13 greediness;” for we have already seen that this five-fold enormity is inspired by the single idea of compelling men to work without wages. This spirit must naturally appear in the Slave- master. But the eloquent Christian Saint did not disclose the whole truth. Slavery is founded on violence, as we have already too clearly seen; of course it can be sustained only by kindred violence, sometimes against the defenceless slave, sometimes against the freeman whose indignation is aroused at the outrage. It is founded on brutal and vulgar pretensions, as we have already too clearly seen ; of course it can be sustained only by kindred brutality and vulgarity. The denial of all rights in the slave can be sustained only by a disregard of other rights, common to the whole community, whether of the person, ofthe press, or of speech. Where this exists there can be but one supreme law, to which all other laws, legislative or social, are subordinate, and this is the pretended law of Slavery. All these things must be manifest in Slave-masters, and yet, unconscious of their true condition, they make boasts which reveal still further the unhappy influence. Barbarous standards of conduct are unblush- ingly avowed. The swagger of a bully is called chivalry; a swiftness to quarrel is called courage ; the bludgeon is adopted as the substitute for argument; and assassination is lifted to be one of the Fine Arts. Long ago it was fixed certain that the day which made man a slave G took half his worth away ”—words from the ancient harp of Homer, resounding through long generations. Nothing here is said of the human being at the other end of the chain. To aver that on this same day all his worth is taken away might seem inconsistent with exceptions which we gladly recognise; but alas 1 it is too clear, both from reason and from evidence, that, bad as Slavery is for the Slave, it is worse for the Master. In making this exposure I am fortified, at the outset, by two classes of authorities, whose testimony it will be difficult to question; the first is American, and founded on personal experience; the second is philosophical, and founded on everlasting truth. First, American Authority; and here I adduce words often quoted, which dropped from the lips of Slave-masters in those better days when, seeing the wrong of Slavery, they escaped from its injurious influence. Of these, none expressed themselves with more vigor than Colonel Mason, a Slave-master from Virginia, in debate on the adoption of the National Constitution. These are his words: “ Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the emigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. .They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Evert Master ok Slaves is bobn a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country.” Thus, with a few touches, does this Slave- master portray his class, putting them in that hateful list, which, according to every principle of liberty, must be resisted so long as we obey God. And this same testimony also found expression from the fiery soul of Jefferson. Here are some of his words : “ There must be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced uy the existence of Slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other; our children see this, and learn to imitate it * * * The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of theo'-e part, and the amor patrice of the other! * * * With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed ” Next comes the Philosophic Authority ; and here the language which I quote may be less familiar, but it is hardly less commanding. Among names of such weight, I shall not discriminate, but shall simply follow the order of time in which they appeared. First is John Locke, the great author of the English System of Intellectual Philosophy, who, though once unhappily conceding indulgence to American Slavery, in another place describes it, in words which every Slave-master should know, as— “The state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and his captive. * * * So opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that ’tis hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it)’ Then comes Adam Smith, the founder of the science of Political Economy, who, in his work on Morals, thus utters himself: “ There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too of en scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exarted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected these nations of heroes to the refuse of gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them, to the contempt of the vanquished.”—Theory of hitoral Sentiments, Part V, chapter 2 This judgment, pronounced just a century ago, was repelled by the Slave-masters of Virginia, in a feeble publication which attests at least their own consciousness that they were the criminals arraigned by the distinguished philosopher. This was soon followed by the testimony of the great English moralist, Dr. Johnson, who, in a letter to a friendj thus shows his opinion of Slave-masters : “To omit for a year, or fora day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any purposes, that terminate on this side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the world has had an example, except in the practice of the planters cf America, a race of mortals whom, 1 suppose, no other man wishes to resemble.”—Letter to 'William Drummond, 13th August, 17£6. (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, by Croker ) With such authorities, American and Philosophic, I need not hesitate in this ungracious- task ; but Truth, which is mightier than Mason and Jefferson, than John Locke, Adam Smith, and Samuel Johnson, marshals the evidence in unbroken succession. Proceeding with this argument, which broadens as we advance, we shall see Slave-masters
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