OCR Text |
Show 28 forced assistance. It is doubtful whether in the free States there is any one article of property which enters so extensively and minutely into all the ramifications of society. Our society is more divided into portions and detachments, having a general connexion to be sure, but not that intimate and close union which binds the inhabitants to the common interests of slavery. \Vhen our woollen interest was threatened, the manufacturers of cotton thought they could get along pretty well. \Vhen our navigation interest wa; in danger, the commerce of the country most closely allied to it did not feel the apprehension of immediate dissolution. lf at this moment any one or two of our most productive occupations were closed by a war or a tarilr that should ruin them, the rest might go on with only their proportional share in the common calamity. But Sbvery wherever it exists is the sensorium of the conntry. It is the one nerve which runs through the whole political body and connects every part of it with the seat of life. Now before Slavery can cease in the United States this vast property must be annihilated. It must be surrendered by consent of its owners or wrested from them by force of war. An overwhelming and well appointed army not less numerous than Napoleon led into Russia, might in process of time over-run the country and making desolation call it peace. Such an army wonld give the abolitionist some reason to hope that Slavery might be destroyed. He might expect in the lust of conquest to find the slave and his master in one common grave. Force can do any thing. But to expect that the Southern slave holders will voluntarily relinquish their possession and title to the property which they claim in their slaves, is a stretch of credulity that has as yet no parallel in the history of human delusion. or the tenacity with whic.h mankind cling to the possession of property, we are not to judge by estimating its intrinsic title to their regard, but by practice, experience and a knowledge of human wants, passions and desires. He is a poor I I 29 teacber who in estimating the operation of motives and the causes of action takes mankind as he would have them and not as they are. lie is a false gu ide in any exped ition for the benefit of society, who takes the road he should prefer without first ascertaining if it be practicable. Two hundrPd and fifty millions of dollars must be sacrificed by about four millions of people. Let us examine this matter by bringing it home to omselves. Taking round numbers it would be equivalent to a tax of four millions five hundred thousand dollars on the City of Boston- or upwards of thirty-six millions of dollars for the State, and more than one hundred millions of dollars for the six New England States. I have all rea>onable faith in the generosity, the spirit and the nobleness of my fellow-citizens, but if it were asked of them to take this immense amount and pour it as a votive gift into the ocean, or gather it and burn it on their lofty hills as a beacon fire in hon01· of freedom and to relieve the Southern slaves from their intolerable bondage, who ventures to believe he would live long enough to see the consummation of so much moral glory ? Or suppose it was to be asked of us to pay only our proportionate share of a general assessment on the United States for the indemnity of the slave holders, would the City of Boston be willing to contribute its amount of one million and three quarters, or the State its quota of seventeen millions and a half? If here then, where there is such an abhorrence of slavery, where there is so much high principle, where so many think it morally wrong, there would be found some difficulty in obtaining a contribution large enough to pmchase ease to our own consciences, by reli ev ing the country of this awful iniquity, what may be expected in the slave districts, where there is no such feeling, and of who>e freemen we ask not to contribute merely, but to take upon themselves the whole load- to reduce themselves to want- their families to beggary and their countrv to ruin. But the loss of ;he slave as property, immense as it is, |