 
 appalling scale than the world has ever 
 yet witnessed ? The recollections of 
 hereditary feud alone have, in every age, 
 so inflamed the angry passions of our 
 nature as to lend a deeper gloom even to 
 the horrors of war. When the poet de- 
 scribes the master of the lyre, as seeking 
 to rouse the martial ardour of the Grecian 
 conqueror and his attendant nobles, he 
 brings before them the ghosts of their 
 Grecian ancestors that were left unburied 
 on the plains of Troy, who tossing their 
 lighted torches — 
 
 " Point to the Persian abodes, 
 And glittering temples of their hostilegods."' 
 
 But what would be the ferocity awakened 
 in half-savage bosoms, when embittered 
 memories of long-descended hate towards 
 a superior race, exasperated by the mad- 
 dening pangs of want, impelled them to 
 seek retribution for centuries of imagi- 
 nary wrong? Either that precious har- 
 vest of civilization which has been slowly 
 ripening under the toils of successive 
 generations of our fathers, and the genial 
 sunshine and refreshing showers of centu- 
 ries of kindly Providence, would be 
 gathered by the rude sons of spoil, or 
 peace would return after a tragedy of 
 crime and sorrow, with whose burthen of 
 
Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law? 
 
 15 
 
 ■woe the voice of history would be tremu- 
 lous through long ages of after time. 
 
 The whole reasoning of modern phi- 
 lanthropy upon this subject has been 
 vitiated, by its overlooking those funda- 
 mental moral differences between the 
 races, which constitute a far more im- 
 portant element in the political arrange- 
 ments of society, than relative intellec- 
 tual power. It is immaterial how these 
 differences have been created. Their ex- 
 istence is certain ; and if capable of re- 
 moval at all, they are yet likely to en- 
 dure for such an indefinite period, that 
 in the consideration of any practical pro- 
 blem, we must regard them as permanent. 
 The collective superiority of a race can 
 no more exempt it from the obligations 
 of justice and mercy, than the personal 
 superiority of an individual ; but where 
 unequal races are compelled to live to- 
 gether, a sober and intelligent estimate 
 of their several aptitudes and capacities 
 must form the basis of their social and 
 political organization. The intellectual 
 weakness of the black man is not so 
 characteristic, as the moral qualities which 
 distinguish him from his white brother. 
 The warmest friends of emancipation, 
 amongst others the late Dr. Channing, 
 have acknowledged that the civilization 
 of the African, must present a different 
 type from that of the Caucasian, and re- 
 semble more the development of the 
 East than the West. His nature is made 
 1 up of the gentler elements. Docile, af- 
 fectionate, light-hearted, facile to impres- 
 sion, reverential, he is disposed to look 
 without for strength and direction. In 
 the courage that rises with danger, in the 
 energy that would prove a consuming fire 
 to its possessor, if it found no object upon 
 which to spend its strength, in the proud 
 aspiring temper which would render 
 slavery intolerable, he is far inferior to 
 other races. Hence, subordination is as 
 congenial to his moral, as a warm latitude 
 is to his physical nature. Freedom is not 
 "chartered on his manly brow" as on 
 that of the native Indian. Unkindness 
 awakens resentment, but servitude alone 
 carries no sense of degradation fatal to 
 self respect. Acivili/.ation like our own 
 could be developed only by a free people; 
 
 but under a system of slavery to a superior 
 race, which was ameliorated by the 
 charities of our religion, the African is 
 capable of making indefinite progress. 
 He is not animated by that love if liberty 
 which Bacon quaintly compar d to a 
 spark that ever flieth in the facii of him 
 who seeketh to trample it un cr foot. 
 The masses of the old world, unt'er vari- 
 ous forms of slavery, have exhibited a 
 standing discontent, and their struggles 
 for freedom have been the flashes of a 
 smothered but deeply hidden fire. The 
 obedience of the African, unless dis- 
 turbed by some impulse from without, 
 and to which he yields only in a vague 
 hope of obtaining respite from labour, is 
 willing and cheerful. De Toqqueville, iu 
 his work on the French Revolution, points 
 out a difference between nations, in what 
 he calls the sublime taste for freedom — 
 some seeking it for its material blessings 
 only, others for its intrinsic attractions ; 
 and adds, " that he who seeks freedom 
 for anything else than freedom's self, is 
 made to be a slave." How fallacious 
 must be any political induction which 
 transfers to the African that love of 
 personal liberty, which wells from the 
 heart of our own race in a spring-tide of 
 passionate devotion, the winters of despot- 
 ism could never chill. The Providence 
 which appointed the Anglo-Saxon to 
 lead the van of human progress fitted 
 him for his mission, by preconfiguring 
 his soul to the influences of freedom. 
 This sentiment is indestructible in his 
 nature. It would survive the degrada- 
 tion of any form or term of bondage. Like 
 the sea shell, when torn from its home in 
 the deep, his heart, through all the ages 
 of slavery, would be vocal with the music 
 of his native liberty. 
 
 The strength of that security against 
 oppression which the Southern slave de- 
 rives from the selfishness of human na- 
 ture, has never been sufficiently appre- 
 ciated, for in truth, it has existed in con- 
 nection with no other form of servitude. 
 With exceptions too slight to deserve re- 
 mark, in Greece and Rome, in the Brit- 
 ish and Spanish colonies, it was cheaper 
 to buy slaves than to raise them, to work 
 them to death, than to provide for them 
 
 / 
 
16 
 
 Is Slavery Consistent witJi Natural Lato? 
 
 in life. Hence in Rome, the slaves of the 
 public were better cared for than those 
 of the individual. With us, the master 
 has a large and immediate interest, not 
 only in the life, but the health, comfort 
 and improvement of his slave, for they 
 all add to his value and efficiency as a 
 labourer. Southern slavery must there- 
 fore be tried upon its own merits, and not 
 by data true or false, collected from other 
 forms of servitude. Arithmetic, Gibbon 
 ^ once said, is the natural enemy of rheto- 
 ric, and a single statement vrill suffice to 
 discredit all the reasoning, and pour con- 
 tempt upon all the declamation which has 
 confounded our slavery with that of the 
 British West Indies. From the most re- 
 liable calculations that can be made, says 
 Carey, in his Essay on the Slave Trade, 
 it appears that for every African import- 
 ed into the United States, ten are now to 
 be found, such has been the wonderful 
 growth of population ; for every three 
 imported into the British West Indies, 
 only one now exists, such has been its 
 frightful decline. But however ample 
 this protection may be to the slave from 
 the oppression of strangers, his own pas- 
 sions it is urged, will lead the master to 
 spurn the restraints of interest. But 
 what security against an abuse of power, 
 has human wisdom ever devised which is 
 likely to operate with such uniform and 
 prevailing force ? As Burke said of ano- 
 ther social institution, " it makes our 
 weakness subservient to our virtue, and 
 grafts our benevolence, even upon our 
 avarice." All the evidence v.hich is ac- 
 cessible, the statistics of population, of 
 consumption as shown both by im- 
 ports, and the balance between production 
 and exports, and the testimony of intel- 
 ligent and candid travellers bear witness 
 to its general efficiency. And it is to be 
 remarked that whilst the slave partakes 
 largely and immediately of his master's 
 prosperity ; the reverses which reduce 
 the latter to beggary or starvation, pass 
 almost harmless over his head. In other 
 countries, the pressure of every public 
 calamity falls upon the working classes : 
 but with us the slave is placed in a great 
 measure beyond their reach, by the cir- 
 cumstance that his hire or ownership im- 
 
 port a condition of life in Avhich the means 
 of subsistence are enjoyed. From the 
 demoralization of extreme want, so fatal 
 to virtue as well as happiness in other 
 lands, he is thus always saved. It was 
 the benevolent wish of Henr}' the Fourth 
 of France, that every peasant in his do- 
 minions might have a fowl in his pot for 
 Sunday. In every age the patriot has of- 
 fered a similar prayer for the labouring 
 poor of his country. But it is only in the 
 Southern States of our confederacy, that 
 the sun ever beheld a meal of wholesome 
 and abundant food, the daily reward of 
 the children of toil. 
 
 The relation is so far from having any 
 tendency to provoke those angry and re- 
 sentful feelings -which would excite the 
 master to acts of cruelty, that its tendency 
 is directly the reverse. 
 
 It was truly said by Legare, that ^ar- 
 cerc suhjedis, was not exclusively a Ro- 
 man virtue: that it was a law of the 
 heart, the usual attribute of undisputed 
 power ; and that there were few men who 
 did not feel the force of that beautiful 
 and touching appeal: " Behold, behold, 
 I am thy servant." It was owing to this 
 principle that when the dependence of 
 the feudal vassal upon his lord was most 
 complete, their mutual attachment, (as 
 we arc assured by Gilbert Stewart and 
 other historians of this period,) was 
 strongest, and as the feudal tenure decay- 
 ed, and the law was interposed between 
 them, the kindness upon one side and the 
 affection and gratitude upon the other dis- 
 appeared. It is not simply the conscious- 
 ness of strength which tends to disarm 
 resentment in the bosom of the master. It 
 is the long and intimate association, con- 
 nected with the feelings of interest awa- 
 kened in all but the hardest hearts by 
 the cares and responsibilities of guardi- 
 anship which make the slave an object of 
 friendly regard, and bring him within 
 that circle of kindly sympathies which 
 cluster around the domestic hearth. It 
 is a form of that generous feeling which 
 bound the Highland chieftain to hia 
 clan, and which, with greater or less 
 force, depending upon the virtue of the 
 age, attaches to every relation of patri- 
 archal authority. According to Dr. Ar- 
 
Is Slavery Consistent xoith Natural Law. 
 
 17 
 
 nold, (in his tract on the Social condition 
 of the Operative Classes,) the old system 
 of English slavery was far kinder than 
 that now existing in England of hired 
 service. The affection between the mas- 
 ter and the villain is shown by the fact 
 that villainage " wore out " by volunta- 
 ry manumission — a circumstance which 
 never would have happened had the rela- 
 tion been one simply of profit and loss. 
 Shakspeare in his character of old Adam, 
 in "As You Like It," has adverted to the 
 more genial and kindly elements which 
 distinguished this legal service from that 
 for wages. Orlando, in replying to the 
 pressing entreaty of the old servant 
 to go with him, and " do the service of a 
 younger man in all his business and ne- 
 cessities," says — 
 
 " Oh good old man, how well in thee ap- 
 pears 
 The constant service of the antique world, 
 When service sweat for duty — not for 
 meed." 
 
 The mutual good will of distinct classes 
 has, in all ages, been dependent upon a 
 well defined subordination. This opin- 
 ion is confirmed by the testimony of one 
 of the most eloquent writers of New Eng- 
 land, in reference to the workings of its 
 social system as they fell under his perso- 
 nal observation. I appeal, says Dana in 
 his Essay on Law as suited to Man, "to 
 those who remember the state of our do- 
 mestic relations, when the old Scriptural 
 terms of master and servant were in 
 use. I do not fear contradiction when I 
 say there was more of mutual good will 
 then than now ; more of trust on the 
 one side and fidelity on the other ; more 
 of protection and kind care, and more of 
 gratitude and affectionate respect in re- 
 turn ; and because each understood well 
 his place, actually more of a certain free- 
 dom, tempered by gentleness and by de- 
 ference. From the very fact that the dis- 
 tinction of classes was more marked, the 
 bond between the individuals constitu- 
 ting these two, was closer. As a general 
 truth, I verily believe that, with the ex- 
 ception of near-blood relationships, and 
 here and there peculiar friendships, the 
 attachment of master and servant was 
 2 
 
 closer and more enduring than that of 
 almost any other connection in life. The 
 young of this day, under a change of for- 
 tune, will hardly live to see the eye of 
 an old, faithful servant fill at their fall ; 
 nor will the old domestic be longer 
 housed and warmed by the fireside of 
 his master's child, or be followed by him 
 to the grave. The blessed sun of those 
 good old days has gone down, it may 
 be for ever, and it is very cold." It is 
 through the operation of these kindly 
 sentiments, which it awakens on both 
 sides, that African slavery reconciles the 
 antagonism of classes that has elsewhere 
 reduced the highest statesmanship to the 
 verge of despair, and becomes the great 
 Peace-maker of our society, converting 
 inequalities, which are sources of danger 
 and discord in other lands, into pledges 
 of reciprocal service, and bonds of mu- 
 tual and intimate friendship. 
 
 But a vigilant and restraining public 
 opinion surrounds our slaves with a cu- 
 mulative security. The master is no char- 
 tered libertine. Custom, the greatest of 
 law-givers, places visible metes and bounds 
 upon his authority which few are so har- 
 dy as to transcend. Native humanity 
 and Christian principle inscribe their lim- 
 itations upon the living tables of his heart. 
 A public sentiment, growing in its strength 
 and increasing in its exactions, covers the '' 
 slave with a protecting shield, far less 
 easily or frequently broken through, than 
 those feeble barriers of law which in our 
 Free States, are interposed between the 
 degraded and outcast black man, and his 
 white brother. Written laws never to be 
 received as accurate exponents of the 
 rights and privileges of a people, are 
 most fallacious when appealed to as a 
 standard, by which to determine the char- 
 acter of a system of slavery ; for the wi- 
 sest and most humane must acknowledge 
 that the introduction of law may so dis- 
 turb the harmony and good will of any 
 domestic relation, as to breed more mis- 
 chief than it can possibly cure. It is not 
 simply in reference to the food, clothing, 
 work, holydays, punishments of slaves, 
 that public sentiment exercises its super- 
 vision and restraint. It looks to the 
 whole range of their happiness and im- 
 
18 
 
 Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ? 
 
 provement. It is operating with great 
 force in inducing masters to provide more 
 extended facilities for their religious in- 
 struction. It has to a large extent termi- 
 nated that disruption of family ties, which 
 ,has always constituted the most serious 
 obstacle to the improvement of the slave, 
 and the severest hardship of his lot. A 
 
 ^ Scotch weaver, William Thompson, who 
 travelled through our Southern States in 
 1843, on foot, sustaining himself by man- 
 ual labour, and mixing constantly with 
 our slave population, states in a book 
 which he published on his return home, 
 that the separation of families did not 
 take place here to such an extent as 
 amongst the labouring poor of Scotland. 
 "We know that the evil has been dimin- 
 ishing with every succeeding day, and I 
 trust that public sentiment will not leave 
 this most beneficent work half done. The 
 sanctity and integrity of the family union 
 is the germ of all civilization. There is 
 nothing in slavery to make its violation 
 inevitable. It may require some time and 
 sacrifice to accommodate the habits of so- 
 ciety to the universal prevalence of a 
 permanent tenure in these relations. But 
 through the agency of public sentiment 
 alone, acting upon buyer and seller, and 
 operating where necessary through com- 
 binations of benevolent neighbours, the 
 mischief in its entire dimensions lies 
 within the grasp of remedy. 
 
 Slavery is charged with fixing a point 
 in the scale of civilization, beyond which 
 it does not permit the labourer to rise. 
 God, it is argued, has conferred the capa- 
 city and imposed the duty of improve- 
 ment, but man forever denies the oppor- 
 tunity. I admit that the refining, eleva- 
 ting, and liberalizing influences of know- 
 
 ^ ledge can not be imparted to the slave, in 
 an equal degree with his master. But 
 this arises from the fact that he is a la- 
 bourer, not that he is a slave. It proceeds 
 from a combination of circumstances 
 which human laws could not alter, and 
 which render daily toil the unavoidable 
 portion of the black man. Civilization is 
 a complex result, demanding a multitude 
 of special offices and functions, for whose 
 performance men are fitted, and even 
 reconciled by gradations in intelligence 
 
 and culture. However exalting or enno- 
 bling might be the knowledge of Newton 
 or Herschell, God in his Providence has 
 denied to the larger part of the human 
 family, the opportunity of obtaining it. 
 The apparent hardship of this arrange- 
 ment disappears when we reflect that this 
 life is only a school of discipline and pro- 
 bation for another, and that a variety of 
 condition involving distinct spheres of 
 duty, may be the wisest and most merci- 
 ful provision for each. Every age rises 
 to a higher level of general intelligence, 
 but the mass of men must be satisfied 
 with that prime wisdom, " to know that 
 before us lies in daily life." Whilst I 
 doubt not that, 
 
 " Through the ages one increasing purpose 
 
 runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with 
 
 the circuit of the suns," 
 
 yet so long as the Divine ordinance, the 
 poor ye have always with you, remains 
 unrepealed — an ordinance without which 
 the fruits of industry would be consumed, 
 and its accumulations cease, the classes 
 of society must be divided by a broad 
 line of disparity in intellectual culture. 
 Emancipation would not relieve the slave 
 from the necessities of daily labour, or '' 
 furnish the leisure for extended mental 
 cultivation. There might be individual 
 exceptions ; but all legislation must take 
 its rule from the general course of human 
 nature, not its accidental departures and 
 variations. It is emancipation and not 
 servitude, which would forever darken 
 and extinguish those prospects of amelio- 
 ration that now lie imaged in the bright 
 perspective of Christian hope. The slave 
 will partake more and more of the life- 
 giving civilization of the master. As it 
 is, his intimate relations with the supe- 
 rior race, and the unsystematic instruc- 
 tion he receives in the family, have placed 
 him in pointof general intelligence above 
 a large portion of the white labourers of 
 Europe. It appears from the most recent 
 statistics, that one half the adult popula- *'' 
 tion of England and Wales are unable to 
 write their names. It was of English 
 
Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f 
 
 19 
 
 labourers, not American slaves, that Gray 
 ■Vfrote those touching lines — 
 
 "But knowledge to their eyes her ample 
 page, 
 
 Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er un- 
 roll ; 
 
 Chill penury repressed their noble rage. 
 
 And froze the genial current of the soul." 
 
 But it is supposed that our slaves can 
 never be instructed without danger to 
 the public safety, as knowledge, like the 
 admission of light into a subterranean 
 mine, might lead to an explosion. There 
 may be circumstances in which the su- 
 preme law of self-preservation will com- 
 
 ■4 mand us to withhold from the slave the 
 degree of information, we would gladly 
 impart. But it is never to be forgotteo, 
 that this stern and inexorable necessity 
 will not be created by the system icself. 
 The sin, and the responsibility of its exis- 
 tence will lie at the door of the misjudg- 
 ing philanthropy which has rashly and ig- 
 norantly interposed to adjust relations on 
 whose balance hang great issues of liber- 
 ty and civilization. If the views which 
 have been presented are true, the more 
 
 V his reason was instructed, the clearer 
 would be the slave's perception of the 
 general equity of the arrangement which 
 fixed his lot. But if knowledge is to in- 
 troduce him to a literature which will 
 confuse his understanding by its sophis- 
 try, whilst it inflames his passions by its 
 appeals, which will exaggerate his rights 
 and magnify his wrongs, then mercy to 
 the slave, as well as justice to society re- 
 quire us to protect him from the folly and 
 crime into which he might be hurried by 
 the madness of moral intoxication. We 
 will not throw open our gates, that the 
 enemies of peace may sow the dragon's 
 teeth of discord, and leave us to reap a 
 harvest of confusion and rebellion — but 
 •when they come to plant love amongst us, 
 te teach apostolic precepts, as elementary 
 morality, and to hold up the standard of 
 Holy Scripture as the rule of conduct, 
 and proof of law, we will give them hos- 
 pitable welcome. 
 
 If I have at all comprehended the ele- 
 ments which should enter into the deter- 
 
 mination of this momentous problem of 
 social welfare and public authority, the 
 existence of African Slavery amongst us, 
 furnishes no just occasion for self-re- 
 proach; much less for the presumptuous 
 rebuke of our fellow man. As individu- 
 als, we have cause to humble ourselves 
 before God, for the imperfect discharge 
 of our duties in this, and in every other 
 .relation of life: but for its justice and 
 morality as an element of our social pol- *^ 
 ity, we may confidently appeal to those 
 future ages, which, when the bedimming 
 mists of passion and prejudice have van- 
 ished, will examine it in the pure light of 
 truch, and pronounce the final sentence 
 of impartial History. Beyond our own 
 borders, there has been no sober and in- 
 telligent estimate of its distinctive fea- 
 tures ; no just apprehension of the na- 
 ture, extent and permanence of the dis- 
 parities between the races, or of the fatal 
 consequences to the slave, of a freedom 
 which would expose him to the uncheck- 
 ed selfishness of a superior civilization ; 
 no conception approaching to the reality 
 of the power which has been exerted by 
 a public sentiment, springing from Chris- 
 tian principle, and sustained by the uni- 
 versal instincts of self-interest, in tem- 
 pering the severity of its restraints, and 
 impressing upon it the mild character of 
 a patriarchal relation ; no rational antici- 
 pation of the improvement of which the 
 negro would be capable under our form of 
 servitude, if those who now nurse the wild 
 and mischievous dream of peaceful eman 
 cipation, should lend all their energies to 
 the maintenance of the only social system 
 under which his progressive amelioration 
 appears possible. African slavery is no y 
 relic of barbarism to which we cling from 
 the ascendency of semi-civilized tastes, 
 habits, and principles; but an adjustment 
 of the social and political relations of the 
 races, consistent with the purest justice, 
 commended by the highest expediency, 
 and sanctioned by a comprehensive and 
 enlightened humanity. It has no doubt 
 been sometimes abused by the base and 
 wicked passions of our fallen nature to 
 purposes of cruelty and wrong ; but where 
 is the school of civilization from which 
 the stern and wholesome discipline of suf- 
 
20 
 
 Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f 
 
 fering has been banished? or the human 
 landscape not saddened by a dark-flowing 
 stream of sorrow ? Its history when fair- 
 "^ ly written, will be its ample vindication. 
 It has weaned a race of savages from su- 
 perstition and idolatry, imparted to them 
 a general knowledge of the precepts of 
 the true religion, implanted in their bo- 
 soms sentiments of humanity and princi- 
 ples of virtue, developed a taste for the 
 arts and enjoyments of civilized life, 
 given an unknown dignity and elevation 
 to their type of physical, moral and intel- 
 lectual man, and for the two centuries 
 during which this humanizing process has 
 taken place, made for their subsistence 
 and comfort, a more bountiful provision, 
 than was ever before enjoyed in any age 
 or country of the world by a labouring 
 class. If tried by the test which we ap- 
 ply to other institutions, the whole sum 
 of its results, there is no agency of civi- 
 lization which has accomplished so much 
 in the same time, for the happiness and 
 advancement of our race. 
 
 I am fully persuaded, Mr. President, 
 that the preservation of our peace and 
 "' union, our property and liberty depend 
 upon the triumph of these opinions over 
 the delusion and ignorance which have 
 obscured and perplexed the public j udg- 
 ment upon this question of slavery. I 
 believe that they indicate the only tena- 
 ble line of argument along which we can 
 defend our rights or character. So long 
 as men regard all forms of slavery as sin- 
 ful, they will be conducted to the conclu- 
 sion that any aid or comfort to them, is 
 likewise sinful, by a logical necessity, 
 which their passions or interests can only 
 resist for a time. The conviction that 
 justice is the highest expediency for the 
 statesman, the first duty of the Christian, 
 and should be the supreme law of the 
 State, will sooner or later establish its 
 supremacy over all combinations of par- 
 ties and interests. So long as our fellow- 
 citizens of the North look upon this rela- 
 tion as barbarous and corrupting, they 
 must and ought to desire and seek its ex- 
 tinction, as a great vice and crime. Eve- 
 ry year will deepen their sympathy with 
 the slave, suifering under unjust bonds, 
 and inflame their resentful indignation 
 
 towards the master who holds his odious 
 property with unrelaxing grasp. Mutual 
 self-respect is the only term of association 
 upon which either individuals or societies 
 can or ought to live together. How 
 long could our Union endure, if it was to 
 be preserved by submission to a fixed pol- 
 icy of injustice, and acquiescence under 
 an accumulating burthen of reproach? 
 We are willing to give much for Union. 
 We will give territory for it ; the broad 
 acres we have already surrendered would 
 make an empire. We will give blood for 
 it; we have shed it freely upon every 
 field of our country's danger and renown. 
 We will give love for it; the confiding, 
 the forgiving, the overflowing love of 
 brothers and freemen. But much as we 
 value it, we will not purchase it at the 
 price of liberty or character. A union 
 of suspicion, aversion, injustice, in which 
 we would be banned not blessed, outlaw- 
 ed not protected, whether by faction un- 
 der the forms of law or revolution over 
 them I care not, has no charms for me. 
 The Union I love, is that which our fa- 
 thers formed ; a Union which, when it 
 took its place upon the majestic theatre 
 of history, consecrated by the benedic- 
 tions of patriots and freemen, and covered 
 all over with images of fame, was a fel- 
 lowship of equal and fraternal States ; a 
 Union which was established not only as 
 a bond of strength, but as a pledge of 
 justice and a sacrament of affection ; a 
 Union which was intended like the arch 
 of the heavens to embrace within the 
 span of its beneficent influence all inter- 
 ests and sections and to rest oppressively 
 or unequally upon none ; a Union in 
 which the North and the South— "like 
 the double celled heart, at every full 
 stroke," beat the pulses of a common 
 liberty and a common glory. Mr. Madi- 
 son has recorded a beautiful incident, 
 which occurring as the members of the 
 Federal Convention, were attaching their 
 signatures to the Constitution, forms a 
 fitting and significant close to its proceed- 
 ings. Dr. Franklin pointing to the paint- 
 ing of a sun which hung behind the 
 speaker's chair, and adverting to a difii- 
 culty which is said to exist in discrimi- 
 nating between the picture of a rising 
 
Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ? 
 
 21 
 
 and a setting sun, remarked t'lat during 
 the progress of their deliberations, he had 
 often looked at this painting and been 
 doubtful as to its character, but that he 
 now saw clearly it was a rising sun. 
 When the fancy of Franklin gave to the 
 painting its auroral hues, she had dipped 
 her pencil in his heart. Let but a heal- 
 ing conviction of the true character of 
 our system of slavery enter into the pub- 
 lic sentiment of the North ; let it under- 
 ^ stand that the South is seeking to dis- 
 charge, not simply the obligations of jus- 
 tice, but the larger debt of Christian hu- 
 manity towards this degraded race ; and 
 that if it has not accomplished moi'e, it 
 is because its people like the workmen 
 upon Solomon's temple, have been com- 
 pelled to labour on their social fabric with 
 the trowel in one hand, and the sword in 
 the other : and the old feelings of mutual 
 regard would soon follow a mutual respect 
 resting upon immovable foundations; the 
 animosities and dissensions of the Past 
 would be buried in the duties of the Pre- 
 sent and the Hopes of the Future; the mem- 
 ories of our great heroic age would breathe 
 over us a second spring of patriotism: the 
 comprehensive Amei'icaa sentiment which 
 framed this league of love would revive 
 in all its quickening power, in the bosoms 
 of our people, spreading undivided over 
 every portion of our territory, and opera- 
 ting unspent through all generations of 
 our history ; the Union would be so clasp- 
 
 ed in the North, and in the South, to our 
 heart of hearts, that death itself could 
 not tear loose the clinging tendrils of de- 
 votion ; and that emblematic painting in 
 which our fathers, with "no form nor 
 feeling in their souls, unborrowed from 
 their country," greeted with patriot 
 prayer and hope, the rising beams of 
 morning, would never by any line of les- 
 sening light, betoken to the eyes of their 
 children a parting radiance. 
 
 I have an abiding faith in Time, Truth, 
 and Providence. Let but the educated 
 mind of our society be fully awakened 
 to the magnitude of its responsibilities, 
 and thoroughly instructed in the duties 
 of its mission : let it meet the falsifica- 
 tions of history, and perversions of phi- 
 losophy, and corruptions of religion, iu 
 the varied forms of wise and temperate 
 discussion ; let it catch the spirit of Mil- 
 ton, when he was content to lose his sight 
 in writing for the defence of the liberties 
 of England, and inspired by yet deeper 
 enthusiasm in a cause upon which may 
 depend the liberties and civilization of 
 the whole earth, now in common peril 
 from a universal licentiousness of opin- 
 ion, unseal all its fountains of wit, elo- 
 quence and logic ; and there would soon 
 set out from our Southern coast, a great 
 moral Gulf Stream, able to penetrate and 
 warm all currents of opposing thought — 
 although they come in the strength and 
 volume of ocean tides. 
 
 Note. — This Address at the time of its delivery had not been entirely committed to 
 writing. The author has sometimes found it impossible to recall the exact language 
 which was then employed. He has, also, after conference with some members of the 
 Executive Committee of the State Agricultural Society, added an occasional statement 
 and illustration, which the limits of the oral discourse obliged him to omit. 
 
 / 
 
sup. 
 
 ties aL 
 
 citizens 
 
 tion as bi. 
 
 must and ou^ 
 
 tinction, as a g 
 
 ry year will deei^ 
 
 the slave, suffering 
 
 and inflame their rt 
 
LIBRARY OF t-uwuKc^ 
 
 011 899 895 ^ 
 
 bcT D-'i. -.-