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Show 70 distinguished Prussian historian, Raumer, in his Iet.tcrs on England, maintains, that his own government, wlnch foreigners call despotic, docs not rest on private will,. and that it ensures, on the whole, greater freedom to the subJect, than the British people can boast. Thus despotism docs homage to the great ideas and spirit of our ti~es ; . and yet in the midst of this progress, in the face of th1s umversal reverence for human rights, the slaveholder stands apart, and sets up his claim to ownership of his fellow-creature~, a~d insists on arbitrary, irresponsible rule, and makes h1s w11l a law, and enforces it by degrading punishments. And can this power stand ? Is it able to resist the moral power of the world ? Can it withstand a higher power, that of Eternal Justice, before which all worlds bow, and to which the highest orders of beings must give account ? I have now finished my remarks on the topics suggested by Mr. Clay's speech. I began them with stating, that I should avoid, as much as possible, all personalities; and I have aimed throughout to look only at the .system, not at individuals. .I am aware, however, that some of my remarks must seem to have a very unfavorable bearing on the slaveholder ; for how can the evils and crimes of a system be held up, without implicating more or less those who sustain it ? To prevent then all misapprehension, I wish to say, that whilst I think slaveholders in general highly culpable for upholding a system of wrong, which has been so plainly exposed, I do not regard slaveholding as a proof of the necessary absence of moral and religious prin ... ciple. Our nature is strangely inconsistent, and experience continually teaches us, that faults and sins, on which the eye of conscience has not been distinctly turned, may consist with real virtue. A man, living in a community, all of whose members join in passionate support of an evil insti ... tution, must have an energy of thought, a moral force, a moral independence which few can boast, in order to see 71 ~nd resist and renounce the wrong. N o moral trial on earth 1s pcrhap.s so overpowering. The light, which prevails in other rcgwns, enters most slowly this c ompact, dense mass of moral error. I cannot forget this in judging the slaveholder. I remember, too, that he is not merely a slavc~ older. He sustains the natural, innocent, purifying relahons o~ ~omestic life, of private friendship, of country, and ?f Chnslian worship, and in these he may be exemplary ; m these , there are woman at the South eminently faithful. I know it is said, that in these acknowledgments I weaken my testimony against slavery ; but truth is clearer than policy. I cannot hold it back. Could I liberate all the slaves, by misrepresenting the slaveholder, I would not clo it. The primary work of a man is, not to liberate slaves, but to be just, to render to all their clue, to do what is right, be the cost what it may ; and all benevolent enterprises, which have not their origin and rule in this sovereign principle of duty, are "splendid sins." The slaveholders commit a great wron~, many without consciousness of the wrong, and many wtth entire indifference to the moral character of slaveholding. And in all this they resemble other societies of men here and abroad. There is much unconscious wrong doing, and, still more, much conscious sacrifice of right to interest, all the world over. This should not prevent rebuke of other communities ; but should check invidious comparison, and the spirit of self-exaltation. We of the North have reason and are bound to condemn the enormous wrongs practised at the South · but have we a right to boast of ourselves as better than 1our neighbours ? Is not the selfish spirit of gain, which is blinding multitudes at the South to the injustice of slavery, very rife here ? Were this institution rooted here, should we not cling as a people to it, as obstinately as others ? Are none of us now reconciled to it by the profits it affords them ? England reproaches our slavery, and she cannot do it too solemnly. |
