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Show 106 THIRD DA Y-Al-"fi-:RNOON SESSION. The issue was between religion and its counterfeit; between religion and liberty on one siJe, and idolatry and slavery on the other. The Uedecmer, the poorest man in Judea, nnd yet the very God, took upon himself the form of a servant,-the most c\espiscd form of our. c01~mon humanity. The Redeemer came to lift up large mas~cs of mank1~d In the shape of the poor, the imprisoned, the enslaved, the nllscra.ble, the J~no~ant, and place them on the summit lcvt:l of our common humatHly, a~1d vJndJCate their relationship to God. And i11 the course of three centune~ after he preached his sermon on the Mount, during which time ten generallons came and crossed the bridge of human life, the trnths of that sermon had grappled with principalities and powers, with prejudice, and idolatry, and slavery, which had grown sturdy by their holJ on mankind for a thousand years, and had filled the Homan world with chiReUed gods of men's device, while the unpaid slave groaned from the A pprnines to the hanks of the Euphrates, from the Scamander to the Tweed, from the mountains of Mauritania to the dark·rolling Danube. At the end of three hundred years from the blessed Saviour's humanity, his holy principles had banished idolatry and slavery from the wide spread Roman world, with its one hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants. But, oh! how often did the faggot hurn,-did the martyr's blood flow, in defending the liberty of conscience and of person, before the world as8'ented to these principles! The next great issue to which the mind of Europe was summoned was the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Slavery and idolatry had come back to this world again. 'l'hc contest again was between truth and false· hood. The men of that. generation made brick without straw; their substance was eaten out hy ecc\e:;iastical imposition; a midnight of despolism brooded over the faculties of the moral world. Slaves in a state of serfism or vi\lanage, were groaning beneath the military pomp of the feudal system. The human mind rose up from the sleep of a thousand yeurs, and shook from itself the accumulated errors of ~~ges, and broke those bandages in which the independence of the mind and body had been swathed. From great issues and mighty trials like these, have beeu drawn all the truth, the religion, and liberty which have blessed this world. But hypocrisy, with ruin and darkness rioting in its heart, entered the portals of the rhurch, and put on the cast-off livery worn by ruined angels, when their guilty a1nbition expelled them from t.he realnu• of light; and, professing ' 'eneration for God's eternal witnesses, the Old and New Testaments, these impostors have declared, that these witnesses spalw that which they did not,-that these witnesses declared Slavery was an institution of Heaven, sanctioned by the God of justice and mercy! These baneful perversions of Divine truth have been employed for the most malignant purposes, so that Sot1thern professors of religion and professed ministers of Christ pretend to get their allthority to rob the slave of himself, his mind, his body, his wife, and children, from the Bible!! North America, in her political behavior is a contradiction in terms. She was the land of refuge for the oppressed. Corrupt Europe, of the seven· tee nth century, drove from her bosom her most. pious, noble, and independent sons, to search for liberty of conscience in the howling wilderne.ss of the Occidental world. The Puritan of New England, the Catholtc .of Maryland, the Epi:i!copalian of Virginia, and the Friends of Pennsylvama, claimed, like t.he Hehl'ews tn Egypt, the nght of makmg the wilderness their temple to worship God. Yes, they leaped the barriers of the oc~an's solitudes, and nestled down amongst the wild aborigines to enjoy the bber~ SPEECH OF ALVAN STEWART. 107 stiuecsh o af lbao ddy an d m.m d ' an d escape oppressi.O n. Oh, horri. d solec.i sm! that . 1 ° should now become the grand rendezvous of slaves outnumber· 10~f~ lose of any other country in the civilized world. ' 1~ year 1776 astonished the world with a new i~su e which reached ~1 P d'ln . down and all around the circle of humanity. :fhis issue was en .er~d to the oppressors of mankind, throughout the world by the fe~~~~~~~SCongress ~f the. Un.ited .states, who Lhrew in th~ teeth of1 tyrants, k. • monarchists, tne inhentors of power the pnmogeniturists the •?napp~rs, slaveholders, man-despi8ers, and ~an·haters, the~e worJs of ~lghty Hn~ort: ".!J_ll '!un. are cre~ted equal, and m·e endowed by thei1• reator wtth _cerlatn u~ultenable nghts, among which are life, iiberty, ~nd lite purswt of lwpptness ;" and to vindicate the truth of lhis proposi~ Jon, the people of these United States poured out their blood like water 10r seven years. Phil~sophers, philan~hropists .• politicians, and jurists, had written tomes an? folios of, me~aphys1cal rnusmgs and abstractions, to settle the starting pomt orm~ll S CXJStence,-the rights of one as COmpared with those of another In com1~1g 1n~o the compact. of civil society. But 111 f?OIIlg up to~ remot~ antiq~1ity, to !e~rn what principles governed ~hos~ lawg1vers who la1d .the loundauons of c1v1l polity for those old nations Ill Euro~e, ~able occupies the place of veritable history, and histor ~eems ~v1th tts. thousand falsehoods, and bewilders the mind withOl~ mstruclln~ the J.udgment, and leaves the inquirer at the horizon's distance from certainty, 1f not from truth. ·~he. feudal ~ys.te.m, the doctrine of primogeniture,-that executive, l~g1slauve and JLnhcJal powers, were matters of inhcritance,-may be constd. ered the elementary doctrine of Europe. fhat ~ten are born equal, is ~ great moral proposition, coming from Go~, a~u•. as o.ld as man, a~1 d grows out of His own eternal benevolence, by wl!1ch ll ts S~id that G.od ts no res pecter of persons. fh~ doctnne of pnm~geniture is that by which the oldest child, being m~le, IS born to the mherllance of the whole landed estate of a father or re] atJve.' ami the other children of no part; by which the oldest child of a king, or pr~nce,. or duk~, e~rl, or no?le,. l~owever weak, is hom to the inheritance of executtve •. leg1slat1ve, an~l .JUdiCial power, while the son of the pensant, ho,~eve.r cull1vated by learning, or however superior by force of an exalted gem us ts only born to obey. Many or the memb~rs of the House of Lords, in England, inherit. their sea~ to.legJ~l~te for thetr.~ountrymen.' by the same law by which they hold th~1r father~ estates. 1 hey 111hent both. They inherit judicial power Wli'e or foolish, as a c~urt of dernicr resort, to reverse the decisions of th~ chancellor and twelve JUdges of England, on a statute which these members ?f. the ~ouse. of Lord~ inherited power to make. In England, nothi11g but IdJOcy, msam~y, or cnme, can deprive some four or five hundred Englishm~ n from betng law-makers and judges in the last resort· and that too Without the express consent of a Jiving man in England ma1 1 1ifested in '..hei; favor, but barely by inheritance. The. feud~l s.Y~tem, primoge~1iture, and that certain persons inherited the ~xec~uve, jUd1r:1~ry, and leg1slative powers of their country, and also mhented the alleg1ance and ob~dience of the nation, have been the fundamental la~vs of most European countnes from the downfal of the Roman Empire t.o this hour. Lo,ok at E~gland an<~ Iter colonies of fifty millions of inhabitants, and her East Indta possessiOns of one hundred millions more makin hundred and fifty millions of human beings, or one-fifth or th~ humat~ r;cnP~ |