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Show George B. Cheever. from such examples that we can possibly gain, at the same time that all the light from all the centuries can never show any other way of redemption from sin than by repentance of it, nor any national salvation but that of righteou ness and ju ~tice. Nations, as well as indi,·idual , have a time when they can repent and a time in which they cannot. They may pass the line of destiny where there is no more space of repentance, though it be sought carefully with tears. Aristotle somewhere in his works has said that we are under a great debt of gratitude for the mistakes of our predecessOI ·~, and he might luwe added, for the example of their iniquities, provided we will take them as a warning, and lay the lesson to heart. But how much greater, and in a true and literal sense, without any sarcasm or double meaninror' is our debt of gratitude to those who have set us the example of great and heroic disinterestedness, to individuals who by a life, or a single action out of the bosom of a life, have set a light in the firmament of our practical et hies like the North Star, a light of benevolence and glory; or to nations more rarely than to individuals; and, indeed, how rare, how almost solitary, is the example of true national grcatne s, disinterestedness, high moral and religious principle; fuithfulne~ to Freedom as a principle, and not merely as an interc t, faithfulness to that which is another man's, another l'acc's, and not merely to that which i::> our own ! But if we have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? This principle of ju tice and of retribution, as certainly as God is true, he will act upon with us, as a people, in reference to the race of strangers he has thrown upon onr care. The word stranger is, in God's law, a sacred word. The Ilcbrews were strangers in the land of Egypt; we know the principles of responsibility, duty, benevolence, that God has illustrated by them. A race of strangers under our power, thrown upon our protection; a race whom we can easily oppress, if we choose, but whom we are bound to bless to raise them to a ' George B. Cheever. 143 participation in our own privileges, to love them as we love ourselves, are a most sacr ed responsibility and tru t, a mighty, peremptory, decisive trial of our character. Love ye the stranger, for yc were ~trangers in the land of Egypt. Cursed be he that pervertcth the judgment of the stranger! Ye sl1all have one manner of law, a. well for the stranger as for the native of your own race. The laws of God are plain; the principles of justice and benevolence are plain ; we admit them in regard to Germans, French, Italians, Swiss, Irish, English; all, indeed, on earth, whom we can use for votes; all, save only the Africans, the great race of strangers whom ·we have kidnapped and compelled hither, and in justice towards whom God calls upon us therefore with a louder call than that of mere benevolence. For we have made them the subjects of a vaster and more cruel oppression than any civilized nation under heaven ever practised towards any people; and according to the principle of human nature,- that whomsoever a man injures, ldm he thenceforth hates,- we hate them with an intcn ~ ity proportioned to the injury we have done them; we make them the standing object of cruelty and contempt, and use them as a foil for our own greatness. Then ob ervc the working of prejudice ; we have no hatred to them, or to their color, as slaves, as chattels; but we abhor them and their color as freemen, and pronounce them a nuisance. As entitled to a share in our privileges, our citizenship, our rights, the rights of humanity, we hate them, their color, and their race, with a hatred that, without any thing of the dignity or nobleness of enmity, is compounded out of the meanest elements of fraud, fear, and selfishness. This is an inevitable consequence of the vast accumulating injuries we have heaped upon them. Now, here they are; but they have grown at length beyond the possibility of management as a purely selfish speculation, as an article of profit, and we know not what to do wi th them. They puzzle us, they perplex us, they terrify us. 'Ve are like murderers, ( ai when the Dred Scott decision was |
