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Show 154 and money-getting habits of New England, or the menacBs which have been addressed to our cupidity, for the purpose of putting us to silence on the subject of slavery. Such language does in no degree move me. l only ask that we may give no ground for its application. We can easily bear it, if we do not deserve it. Om mothercountry has been called a nation of shopkeepers, and New England ought not to be provoked by the name. Only let us give no sanction to the opinion that our spirit is narrowed to our shops; that we place the art of bargaining above all arts, all sciences, accomplishments, and virtues; that rather than lose the fruits of the sla1·e's labor we would rivet his chains; that sooner than lose a market we would make shipwreck of honor; that sooner than sacrifice present gain we would break our faith to our fathers and our children, to our principles and om God. To resent or re taliate reproaches would be unwise and unchristian. The only re venge worthy of a good man is, to turn reproaches into admonitions against baseness, into incitements to a more generous virtue. New En<dand has lonrr suffered the imputation of a sorJ\c1, calculatin; spirit, of supreme devotion to gain. Let us show that we have principles, compared with which the wealth of the world is light as air. It is a common remark here, that there i~ not a community under heaven, through which 155 thet·e is so general a diffusion of intelligence and healthful moral sentiment as in New England. L et not the just influence of such a society be impaired by any act which would give to prejudice the aspect of truth. The free States, it is to be fea red , must pass through a struggle. May they sustain it ns becomes their freedom ! The present excitement at the South can hardly be expected to pass away, without attempts to wrest fi·om them unworthy concessions. The tone in rcg<~rcl to slavery in that part of our country is changed. It is not only more vehement, but more fal se than formerly. Once slavery was acknowledged as un evil. Now it is proclaimed to be a good. vVe have even been told , not by a handful of enthusiasts in private life, but by men in the highest station and of widest influence at the South, that slavery is the soil into which political freerlom strikes its rleepest roots, and that republican institutions arc never so secure as when the laboring class is reduced to se rvitude. Certainly, no assertion of the wildest abolitionist could give such a shock to the slaveholder, as this new doctrine is fitted to give to the people of the North. Liberty, with a slave for bet• pedestal, and with a chain in her hand, differs so entirely from that lovely vision, that benignant Divinity, to which we, like our fathet·s, have paid homage, that we cannot endure that both should be called |
