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Show 20 NOTES ON it,-thcrcforc, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fa.ncy. 'Vhatcvcr is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in· every pudJic, that I may walk over dryshod. Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient~ This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our jslave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything \ )"Jsc of it." (Vol. ii. p. 11.) Well, if this be so, then I have two observations to make ; first, that slavery is not confined to the Southern States, but is coextensive with Christendom, not to say Heathendom; and second, that if this be "about \Ybat slavery is," then it is not so very bad, after all. No doubt it strikes at the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence; but then, it is because that paragraph strikes at common sense, a.nd common obscrvavation; unless, indeed, it be considered a rhetorical flourish; in either of which cases, it is sadly out of place, the American RcYolution needing no such false philosophy to justify it. Men arc not born free and equal in any practical sense of the terms; neither lmve they any such inalienable rights as are here asserted. No man has an inalienable right to life, or to liberty, (for men ma.y, and often do, forfeit them both,) or even to the pursuit of happiness, except so f3.r as it is involved in the pursuit of virtue. No. Man's inalienable rights, (for inalienable r>ghts he bas,) arc of an altogether different class; as, for instance: Every man has an inalienable right to love the Lord, his God, with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and his UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. 21 neighbour as himself. Every man has an inalienable right to do justly, Jove mercy, and walk humbly with his God. Every man has an inalienable right to keep himself unspotted from the world. Every man has an inalienable right to love his enemies, to bless them that curse him, to do good to them that hate him, and to pray for them that despitefully use him and per$ecute him. These, and such as these, areman'sinalienable rights, and if every man would assert them, by acting upon them, the world would be a great deal better than it is. These, and such as these, I say, are man's inalienable rights; if there is any inalienable right of another class, it is that so ably set forth by Carlyle,-the right of every man to be compelled to do·what he is fit for, if he won't do it voluntarily; and this brings us back to Quashy, who is doing here in the United Statee, just what Quashy is fit forQuashy himself being judge. But on this point, Aunt Chloe shall speak for us : "Yer mind dat ar great chicken pie I made when we guv de dinner to General Knox 1 I and Missis, we come pretty near quarreling about dat ar crust. What does get into ladies sometimes, I don't know; but, sometimes, when a body bas de heaviest kind o' 'sponsibility on 'ern, as ye may say, and is all kinder 'seris' and taken up, dey t.kcs dat ar time to be hangin' round and kinder interferin'! Now, Missis, she wanted me to do dis way, and she wanted me to do dat .way; and, finalJy, I got kinder sarcy, and, says I, "Now, :Misses, do jist look at dem beautiful white hands o' yourn, with long fingers, and all a sparkling with rings, like my white lilies when de dow's on 'em; and look at my grea.t black stumpin hands. Now, don't ye think dat de Lord must have meant rne to make de pie-crust, and you to stay in de parlour 1 Dar! I was jist so sarcy, Mas'r George." (Vol. i. p. 45.) And if Auguste St. Clare, in the passage before us, bad been "jist so" sensible, he would have given us a little less rhetoric, and a good deal more logic. |