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Show 60 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. of servitude. But does it follow that "if this he true, it is true universally.~.. Because one man who cannot govern himself may he governed by another, does it follow that every man should he governed by others? Docs it follow that the one w,ho has acquired and maintained the most perfect self-government, should be subjected to the control of him who is wholly incompetent to control himself? Yes, certainly, if the reasoning of Dr. Wayland he true; hut, according to every sound principle of political ethics, the answer is, emphatically, No! There is a di1lerence ])etween a Hottentot and a Newton. The first should no more he condemned to astronomical calculations and discoveries, than the last should be required to follow a plough. Such differences, however, are overlooked by much of the reasoning of the abolitionist. In regard to the question of fact, whether a man is really a man and not a mere thing, he is profoundly versed. He can discourse most eloquently upon this subject: he can prove, by most irrefragable arguments, that a Hottentot is a man as well as a Newton. But as to the differences among men, such nice distinctions are beneath his philosophy ! It is true that one may be sunk so low in the scale AHGUMENTt OF AllOLITIONISTS. 61 of being that civil freedom would be a curse to him; yet, whether this be so or not, is a question of fact which his philosophy does not stoop to decide. He merely wishes to know what rights A can possibly have, either by the law of God or man, which do not equally belong to B? And if A would feel it an injury to be placed under the control of B, then "there is no doubt" that it is equally wrong to place B under the control of A? In plain English, if it would be injurious and wrong to subject aN e1vton to the will of a IIottentot, then it would be equally injurious and wrong to subject a IIottentot to the will of a Newton! Such is the inevitable consequence of his very profound political principles! Nay, such is the identical consequence which he draws from his own principles! If questions of fact are not within the province of the moral philosopher, then the moral philosopher has no business with the science of political ethics. This is not a pw-e, it is a mixed science. Facts can no more be over ·looked by the political architect, than magnitude can be disregarded by the mathematician. The man, the political dreamer, who pays no attention to them, may be fit, for aught we know, to frame a government out of moonshine 6 |