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Show 36 offend our moral sense, much more than the " owner" stretched on his ottoman or sofa. What oughtto astonish us is the limitation, not the existence of the evil. It is to be desi1·ed, that those among us, who groan over Emancipation, because the staples of the islands are diminished, should be made to wear for a few months the yoke of slavery, so as to judge experimentally whether freedom is worth or _not a f~w hogsheads of sugar. If knowing what th1s yoke 1s, they are willing that others should bear it, they deserve themselves above all others to be crushed by it. Slavery is the greatest of wrongs, the most intolerable of all the forms of oppression. We of this country thought, that to be robbed of political liberty was an injury not to be endured; and, as a people, were ready to shed our blood like water to avert it. But political liberty is of no worth compared with personal; and slavery robs men of the latter. Under the despotisms of modern Europe, the people, though deprived of political freedom, enjoy codes of Ia ws constructed with great care, the fruits of the wisdom of ages, which recognize the sacredness of the rights of person and property, and under which those rights are essentially secure. A subject of these despotisms may still be a man, may better his condition, may enrich his intellect, may fill the earth with his fame. He enjoys essentially 37 personal freedom, and through this accomplishes the great ends of his being. To be stripped of this blessing, to be owned by a fellow creature, to hold our limbs and faculties as another's property, to be subject every moment to another's will, to stand in awe of another's lash, to have our whole energies chained to never varying tasks for another's luxury, to hold wife and children at another's pleasure,what wrong can be compared with this ? This is such an insult on human nature, such an impiety towards the common Father, that the whole earth should send up one cry of reprobation against it; and yet we are told, this outrage must continue, lest the market of the civilized world should be deprived of some hogsheads of sugar. It is hard to weigh human rights against each other; they are all sacred and invaluable. But there is no one which nature, instinct, makes so dear to us as the right of action, of free motion : the right of exerting, and by exertion enlarging our faculties of body and mind; the right of forming plans, of directing our powers according to our convictions of interest and duty; the right of putting forth our energies from a spring in our own breasts. Selfmotion, this is what our nature hungers and thirsts for as its true element and life. In truth, every thing that lives, the bird, the insect, craves and delights in freedom of action ; and much more must 4 |