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Show 16 a heart in New England that would not beat high with sympathy for the abused white man ! Is there an arm that would uot reach him a dagger, if it could! Is there a tribunal on earth, or any law of Heaven, that would not excuse - excuse, did 1 say ! -that would not command him to watch for his opportunity, and make himself free ? If a human being is made a slave under color of a la~v which is nothing but the law of force, which is against right, justice, and the will of God, which gives no title and can convey no property in his person, which is criminal and void in its conception and its continuance, all moral and Christian doctrine, all sound reasoning, and that spirit of humanity which makes man superior to a brute, gives him the right of resistance and tells him to use it. But, says Dr. C.-alarmed, unquestionably, at the dangerous precipice to which he was tending- " government, indeed, has ordained Slavery, and to government the individual is in no case to offer resistance.' ' Such a sentiment is fit only for a slave. It is the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance which was scouted from all human creeds, with the same breath that blew away the divine right of kings and the dogmatical pretensions of the clergy. Government is to be resisted by the sacred right of revolution and the inherent and original right of rebellion, in those extreme and dreadful emergencies which carry with them their own justification. If government, when without right and against moral principle and Christian duty, it subjects two millions of human beings to abject Slavery, whom God made free and intends, in his holy will, should continue to be freeif government may not, in such case, be resisted by them, all our sentiments of freedom are wrong- all reverence for our own revolution is folly·- all respect for the liberty we enjoy is no more than idle pretension and senseless extravagance. Does our learned theologian expect to shield himself from animadversion by the use of the term "individual"? It would be a quibble unworthy his character. An individual 17 citizen, in an organized government, appeals for redress to the Jaw. But in the occurrence of such an unsupposable case as that he should be doomed to death or slavery, without trial or justice, his right of resistance revives, which, under common circumstances, is suspended. It may be useless to him, but not the Jess perfect. But the slaves are not to be treated as a case of a single, solitary individual. There are more than two millions of them, and nearly as many as the number of American citizens in 1776. There are three times the number of the whole population of Massachusetts ; and if any government, foreign or domestic, was to doom the free-born anrl gallant sons of our Commonwealth to Slavery, and there was one of them that should tell you that government must not in such case be resisted, he would be fit for the Slavery to which he was destined- aye, truly, to be the slave of slaves. One cannot but be struck with the opposition between the course of our author and the Bible, from which he professes to draw his artillery, as explained by Dr. Wayland, whose most practical and able elements of moral science he quotes, with deserved approbation. If the Bible, says Dr. W., had forbidden the evil of Slavery instead of subverting the principle, if it had proclaimed the unlawfulness of Slavery and taught slaves to resist the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world. Dr. Channing is not contented with subverting the principle. He assumes to forbid the sin. He undertakes to proclaim the unlawfulness of Slavery, and thereby teaches the right of resistance, and as a consequence, does what he can to array that deadly hostility which the WJser teachings of the gospel were intended to prevent. It would be astonishing that, with his intellectual acuteness, he should have disregarded this plain distinction between his own course and his master's, but that we know the power of enthusiasm, like Slavery, " to blind its supporters to the plainest truth." 3 |
