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Show 58 slavery is still a heavy yoke, and strips man of his dearest rights, be the master's character what it may. Slavery is not less a curse, because long usc may have blinded most, who support it, to its evils. Its influence is still blighting, though conscientiously uph eld. Absolute monarchy is still a scourge, though among despots there have been good men. It is possible to abhor and oppose bad institutions, and yet to abstain fi·om indiscriminate condemnation of those who cling to tll'crn, and even to see in their ranks greater virtue than in ourselves. It is true, and ought tL' ue cheerfully acknowledged, that in the slave-holding States may be found some of the greatest names of our history, and, what is still more important, bright examples of private virtue and Christian love. There is, however, there must be, in slaveholding communities a large class which cannot be too severely condemned. There are many, we fear, very many, who hold their fellow-creatures in bondage, from selfish, base motives. They hold the slave for ga in, whether justly or· unjustly they neither ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have no faith in the principles which will diminis!J a man's wealth. They hold him, not for his own good or the safet/ol' the state, but with precisely the same views with which they hold a laboring horse, that is, for the profit which they can wring from him. They will 59 ;.ot hear a word of his wrongs; for, wronged or not, they will not let him go. He is their property, and lhey mean not to he poor for righteousness' sake. Such a class there undoubtedly is among slaveholders; how large their own consciences must determine. We are sme of it; for under such circumstances human nature will and must come to this mournful result. Now, to men of this spirit, the explanations we have made do in no degree apply. Such men ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged humanity and indignant virtue. Slavery, upheld for gain, is a gt·eat crime. He, who has nothinrr to urcre ar,ainst emancipation, but that it will m:ke hi;;, p~orer, is bound to Immediate Emancipation. He has no excuse for wresting from his brethren their rights. The plea of benefit to the slave and the state avails him nothing. He extorts, by the lash, that bbor to which he has no claim, through a base selfishness. Every morsel of food, thus forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than gall. His gold is cankered. The sweat of the slave taints the luxuries for which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong doer of whom I speak, to live as the slave, to clothe himself in the slave's raiment, to eat the slave's coarse food, to till his fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of a wantonly injured fellow-creature. No fellow- |
