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Show 29G LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. kidnapping and man-selling, coffies and slavetraders, or in which any class shall he exempt from misfortunes which appear to him to be incidental to humanity." Thus, according to this very sagacious, honest, consistent writer, it matters little what you do with the native African : he has no moral sense; he feels no wrong; he suffers only what he would inflict. But when yon come to deal with the American slave, or, as this writer calls him, "the civilized Virginian," it is quite another thing! IIis dispositions have been softened, his intellect sharpened, and his sensibilities roused to a new life, by society and by Christianity! And yet, according to this very writer, this highly civilized Virginian is the man who, by American slavery, has been degraded from the native African into a brute! We dismiss his lawless savage, and his equally lawless pen, from our further consideration. We proceed, in like manner, to condemn Dr. Channing out of his own month. He has I"epeatedly asserted that slavery among us degrades its subjects into brutes. Now hear him on the other side of this question "The European race," says he, "have manifested more courage, enterprise, invention; but ARGUMENT FROM TilE PUBLIC GOOD. 297 in the dispositions which Cln·istianity particularly honors, how inferior are they to the Afncan! When I cast my eyes over our Southern region,-the land of bowie-knives, lynch-law, and duels, of 'chivalry,' 'honor,' and revenge; and when I consider that Christianity is declared to be a spirit of charity, 'which seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinkcth no evil, and endurcth all things,' aud is also declared to be 'the wisdom from above, which is 'first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits;' can I hesitate in deciding to which of the races in that land Christianity is most adapted, and in which its noblest disciples are most likely to be reared'?''* It was by casting his eyes over "our Southern region" that Dr. Channing concluded "that we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family." If he had cast them over the appallingly dark region of Africa, be would have been compelled, in spite of the wonderworking power of his imagination, to pronounce it one of the very worst and most degraded races upon earth. If, a3 he imagines, * Dr. Channing's Works, vol. vi. p. 50, 5l. |