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Show 228 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. or the explanation which is gi\·en of it by abolitionists. If the question were, whether slavery should be introduced among us, or into any non-slavebolding State, then such facts and explanations would be worthy of our notice. Then such an appeal to experience would be relevant to the point in dispute. But such is not the question. We are not called upon to decide whether slavery shall be established in our midst or not. This question has been decided for us. Slavery-as everybody knowswas forced upon the colonies by the arbitrary and despotic rule of Great Britain, and that, too, against the earnest remonstrances of our ancestors. The thing has been done. The past is beyond our control. It is fixed and unalterable. The only inquiry which remains for us now is, whether the slavery which was thus forced upon our ancestors shall be continued, or whether it shall be abolished? The question is not what Virginia, or Kentucky, or any other slave State, rnight have been, but what they would be in case slavery were abolished. If abolitionistB would speak to the point, then let them show us some country in which slavery has been abolished, and we will abide by the experiment. F0rtunatcly for us,. we need not look far for ARGUMENT FROM TilE PUDLIC GOOD. 220 such an experiment ;-an C)l:pcriment which has been made, not upon mere chattels or brutes, but upon the social aud moral well-being of more than a million of human beings. We refer, of course, to the emancipation of the slaves in the British Colonies. This work, as every one knows, was the great vaunted achievement of British abolitionists. IIere, then, we may see their philosophy-if philosophy it may be called-" teaching by example." IIere we may see and taste the fruits of abolitionism, ere we conclude to grow them upon our own soil. § II. Emancipation in tlte British Colonies. It is scarcely in the power of human language to describe the enthusiastic delight with which the abolitionists, both in England and in America, were inspired by the spectacle of West India Emancipation. We might easily adduce a hundred illustrations of the almost frantic joy with which it intmdcated their brains. We shall, however, for the sake of brevity, confine our attention to a single example,- which will, at the same time, serve to show, not only how wild the abolitionist himself was, but also bow indignant be became that others were not equally disposed to part 20 |