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it for granted, that because christianity recognizes such a state of society, and enforces the mutual duties arising therefrom, it sanctions and approves slavery itself. This is a great and palpable error. The New Testament contains no express prohibition of polygamy. Is polygamy therefore consistent with christianity? Can the Turk carry the New Testament into his harem, and read it, and become a Christian, and still be a polygamist? Can that book become through Turkey the family book; can the spirit of that book pervade the nation; can the institutions of christianity become the institutions of the country; can the influence of christianity become predominant and triumphant; and polygamy not be abolished by public opinion and by law? So in regard to despotism. The New Testament acknowledged the despotism of Nero, as an established and legitimate government; but did it therefore give its approbation to the principles on which that government was foundded, or to the mode in which it was administered? Is it possible for the religion of the New Testament to flourish under a despotic government, without speedily subverting that government, by reforming the spirit and changing entirely the structure of society? In the same way christianity is always the antagonist principle of slavery on the small scale. It says indeed to him who is "under the yoke," "Art thou called being a slave, care not for it:" yet it regards slavery as an evil; for it adds, "But if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." It acknowledges the legal rights of the master; but it whispers in his ear, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them;" it bids him remember that the meanest of his slaves is his brother, and that he himself has a master in heaven. It is a mighty leveler; it makes men feel that they are all alike and equal, made of one blood, sustaining the same relations to God who respecteth not the persons of princes, and hurrying to the same eternity of retribution. Its genius is the genius of universal emancipation. It proclaims liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound. Its universal triumph will be the triumph of liberty over all the world. Then the sword of the oppressor, and the fetters of the oppressed shall be broken together. No throne of a despot shall insult the benignant heavens; no footstep of a slave shall pollute

the renovated earth.

The greatness of the evil of slavery in this country, our limits will not permit us to describe in detail; we can only sketch a hasty outline. There are in this land of freedom and humanity and christian light, not less than two millions of slaves; two millions of beings, men in shape, and with immortal souls like men, but whom the law regards only as property; who are bought and sold in the market place like cattle; whose emancipation is in most places obstructed by legal barriers; and whose instruction even in the elements of know

ledge is almost everywhere forbidden by laws, professing to be grounded on dire necessity. There is nothing worse than this in Austria; we had almost said, in Turkey. To think of such a mass of ignorance and degradation, is enough to overwhelm with shame every high minded patriot. Every one of these two millions of slaves, occupies the place which a freeman ought to occupy. Their labor is employed to cultivate the soil of all the fairest, and in natural advantages, the richest portion of this country; and as if the earth were cursed for their sake, the soil refuses to yield its increase. How much land in certain districts of our country, once highly productive, is "worn out?" What has worn it out? The system under which it has been cultivated. It has been trampled. into barrenness under the feet of slaves. Indolence, unthriftiness, and other kindred vices, necessarily characterise such a population. The slave, working for another, and eating bread which is not his own, works as little as he can, and consumes like a prodigal. The freeman working for himself, and living at his own expense, works as much as he can, and consumes with a careful economy. On this ground the defenders of slavery rest one of their favorite arguments; namely, that the condition of the slave as an animal is superior to that of a free laborer.* Consequently a distressing commercial embarrassment is almost everywhere the constant attendant of the evil; so constant that this cause must, in the course of perhaps another half century, make slavery a burden on the slaveridden planter, too grievous to be borne any longer. The state of society where such a system prevails, to say nothing of the moral habits natural to the master and the slave-is almost necessarily inconsistent with the establishment of christian institutions. Where the face of the country is divided into small farms, and interspersed with villages, and where the population is of one sort, there the people can provide themselves with common schools, there they can build for themselves churches within an hour's distance of every man's door. Who expects to see such a state of things where the soil is divided into large plantations, on each of which the stately dwelling of the proprietor is surrounded only by the huts of degraded beings whom it is his settled policy to keep in ignorance? These two millions of slaves are the natural enemies of the country; this we can affirm on the authority of their masters. To them, more strikingly than to those who rule over them, these truths are " self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit

*Southern Review, No.I.p.233. Also a refutation of the calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States, etc. Charleston, 1822: pp. 48–60. t S. Rev. No. VIII. pp 359, 360. Refutation of calumnies, etc. pp. 82, 86.

of happiness." "Let it never be forgotten," says a southern defender of slavery, "that our negroes are truly the jacobins of the country; that they are the anarchists and the domestic enemy, the common enemy of civilized society, and the barbarians who would, if they could, become the destroyers of our race."

But where lies the remedy for this evil? In legislation? Who is to legislate the substitution of free labor for slave labor on the plantations of the southern states? Not Congress; nor the legislatures of the free states, singly or combined; but only the legislatures of those states in which this vicious constitution of society is established. In other words, the progressive emancipation of these slaves is, under God, only in the hands of their masters. And before any thing can be done, those masters must be made to see that the thing is both desirable and practicable. Public opinion must be rectified and awakened, and that in the slave-holding states. The time is near at hand when those states will no longer be able to endure the expense of slavery. Already they feel that something is crushing them; but they know not what it is. The efforts of the Colonization Society are contributing much to the formation of a correct and decided public opinion.

1. The Society offers to many individuals a long wished-for optunity to emancipate their slaves. The embarrassment which many a philanthropic proprietor has felt in relation to his slaves, has been but little known at the north, and has had but little sympathy. He finds himself the lord of perhaps a hundred human beings; and is anxious to do them all the good in his power. He would emancipate them; but if he does, their prospect of happiness can hardly be said to be improved by the change. Some half a dozen perhaps, in the hundred, become industrious and useful members of society; and the rest are mere vagabonds, idle, wicked, and miserable.. Shall he retain them as his slaves, and make them in that condition, as happy as he can? But in the reverses of business, these slaves of his may be sold by the sheriff to pay his debts; and, certainly in the progress of time, death will take him away; and then who is to be their master? This is the dilemma in which many a benevolent man has found himself. The Colonization Society has provided for those slaves a place of refuge; and it wants only the means, to remove the difficulty in all such cases of conscience. There are already in Liberia, hundreds of citizens, once slaves, who have been made free in just this way. At the beginning of the present year, application had been made to the managers in behalf of six hundred slaves, whose masters were willing and desirous to emancipate them, if the society would only carry them to Africa. There is good reason to believe, that in the State of North Carolina alone, two thousand slaves might shortly obtain their liberty on the same terms. Now push the operations

of this society; give them the means of carrying on their blessed work; build up their little colony, till every master who desires to bestow freedom on his slave shall be thus enabled to do it; and what will be the result? What will be the effect on public opinion? And how long will it be, ere public opinion at the south, will begin to demonstrate itself, in discussions of the impolicy of slavery, and in legislative measures for relieving the body politic from so deadly an evil?

2. Discussion has already commenced among slave holders. The Colonization Society has been the occasion of much inquiry in regard to slavery. The evils and essential vices of the system are to a very great extent most unequivocally acknowledged, and are continually coming to be better understood. The enemies of the society, are the fierce and uncompromising friends of slavery; and their opposition, grounded on the belief that the society is in its actual tendency, an anti-slavery institution, is bitter and implacable. Thus the progress of this enterprise has brought out the friends of the existing system, and has exposed the ground on which they stand. The friends of the society, on the other hand, are without exception, we believe, heartily dissatisfied with the slave system; they regard it as necessarily involving the most serious evils, moral, political, and economical; and as a body they are ready to favor any moderate and judicious measures for its removal. This is one step towards the formation of such a public opinion, as shall add another and another to the number of those states in which the constitution of society is truly republican. It tells something for the cause of liberty when slaveholders from Maryland and Virginia stand up to describe, in the strongest language, the evils which slavery has entailed upon the country, and to express their hope that those evils will yet be removed.* It is something, to find, that when the fiery spirits of the still more distant south, give vent to their zeal for slavery, they break their lances not only on the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the 'philanthropists' of New England, but on slaveholders, whose title to the honors of chivalry is as clear as their own. It is more, to see a politician like Mr. Clay, himself the favorite citizen of a slaveholding state, and as such a candidate for the chief magistracy of the nation, coming before the public with such an exposition of the system of slavery, as is contained in the address before the Colonization Society of Kentucky. The public mind is waking at the south. The actual state of intelligence and feeling there, is not to be judged of solely by the inflammatory pamphlets of Thomas Cooper, the harrangues of wordy nullificationists, or the sentiments

* Sce the speeches at the annual meetings of the Society.

offered, inter pocula, by drinkers at a political carousal. There are in all the southern as well as in the northern states, men of sound judgment, sterling principle, and acknowledged weight of character, whose voices are not heard in the noisy arena of political strife, but whose influence is in fact as powerful as it is deep and silent. To such men, when faction raises the cry of disunion, and when popular excitement seems ready to break out in acts of treason, we look for an influence that shall sooth the turbulence of passion, and bring the people to "awaken their senses that they may the better judge." To such men we look for an enlightening, tranquilizing, and reforming influence on the subject of slavery.

3. In another, point this enterprise touches the abolition of slavery. One of the greatest obstacles to the progress of conviction at the south, is the condition of the free blacks. This operates not only to prevent individual acts of emancipation, but still more to make the idea of emancipation unpopular, and to strengthen the common notion, that any improvement in the condition of the slaves is impossible. Every thing therefore which goes to elevate the free people of color in the scale of existence, every thing which wakens in them the spirit of industry and enterprise, every thing which tends to inspire them with the manliness of virtue, every thing which makes them more respectable or more respected, accelerates the arrival of the hour, when the people of those states will be convinced, that at least the substitution of a mitigated system for the system of absolute slavery, is equally desirable and practicable.

We conclude our remarks on this topic as we began. If the reader is not satisfied that the Colonization Society is promoting the abolition of slavery; there are other grounds on which its claims present themselves, and on those grounds independently considered, it imperiously demands the cooperation of every philanthropist, and the prayers of every christian. The prosecution of this enterprise will produce results on the continent of Africa, which, if there were nothing else to be hoped for, would place the Society in the foremost rank among the institutions of this age of philanthropic enterprise.

Africa, for three long centuries, has been ravaged by the slave trade. Notwithstanding all that has been done to suppress that traffic, notwithstanding its formal abolition by all civilized nations, it is carried on at the present hour, with all its atrocities unmitigated. The flags of France, Portugal, Brazil, and Spain, with the connivance of those governments, afford to the slavetrader, in spite of laws and treaties and armed cruisers, a partial protection, of which he avails himself to the utmost. And with what cruelty he carries on his war against human nature, every year affords us illustrations sufficiently horrible.

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