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Show 300 DESPOTISM that no fu ture Gibbon shall bring any si.milar ch~rge against them. Assuming and conscientiOu!;ly ~eilev~ ing, as no doubt all of them who have con:scJcnces do,- though conscience is not commonly regardPd as indi:-;pcmmble to a "cons~rn1_nat? l~wyer,"-th~t slavery is one of "the public JnstJtutiOilS o\ thc1r country," guaranteed an~ ? "d.orsed by the l•e<!eral constituiiou, so far from Jtnl lattng the example_of the Roman lawyers, all their skill and subtlety IS em. ploycd, not in reforming the t.y~anny of dar~er ages, but in twisting new whips and Jorging new Jetter:;, to pefpetuatc that tyranny to the late:;t times, and to difl'nse it over t he whole face of the country. \Vhat I have written on the subject of the legal basi> of slavery, ] have not written with the least expectation of producing any efrect upon lawyers or judges al ready committed to different views; or, indeed, upon any lawyer more than forty years of age. Harvey did not convert a single physician above that age to his view of t.he circulation of the blood ; and as to new views, whether true or false, lawyers and doctors, for obvious rea~ons, are very much a like. At t he present day, however, especially in America, the current of public opinion sets strongly in favor of per::ional freedom ; a nd to attempt., whether by legi::dative or juridical devices, to dam up and slop short any current of public opinion, is a very hazardous/ thing. The experiment may s~cm to succeed for a moment. It may answer ~::~uffi cae nUy well where only a temporary objt'ct. is to be accomplished. 'The ru~bing waters of refreshment and fertility may be stayed. The black anJ sharp rocks may be laid bare, and industrious political tishPrmcn may take much fish 111 the pools. But presently, when least expected, and without a moment's warning, the obstruction gi~es way before the !:\till and silently rising water, wh1ch S\Ve('ps o[r dam, fi.:;hermen, every thing in the way to ineviTable des truction ; a destruction which overwhel m~, also, many innocent dwellers on the river's bank, who, though t hey foresaw and remonstrated, IN AMERICA. 301 had not been able to prevent the di.aster. Such indeed is tbe catastrophe, as inevitable as it is for· midable, with~ which we a re threatened at the present moment. The darn has been buildin(J' this twenty years or more. 'l'hc accumulating waters must and will come down. To discover the means so to guide them that the evil of slavery may be swept away with· out leaving others behind it hardly less deplorable, is a problem to which all men of sense and j)ldgment, whether slave· holders or non-slave-holders, ought. forthwith to apply themselves. It is a question that interests all alike-for, much as we may quarrel among oursf'lves, and loudly as, like Adam and Eve over the tasted apple, we may accuse and berate each other, we are all in t his matter, equally concerned, equally unfortunate, equally guilty. If tlw South has been the boisterous youth who solicited, and eYcn demanded, what the blindness of pa~siou made hil~1 think almost his right, the North has been the weak, willing, prolligat.e maiden, w ho yielded-for money- what she knew to be wrong. W e are a ll, slave-holders and abolitionists, citizens of the same community; nor is it possible for us to denationalize ourselves. Our state lines are fast sinking into little more t han county lines; E'Ven the old state rights Democratic party has adopted the cry of-The Republic one and indivisible! We are all in the same ship, and must sink or swim together. We are slave-holders or abolitionists, not because we differ much either in moral character or intellectual capacity, either in sentiment or opinion, but mainly from differences of social and topographical position. So completely alike, in all fundamental points, are some of our most ardent abolitionist::~ and some of the boldest of our southern defenders of slavery, that if they could, in a nig ht, be made to cha nge place~, the one finding himself in posses~ion of a cotton plantat ion and a hundred slaves, and the other the editor of a northern abolitionist newspaper, with a tolerable prospect of going to Congress on that interest,- and supposing, also, the memory of past com- 26 |