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Show 54 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. nobler state than one of slavery, should be held by society in such a state. This position, although it is so prominently set forth by ev~ry advocate of slavery at the South, is almost mvariably overlooked by the Northern ab~liti~n· ists. They talk, and reason, and declmm, mdeed, just as if we had caught a bevy of black angels as they were winging their w·ay to some island of purity and bliss here upon earth, and reduced them from their heavenly state, by the most diabolical cruelties· mid oppressions, to one of degradation, misery, and servitude. They forget that Af1·ica is not yet a paradise, and that Southeru servitude is not quite a hell. They forget-in the heat and haste of their argument they forget- that the institution of slavery is designed by the South not for the enlightened and the free, ·but only for the igno· rant and the debased. They need to be constantly reminded that the institution of slavery is not the mother, but tl1e daughter, of igno· ranee and degradation. It is, indeed, the legitimate offspring of that intellectual and moral debasement which, for so many thousand years, has been accumulating and growing upon the African race. And if the abolitionists at the North will only invent some method by which ARGUMENTS OF ABOLITI >N'ISTS. 55 all this frightful mass of degradation may bo blotted out at once, then will we most cheer. fully consent to "the immediate abolition of slavery." On this point, however, we need not dwell, as we shall have occasion to recur to it again. when we come to consider the grounds and reasons on which the institution of slavery is vindicated. Having argued that the right of slavery, if it exist, implies the right to shoot and murder an enlightened neighbor, with a view to reduce his wife and child1·en to a state of servitude, as well as to crush their intellectual ancl moral nature in order to keep them in such a state, tl1e author adds, "If I err in making these inferences, I err innocently." We have no doubt of the most perfect and entire innocence of the author. But we would remind him that innocence, however perfect or childlike, is not the only quality which a great reformer should possess. § IV. The fourth fallacy of the abolitionist. He i~ often guilty of a petitio principii, in taking it for granted that the institution of •lavery is an injury to the slave, which is the very point in dispute. T)lqs sa~·s Dr. ·wayland: |