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Show 302 DESI'OTISI\f mitments to be at the same time obliterat.ed,-there is nothing whatever in their moral or intellectual constitution which would prevent them from exactly ami most conscientiously filling up each other's present places. To the common Pyc, the moon appears, accordihO' to the relative position of the object and the obscrv~r, a disc of ligllt, or ,an absolute non-exi~tence-. It is only to the philosopher that the new moon and the full moon are the same thing. But in the pre~ent age, we are all growing to be philosophers, and difiCrence of position cannot long stand out against coincidence of intellect and sentim~nt. The abolition of slavf'ry is the great work of t.he generation now in being. What thoughtful man doubts it? Mr. Calhoun certainly did not. Our Revolutionary Fathers did what they could. Peace to their ashes and honor to their memory, spite of the diatribes of those content with nothing short of every thing! The abolition of slavery in the Northern States, wretchedly and inefficiently as that matter was managed; its exclusion from the great North West; and the abolition of the African slave-trade, were things great in them· ~:Selves, and in their consequences mighty. Who can doubt that, if slavery had not been abolished in Massachusetts, some wealthy Boston supporters of the Jaw of 1850 would be, at this moment, exhibiting their attachment to the Union by filling their houses, perhaps their cotton factories, with slaves purchased in the South? Who can doubt that, if the African slave-trade had not been abolished as seasonablv as it was, negroc8, freshly imported from Africa, wo~ld be now selling in the New Orleans market for a hundred dollars a head? And what hope would there be for liberty, were the fertile states of the North West now cultivated, us, but for the ordinance of 1787, they would have been, by servile hands, not servile by con· sent, but servile by compulsion? 'l'he abolition of slavery was desired, for their own •tales, by all the more intelligent. citizens of Maryland and Virginia, even more ardently than any where IN AMERICA. 303 at the North; but they had neither the couraO'e nor the means to overcome the mountains of i("tn~rance prejudice, and. interest which rose up bcfgre them: _fhey were obl1ged to content themselves with rcpeatmg~, after L~rd Bac?n, "Time is tlw greatest innovator, and w1th hop1ng from their children what they could not accomplish themselves. But the result has only served to confirm the philosophy of Lord Bacon, whose mention <:>f Tune as the great innovator is so ge1~erally q uot.ed ~~a sense totally cliflerent from that in wh1~h. he .utter~d Jt. " Surely," he says, "every new medJC~ne IS an mnovation; and he that refus.es new rem:d1es must expect_new. evils; for Time is lhe greatest wnovator; and 1f T11ne alter all things to the worse, and wisdom and council alter them not to the better, WHAT SIIAJ~I~ DE THE END?" A pregnant question truly. What shall be the end? -a questio~ th.e answer to ~vl~ich must make a part of An Inqmry mto the Feas1b1lity, Expediency, and Necess1ty of the Abolition of Slavery in the United States of America, with Outlines of a Practical Plan for its Accomplishment-a second treatise to which the present one is intended as an introduction. |
