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Show 3 ness and crime - if it is tainted with a deadlier pestilence than the pl ague - it is unfortunate for our own moral habits that the facts were not known to our fath ers, before they bound our virtuous New England in a bond of amity and fellowship to all this iniquity and wretchedness . But it may be inquired with anxi ety when this discovery was made, and why are All their faults observed, Set in a note book, conn'd by rote To cast into their teeth- Are we to continue united to all this moral putrefaction notwithstanding its offensiv eness , or shall we cut the cords that bind us, and part in di sgust I A practical morali st is bound to find a remedy for the evils he enumerates, or keep sil ence till he can. We are perhaps to reform them, beginning the glorious work in the spirit of the J e ll'ish Pharisee by thanking God we are not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, at· even as these publicans. Until this reformation is accomplished we must go on together with all these accompaniments of viciousness and c rime. But the slave country is to be a slave country for the present generation. What frantic abolitionist dreams of earlier univ ersal fr eedom I Prayer meetings may be held by the faithful. Women, and men like women may meet in secret conclave and preach about it. Little children may loose their gingerbread and give their cents to purchase trac ts. Foreign renegadoes, whom fanatici sm sends to us and folly encourages, may agitate the community with inflamatory exhortations and specious discourse. The gifted and fair, whom the misplaced hospitality of an abused people flatters into a brief notoriety, may join their fac titious consequence to the throng, and even the splendor of great talents, the reputation of great piety and the influence of a great name may bring all the resources it possesses to remove Slavery from the land, but the day of de-r I* 9 liverance will not dawn upon us till all who now hold slaves and all who reproach them for it, and the slaves themselves who are the present living objects of pity and piety and sympathy and love, shall be together alike the "unsubstantial images of air., In my judgment the time will be protracted by these general accusations. The eflect of them is to produce obduracy in error and resentment for indignily ; to sustain a man in his vices by all motives of self-respect, and rouse his hatred to the officious intruder who dares, with words of charity on his lips, to violate the rights of personal responsibility and assume the offices of inquisitor and judge. But general accusations are never true. It is in vain to make nice distinctions which are appreciated only by sciJOiars. The national character, real or imputed, is felt to attach to every individual whether he himself be or be not a panaker of the national vice. Yet as many men in the worst districts of a civilized community are free from the iniquity which is ascribed to the whole, general accusation becomes personal injustice, and injustice in the guise of morality unites upon itself all the odium which the world vents upon ano11;ance and hypocricy. Besides the extreme offensiveness of national reflections, there is a passage of such point and particularity that scarcely a husband or father in the slave country can fail to consider it a personal affront. "Early licentiousness is fruitful of crime in mature life. How far the obligation to conjugal fidelity, the sacredness of domestic ties, will be revered amid such habits, such temptations, such facilities to vice, as are involved in slaver~, needs no exposition. So terrible is the connexion of crimes! They, who mvade the domestic rights of others, suffer in their own homes. The household of the slave may be broken up arbitrarily by the master; but he finds his revenge, if revenge he asks, in the bligbt which the master's unfl1ithfulness sheds over his own domestic joys. A slave-country reeks with Jicen· tiousness. It is tainted with a deadlier pestilence than the plague., It is among the most fruitful and pathetic subjects of Dr. C.'s complaint that there is nothing sacred in the l10me of the slave; that the master enters it with impunity and dis- 2 |
