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Show 78 contact with it; we grow familiar with it; still more, we thrive by it; and the next step is easy, to consent to the sacrifice of human beings, by whom we prosper. The dead know not their want of life, and so a people, whose moral sentiments are palsied by the interweaving of all their intereRts with a system of oppression, become degraded without suspecting it. In consequence of this connection with slave countries, the Idea of Human Rights, that great idea of our age, and on which we profess to build our institutions, is darkened, weakened among us, so as to be to many little more than a sound. A country of licensed, legalized wrongs, is not the atmosphere in which the sentiment of reverence for these rights can exist in full power. In such a community, there may be a respect for the arbitrary rights, which law creates and may destroy, and a respect for historical rights, which rest on usage. But the fundamental rights which inhere in man as man, and which lie at the foundation of a just, equitable, beneficent, noble polity, must be imperfectly comprehended. This depression of moral sentiment in a people is an evil, the extent of which is not easily apprehended. It affects and degrades every relation of life. Men, in whose sight human nature is stripped of all its rights and dignity, cannot love or honor any who possess it, as they ought. In offering these remarks I do not forget what I rejoice to know, that there is 79 much moral feeling among us in regard to slavery. But still there is a strong tendency to indifference, and to something wo•·se ; and on this account we owe it to our own moral health, and to the moral life of society, to express plainly and strongly our moral abhorrence of this institution. This duty is rendered more urgent by the depraving tendency of our political connections and agitations. It has been said much too sweepingly, but with some approximation to truth, that in this country we have hosts of politicians, but no statesmen ; meaning, by the latter term, men of comprehensive, far-reaching views, who study the permanent good of the community, and hold fast under all changes to the great principles on which its salvation rests. The generality of our public men are mere politicians, purblind to the future, fevered by the present, merging patriotism in party spirit, intent on carrying a vote or election, no matter what means they use or what precedents they establish, and holding themselves absolved from a strict morality in public affairs. A principal object of political tactics is to conciliate and gain over to one or another side the most important interests of the country; and of consequence the slave interest is propitiated with no small care. No party can afford to lose the South. The master's vote is too precious to be hazarded by sympathy with the slaves. Ac- |