1 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
 1 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY PAPERS OF 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 II 
 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY 
 
 PAPERS OF 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 ii 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YOKK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCII 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
Copyright 1902 by Houghton Mifflin * Company 
 All rights reserved 
 
, Z. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE COURSE OF THE WHIGS PAGE 3 v 
 
 January 11, 1849 
 
 OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN 10 
 
 January 18, 1849 
 
 POLITICS AND THE PULPIT 17 
 
 January 25, 1849 
 
 ETHNOLOGY 25 
 
 February 1, 1849 
 
 MR. CALHOUN S REPORT 33 
 
 February 15, 1849 
 
 THE MORAL MOVEMENT AGAINST SLAVERY 4a 
 
 February 22, 1849 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS AND EMANCIPATION 50 I 
 
 March 1, 1849 
 
 GENERAL TAYLOR 58 
 
 March 15, 1849 
 
 MR. CLAY AS AN ABOLITIONIST SECOND APPEAR 
 ANCE IN FIFTY YEARS 65 
 
 March 22, 1849 
 
C vi n 
 
 SLAVEHOLDING TERRITORIES 74- 
 
 April 19, 1849 
 
 ANTI-SLAVERY CRITICISM UPON MR, CLAY S LETTER 80 
 April 26, 1849 
 
 PUBLIC OPINION 90 
 
 May 10, 1849 
 
 MOBS 98 
 
 June 14, 1849 
 
 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 105 
 
 July 12, 1849 
 
 / FOURTH OF JULY IN CHARLESTON 112 
 
 July 26, 1849 
 
 MODERATION 119 
 
 August 9, 1849 
 
 CRITICISM AND ABUSE 126 
 
 September 20, 1849 
 
 PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE 134 
 
 October 4, 1849 
 
 CANADA 142 
 
 November 1, 1849 
 
 CALIFORNIA 150 
 
 November 29, 1849 
 
 GENERAL BEM S CONVERSION 156 
 
 December 6, 1849 
 
C vii 3 
 
 TURKISH TYRANNY AND AMERICAN 158 
 
 December 13, 1849 
 
 THE SOUTH AS KING LOG 164 
 
 February 21, 1850 
 
 COMPROMISE 171 
 
 March 7, 1850 
 
 MR. WEBSTER S SPEECH 177 
 
 March 21, 1850 
 
 ANOTHER WORD ON MR. WEBSTER S SPEECH 195 
 
 April 4, 1850 
 
 V^xIPSEUDO-CONSERVATISM 197 
 
 November 14, 1850 
 
 All these papers appeared in "The National Anti-Slavery Standard," 
 on the dates given above. 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY PAPERS 
 
THE COURSE O* 1 THE WHIGS 
 
 _L HERE is no need of any speculation as v to the 
 course which the Whigs, as Whigs, will take in re 
 gard to the measures in which the question of slavery 
 is involved. The result of the late presidential v elec- 
 tion defines their position. After the bargain by 
 which they gained the victory, there is no more free 
 agency left them than the Constitution left to the 
 Northern States when the compromises were once 
 assented to. They have placed themselves in a dis 
 graceful dilemma, and have only a choice of treach 
 eries offered them. They must either betray Party 
 or Man. In such a position men are apt to be 
 decided in their course by the nearness and ap- 
 preciability of the retribution which is to follow, or 
 by the chances of tangible reward. If the Whigs 
 act up to their Northern professions, the immediate 
 disruption of the party will be the sure result. An 
 opposition may combine a great many discordant 
 political elements and various shades of opinion, but 
 a triumphant party can only reap the fruits of vic 
 tory by compactness and the sacrifice of individual 
 interests to the imperative necessity of union. 
 
C 4 ] 
 
 Some moralists have asserted that men are to be 
 judged rather by their intentions and professions 
 than by their deeds. No doubt many Northern 
 Whig politicians during the late campaign believed 
 themselves to be sincere haters of slavery. It was 
 pleasant to utter humane and generous sentiments, 
 especially as the people seemed to like them and the 
 thing could be done upon credit. As long ai votes 
 could be purchased by mere promises to pay)) the 
 signing of a name gave very little trouble. Warmed 
 by the enthusiasm of the occasion, they were willing 
 to give notes to any amount. 
 
 But the day for payment of all promises arrives 
 sooner or later. Even those which ardent and in 
 spired youth makes in solitude and silence, manhood 
 will publicly demand the fulfilment of, and the 
 pleading of infancy infects all the rest of life with 
 a suspicion as well as a self-consciousness of insol 
 vency. The Whig notes, however, had too short a 
 time to run. They must be taken up within a fear 
 fully limited period. If there were a Notary Public 
 to witness their protest for non-payment, his fees 
 would amount to a handsome fortune. Payment 
 might be avoided by pleading infancy, duress, or an 
 immoral consideration, but we rather think that the 
 more compendious method of bankruptcy will be 
 adopted. The capital of the old firm will somehow 
 
I 5 3 
 
 be juggled into the hands of the new concern of 
 Taylor & Company, which will deny any legal or 
 moral accountability to the creditors. 
 
 We think that the Whig party has overreached 
 itself. It has gained a momentary advantage at the 
 cost of its existence. As far as party action is con 
 cerned, it has done its best to strike a deadly blow, 
 not only at the cause of humanity, but at every 
 kind of principle. It has been hypocritical and per 
 fidious in its inhumanity. But the mask is slipping 
 aside more and more from the pro-slavery face, or 
 rather it is being discovered that its real face was 
 turned southward, while an anti-slavery vizard on 
 the back of the head was made to answer for the 
 North. Already are the directors of the party be 
 ginning to stone their prophets, men like Palfrey 
 and Giddings, whom they have hitherto put promi 
 nently forward as lures for Northern and Western 
 anti-slavery aid. 
 
 All through the last campaign the Whig presses 
 were finding fault with Mr. Van Buren for not being 
 anti-slavery enough. We have no controversy with 
 them on that score, though the requirements of a 
 party which could be satisfied with the owner of a 
 hundred slaves could not be very great. But these 
 zealots, these out and out abolitionists (for the 
 nonce), had their doubts whether Mr. Van Buren 
 
C 6 3 
 
 were in favor of abolishing slavery in the District 
 of Columbia. His own assertion was not enough to 
 satisfy them. But there is no variability of tempera 
 ture so great and no changes of temperature so sud 
 den as those indicated by a meteorological journal 
 of politics in the free states. For the two months 
 preceding the third Tuesday in November, all the 
 weathercocks point steadily northward, and the 
 atmosphere is clear and bracing. But on Wednes 
 day the wind shifts to the opposite point of the 
 compass, and a southerly fog creeps gradually up, 
 whose effects on Northern constitutions are exceed 
 ingly debilitating. Men of all professions (but espe 
 cially anti-slavery ones) are subject to the most 
 alarming and fatal attacks, and disappear from the 
 community without a line of obituary. 
 
 Not two months have passed since the Whig 
 leaders were clamorous because the Free Soil Party 
 had stolen their platform which means something 
 to stand upon before election and to trample on 
 after. Heine says somewhere that Tieck was a good 
 satirist, but that the progress of events was more 
 bitterly satirical than he. We need no severer Juve 
 nal here. Mr. Giddings introduces a bill to take the 
 sense of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia 
 in regard to emancipation. He very properly bases 
 his resolution on the principle which was the ful- 
 
C i H 
 
 crum of our Revolution and which forms the corner 
 stone of our system of polity, that all government 
 is founded on the consent of the governed. He 
 accordingly proposes that the vote of every male 
 inhabitant of twenty-one years and upward shall be 
 taken. It was not only just, but peculiarly proper, 
 that his motion should take this shape, for it has 
 somehow got to be the opinion in America that the 
 slaveholders are the suffering party, who alone are 
 entitled to our commiseration and to a voice in the 
 question of Abolition. It was therefore wise and ex 
 pedient in Mr. Giddings to frame his motion as he 
 did. It is the slave who is the chief party in interest. 
 Yet for this Mr. Giddings is denounced by high 
 Whig authority as a demagogue, whose only object 
 is to exasperate the South. On the same principle 
 the Declaration of Independence should have con 
 fined itself to a consideration of the rights and in 
 juries of George the Third. Mr. Giddings s error 
 arose from a want of due attention to chronological 
 proprieties. He should have been aware that prin 
 ciples are entirely dependent upon times and sea 
 sons, and that this motion should have been made 
 before election. The flood-tide of party anti-slavery 
 takes place every fourth November, and rises as rap 
 idly as in the Bay of Fundy. The ebb is equally 
 sudden. 
 
C 8 3 
 
 So, too, in regard to the Wilmot Proviso. This 
 was so popular with Northern Whigs a few weeks 
 ago that Mr. Webster took pains to claim it as " his 
 thunder." He is probably sorry by this time that 
 he ever burned his fingers with it. In the debate on 
 the petition of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society 
 (February 12, 1790) Mr. Madison said that " they 
 might make some regulations respecting the in 
 troduction of them (slaves) into the new states to 
 be formed out of the Western Territory, different 
 from what they could in the old settled states. He 
 thought the object well worthy of consideration." 
 This is the doctrine of reason and common-sense as 
 well as of justice and humanity. Before the elec 
 tion, this was clear enough to Whig eyes. But it 
 seems pretty certainly determined that the bill of 
 Senator Douglas, which yields everything to slavery, 
 will receive enough Whig support in Congress to 
 ensure its success. We believe that a majority of 
 the Whig rank and file are in favor of the Wilmot 
 Proviso. But the misfortune is that it is in the 
 power of a few Truman Smiths in Congress to con 
 trol for a moment the destinies of the country. It 
 takes only a moment to commit a great wrong, but 
 it may require centuries to repair it. The Missouri 
 Compromise (the second downward step of the Re 
 public) was controlled by the vote of one man from 
 Massachusetts. 
 
C 9 3 
 
 We said that the Whig party had overreached 
 itself. The anti-slavery sentiment of the country is 
 fast strengthening into anti-slavery principle. It is 
 not a thing which can be used and thrown by. Wise 
 political leaders would have seen that its gains are 
 permanent, and that its recruits are enlisted for the 
 whole war. But the Whigs have no positive prin 
 ciple to give them cohesion. Skilful only in the tac 
 tics of opposition, they find it impossible to take an 
 affirmative stand. The movement not of America 
 only, but of the whole world, is onward. They are 
 the destructives who endeavor to hold back. True 
 conservatism employs itself in preparing a smooth 
 way for the inevitable future. 
 
 " Safe in its breast the new moon clasps the old, 
 And round it still its guardian arms doth fold, 
 Forever turning fuller to the sun 
 Until increase of light hath made them one." 
 
OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN 
 
 JL HE inconsistencies of men, especially those which 
 have their origin in self-interest, have always af 
 forded a favorite theme for the satirist, and as long 
 as the world lasts he will hardly be at a loss for a 
 fresh text from this longest chapter of human ab 
 surdity. But there is one variety of inconsistency 
 so regular in its operations that we are almost in 
 clined to seek for its causes in some climatic or 
 physiological peculiarity. We refer to the change 
 which the air of Washington produces in Northern 
 members of Congress. 
 
 At home these gentlemen are almost tedious in 
 their eloquent advocacy of the dignity of labor. 
 Their one idea would seem to be that the hard- 
 handed democracy is the bone and sinew of the 
 commonwealth. They may be for or against the 
 tariff, the bank, or the subtreasury, but they are 
 unanimous in their devotion to the cause of the 
 workingman. This is all very fine, and their glow 
 ing and generous sentiments find a response in 
 every heart. But who, after all, is included in the 
 
C 3 
 
 term workingman? What is the implement the use 
 of which confers such nobility upon the hand that 
 wields it? Is it the axe, the hoe, the hammer, or 
 the plough ? This matter is made clear to us after 
 the arrival of the eloquent and philanthropic gentle 
 men at Washington. It is not the daily handling of 
 any or all of the tools we have mentioned that en 
 titles one to these fine candidatial sympathies. A 
 man s palms may be as hard as iron and his back 
 may be crooked with constant toil, and yet he may 
 neither be truly a hardhanded democrat, nor a bone 
 and sinew, nor have any claim whatever to the orator 
 ical dignities resulting from labor. It is the ability 
 to use a ballot which admits him to the freedom of 
 the guild. 
 
 But in truth, so many pitiable objects present 
 themselves to the eyes of Honorable Members on 
 their arrival at Washington that their sympathies 
 are necessarily diverted into other channels. It is 
 no longer the " toiling millions " who claim their 
 tender and respectful regard. It is now " our bre 
 thren of the South " who absorb their interest and 
 call into active operation all the finer feelings and 
 all the active benevolence of their natures. Who 
 are these newly discovered brethren of ours, these 
 objects of so devoted and sublime a charity ? 
 
 At this distance, our too sensitive hearts, still 
 
C 12 3 
 
 throbbing with tumultuous emotions called up by 
 contemplating the dignity of labor, we are apt to 
 fall into a very natural mistake. We have heard of 
 laborers at the South, and taking it for granted in 
 our simplicity that, if a necessary nobility attaches 
 itself to a man who toils for wages, some yet higher 
 and inconceivable grandeur must belong to him 
 who toils for nothing, we imagine that it is among 
 these Southern workers that we are to look for 
 relatives so near and dear. 
 
 This is an entirely erroneous view of the subject, 
 and a little reflection will convince us that it is 
 equally an unphilosophical one. Whether or no we 
 are right in surmising that it is the power of voting 
 which raises the Northern laborer to so high a level 
 of humanity, it is quite certain that a man whose 
 mere calling involves so much dignity and attracts 
 so much respectful consideration stands in need of 
 nothing else. It is the person who has not work, 
 whose hands are soft, who suffers the lifelong mis 
 ery and disgrace of idleness, and is thus excluded 
 from the privileged classes, who is the proper object 
 of our pity. It is unfortunates of this sort who 
 make the hearts of Northern representatives bleed. 
 It would be sheer arrogance in them to put forward 
 a claim of kindred with those nature s noblemen 
 who drudge on the cottonfields and in the rice 
 swamps. 
 
i: is 3 
 
 Christianity involves us in an inconveniently large 
 family connection ; according to that system we are 
 all children of a common Father, and if we make 
 any distinction of fraternity it is to be in favor of 
 our unhappy brother fallen among thieves. Three 
 millions of such we have at the South. But the Con 
 gressional method simplifies matters amazingly, and 
 reduces " our Southern brethren " to a bare two 
 hundred and fifty thousand or so. The descendants 
 of Ham are decided to be children of an tmcommon 
 father, and therefore no relatives of ours. 
 
 But it is not in the New Testament that our 
 legislators look to find their relatives. Their family 
 register is not inscribed even on those blank pages 
 between the old law and the new which we might 
 suppose to be the only portion of the Holy Volume 
 to which they had devoted any special attention. It 
 is the Constitution which settles all these tangled 
 questions of consanguinity. This is our new Dis 
 pensation abrogating the old, our new tariff of 
 social and moral duties. This teaches us who are 
 really our " Southern Brethren." 
 
 It was a happy discovery, this of defining the 
 limits of human brotherhood by degrees of longi 
 tude. By means of a globe an American child can 
 be very rapidly instructed in the simple elements of 
 geographical humanity. East, West, and North, our 
 
C 14 ^ 
 
 sympathies are allowed an indefinite expansion. The 
 safety-valves of our benevolence open toward these 
 three quarters of the earth. A convenient Manual 
 of Ethics calculated from the meridian of Wash 
 ington might be added to the course of instruction 
 in our common schools. Thus, we may sympathize 
 keenly with oppressed Ireland and the downtrodden 
 masses of Europe. Our detestation of tyrants may 
 grow fervent in the precise ratio of their easterly 
 distance. We may contribute largely and meritori 
 ously to rescue the souls of Hindoos from Satan, 
 and the soles of Nestorian Christians from the Ma 
 hometan bastinado. We may join societies for pro 
 moting the phrenological development of the Flat- 
 head Indians, or for supplying the Laplanders with 
 pure olive oil. In all these directions we may law 
 fully pray 
 
 " that come it may, 
 And come it will for a that, 
 When man to man, the warld o er, 
 Shall brithers be." 
 
 But, turning southward, our humanity gradually 
 contracts itself, embraces fewer and fewer objects, 
 and probably comes to a point somewhere in the 
 neighborhood of the Emperor of Brazil. 
 
 It has been a matter of controversy whether the 
 New Testament should be one of the books read by 
 
C IS 3 
 
 the pupils in our public schools. As one chief object 
 of these institutions is to fit the youth of our coun 
 try for their duties and responsibilities as American 
 citizens, we cannot but think that the habitual 
 perusal of such a book would be likely to produce 
 mental confusion and be the cause of error in after 
 life. Some such cause as this may be charitably 
 assigned for the divergences of such men as Gid- 
 dings and Palfrey from the strict line of American 
 patriotism and religious obligation. 
 
 Or is it barely possible, after all, that Jesus 
 Christ may be right and the glorious framers of 
 our Constitution wrong? Ought we in truth to 
 embrace with the arms of our brotherhood not John 
 C. Calhoun or Zachary Taylor, but the living, suf 
 fering, hoping, and despairing property of those 
 eminent Southern Brethren ? Is it the brother fallen 
 among thieves and not the thieves themselves who 
 are to be the recipients of our pity and our help ? 
 Can it be that the eye of a politician too long fixed 
 in rapturous contemplation upon the image of Lib 
 erty stamped on the coin of our country, is thereby 
 unfitted for deciphering the lineaments, now dim and 
 obscure, of the Almighty Father, impressed upon 
 three millions of his duskier children ? These ques 
 tions have suggested themselves with more or less 
 distinctness to a considerable number of men and 
 
C l6 3 
 
 women. If America be, as Fourth of July orators 
 assert, the new Eden of the world, these persons 
 have imagined that they heard in the garden that 
 dreadful voice which demanded of Cam Where 
 is thy brother? The signs of the times seem fa 
 vorable to this little company. The great onward 
 movement of humanity fights for them. The pro 
 gress of events is their most eloquent lecturer and 
 propagandist. The human heart is ever busy mak 
 ing them converts. They have only to continue firm 
 in that belief expressed by Dryden, that 
 
 " There is a necessity in Fate 
 Whereby the bold brave man is fortunate." 
 
POLITICS AND THE PULPIT 
 
 w 
 
 E published last week some extracts from a 
 sermon by Mr. Higginson of Newburyport. We 
 esteem such a sermon a gift to be received as some 
 thing more than a mere matter of course tribute 
 to duty. Mr. Higginson asks and expects no com 
 mendation. He does not barter self-sacrifice for an 
 equal weight of praise. But there are many ways of 
 doing one s duty, and there is something in doing it 
 bravely and generously which attracts, and deserves 
 to attract, our admiration and applause. The spirit 
 of this world is fond of inculcating a middle course 
 as the path of wisdom, cunningly flattering our 
 prudence in order to deceive our higher reason. 
 Men are wont to think that they have extinguished 
 a dangerous fire or dispersed a mephitic vapor when 
 they have succeeded in ridding themselves of that 
 enthusiasm of youth which was truly their God-sent 
 pillar of flame by night and of cloud by day. Ec 
 lecticism is very good in its way, and self-satisfies 
 us with a feeling of judicial impartiality; but, if 
 we try to keep the balance even between God and 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
C 18 3 
 
 the world, the flesh is apt to slip an ounce or two 
 of overweight into the worldly end of the scales. 
 Eclecticism as between Heaven and Hell, which 
 is a system of philosophy uncommonly popular, and 
 dignified with the name of common sense, gen 
 erally amounts to sitting on the fence between 
 those two regions and enjoying at the same time 
 beatific visions of the one without losing a genial 
 glow from the other. Let us thank Mr. Higgin- 
 son for rejecting this eclectic vicarship of Bray, 
 and for giving us not merely the exact measure of 
 duty, but for giving it pressed down and running 
 over. 
 
 There can be no fallacy greater or more danger 
 ous than is contained in the popular axiom that 
 politics and religion should be kept carefully dis 
 joined. It is an axiom which had its origin in the 
 unprincipled self-interest of politicians. It is of a 
 piece with the system which would shut God out 
 from the secular part of the week and imprison Him 
 in a particular day and in certain buildings. With 
 equal propriety the merchant might banish religion 
 from business, and the tradesman keep it carefully 
 away from his shop. Indeed it is too often true 
 that, as the clergyman leaves his robes hanging in 
 the vestry, the congregation doff their religion to 
 be locked up in the church where it will be kept 
 
C 19 3 
 
 safely till they need it to put on again when the 
 seventh day, appropriate to that ceremony, shall 
 have come round again. 
 
 Next to having no religion at all, this kind, which 
 can be put on and off at will, is certainly the most 
 convenient. The African, when he is meditating a 
 predatory excursion, quietly buries his fetich under 
 a tree, and, the theft being safely got through with, 
 exhumes his wooden deity and allows him once 
 more the superintendence of his conduct. The ed 
 itor who rebukes some faithful clergyman for 
 preaching against war or the extension of slavery, 
 is only angry because the fetich has been dug up 
 too soon. Had the clergyman decorously waited till 
 the thing was done, he might have belabored war 
 and slavery in the abstract to his heart s content 
 without being called in question for it. By this sys 
 tem, religion is put upon the short allowance of lib 
 erty conceded to an imprisoned debtor. Kept care 
 fully under lock and key during six days of the 
 week, she is allowed a kind of qualified freedom 
 (within the limits) on Sundays. 
 
 In point of fact it is not politics against which 
 people would shut and bolt the door of the pulpit. 
 Let a clergyman preach a Whig sermon, and the 
 discontent will be found nicely proportioned to the 
 amount of Democracy among his hearers. Let him 
 
C 20 3 
 
 preach a Democratic one, and it is only the Whigs 
 who will go out of church and slam their pew doors 
 behind them. If, on the other hand, he should de 
 nounce one of the " Ultraisms of the Day " even as 
 far as fifteenthly, he would excite no unpleasant 
 feelings except in such of his congregation as were 
 anxious to get to the post-office. It is religion itself 
 in its application to the life of the individual, which 
 they would have the preacher eschew. It is such 
 preachers as Nathan that are found fault with for 
 meddling with exciting topics. 
 
 The great hardship of the Christian revelation 
 lies in the exact closeness with which it will fit you 
 and me. Embodying a universal truth, it possesses 
 within itself a principle of development which ren 
 ders it a test for the church, the state and the indi 
 vidual in every possible phase of society. It is a 
 standard which cannot warp or shrink, and which 
 indicates with impartial indifference every deviation 
 from the immutable line of right and duty. It can 
 not well be a very comfortable instrument in the 
 hands of a faithful minister. 
 
 The editor, virtuously indignant at the mingling 
 of politics with religion, while he fancies that he 
 has laid fast hold upon the protecting horns of the 
 altar, has in truth only offered himself to be tossed 
 upon those of an inevitable dilemma. For he must 
 
C 21 3 
 
 either grant that politics are too vile to be admitted 
 into the company of religion, or that religion is too 
 nicely holy for certain kinds of society. If Chris 
 tianity be good for anything, it is good for use and 
 universal circulation. It is not to be shut up in the 
 Church, as in a kind of bank-vault, to serve for an 
 imaginary specie-basis to the everywhere current 
 shinplasters of sect. 
 
 Abolitionists have no quarrel with the Church as 
 a Church, but only with the Church as it is. This 
 is the reason why they are odious to sect-wrights 
 and divinity-mongers. They do not deny the great 
 services which the Church and the Clergy have 
 rendered to truth and progress as the instruments 
 of order and organization. But they affirm that a 
 Church, to be of any benefit, must be in advance 
 of the social ideas of the age, and demand of the 
 Clergy that they no longer organize sects, but soci 
 ety. It is not politics which they ask them to preach, 
 but Christianity itself. 
 
 To state the matter more strictly, it is not the 
 Abolitionist who makes the demands. They are the 
 requisitions of our present social condition. Nor is 
 the Church so much called upon to be a Reformer, 
 as to be truly a Church. The clergy, at least in 
 America, are no longer a privileged order. They 
 do not and cannot any longer occupy the position 
 
C 22 n 
 
 which they held when the mouth and the pen were 
 the only vehicles and disseminators of truth. They 
 are no longer the only priests, and there are other 
 pulpits than those in churches. The members of 
 Congress, the lecturer, and, above all, the editor, are 
 priests and preachers, and the newspaper furnishes, 
 a pulpit whence their voices may be heard from one 
 end of the land to the other. 
 
 Nevertheless a certain amount of prestige still 
 attaches itself to the clergy. They are still looked 
 upon as guardians specially set apart to watch over 
 religion and spiritual things. A seventh part of the 
 year is reserved for them, and their obligations to 
 truth are larger in proportion to the opportunity 
 afforded them to disseminate and enforce it. It 
 will be their own fault if they allow themselves to 
 be superseded by lay preachers. 
 
 It is hardly to be expected that the older clergy, 
 whose characters have been formed under the pres 
 sure of a wholly different style of ideas, should 
 readily adapt themselves to the requirements of a 
 new order of things. If they are not active reform 
 ers, they at least offer the example of blameless 
 lives. Let us not question their sincerity to forms 
 which to us seem empty. But all the more ought 
 we endeavor to reinvigorate the Church with an 
 infusion of the reforming and progressive spirit. 
 
C 23 H 
 
 The Church has suffered here also by having been 
 in some sort an establishment and having thereby 
 necessarily crystallized into formalism. The same 
 results have everywhere and at all times followed 
 the same causes, and the denunciations of the Abo 
 litionists have never been more severe than that 
 sarcasm of the Saint who said that, " whereas the 
 Church had formerly wooden chalices and golden 
 priests, she has now wooden priests and golden chal 
 
 ices." 
 
 The form of the Church has always been com 
 pelled to adapt itself more or less nearly to the de 
 mands of the age. The new spirit of zeal which is 
 making itself manifest in the younger clergy of all 
 denominations shows that the Church is preparing 
 itself for a new development. Hitherto the Church 
 has been shored up with external props ; it is now 
 beginning to be asked whether she contains in her 
 self any principles of life and growth, and men are 
 busying themselves in eliminating the formula of 
 the Ideal Church which is to be the Church of the 
 Future. 
 
 The Puritans divorced the Church from Art, and, 
 as far as they could, crushed the poetical element 
 out of religion. But Art had its ample revenge, 
 for it attracted religion to itself out of the Church. 
 The time will come when the two shall be again 
 
C 24 ]] 
 
 united and work harmoniously together. Poetry, 
 painting, sculpture and music shall be the steps to 
 that new temple, and the priests shall be ordained 
 by the laying on of the hands of God himself. 
 
ETHNOLOGY 
 
 w, 
 
 B have just seen the hopes of the friends of 
 liberalism and progress in central Europe thwarted 
 in a great measure by foolish disputes about races 
 and nationalities. While the honest men were fall 
 ing out, the rogues have succeeded in getting what 
 was not their own again. The German Punch has a 
 print representing two men, in different national 
 costumes, engaged in a furious combat, the point at 
 issue being whether the name of a certain town 
 should be pronounced Gratz or Graetz. 
 
 When this matter of nationality is reduced to a 
 downright absurdity by setting the inhabitants of 
 two neighboring villages together by the ears, it 
 affords us only matter for a smile, but it becomes 
 serious when acted on a larger stage and by more 
 prominent players, though abstractly as ludicrous 
 as before. 
 
 Almost all races, in proportion as they have 
 come powerful and distinguished, have endeavored 
 to justify their preeminence, as it were, by attribut 
 ing to themselves a divine or at least a noble origin. 
 
I * ] 
 
 Nations, like individuals, when they have risen in 
 the social scale, go immediately to the herald s 
 office for a coat of arms and a pedigree. Had 
 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth a thousand years 
 earlier, their exodus from the land of bondage 
 and their arrival in the Promised Land would have 
 been forerun and accompanied by an abundance of 
 signs and wonders. As it is, we are obliged to con 
 tent ourselves with vague assertions of our Anglo- 
 Saxon descent, the truth being that only the settlers 
 of New England, and of those only a very few, can 
 lay any probable claim to such an origin. 
 
 We have no especial interest in these assertions 
 of national nobility, except in as far as they have 
 been the cause or the apology of national oppres 
 sions. Men are very willing to excuse any unnatu 
 ral feature in their social system by tracing it up to 
 some inscrutable divine arrangement. Whatever re 
 volts from the natural religion of the human heart 
 they shore up with the props of their artificial and 
 traditional religion. An inferior tribe among the 
 Hindus sprang from the feet of Brahma, which, of 
 course, explains to general satisfaction why they 
 have always been, and should always continue to be 
 at the foot of the social scale. In the same way the 
 consciences of many excellent people are not so 
 much negatively relieved as positively exhilarated, 
 
c 27 3 
 
 when they have succeeded in transferring (by any 
 thing but a Baconian induction) the wrongs of the 
 African race to the broad shoulders of ancestral 
 Ham. An anti-slavery lecturer was formerly pretty 
 certain to be received in a strange place with an en 
 tertainment of Ham and eggs (the clergy and people 
 contributing their respective quotas), which kept 
 the promise of hospitality to the ear and broke it to 
 the sense. 
 
 When the descent of the negro races from the 
 Scriptural Ham had been pretty clearly disproved, 
 and the application of the curse entailed upon his 
 progeny transferred to another race, pro-slavery was 
 necessarily reduced to another line of defence. A 
 divine origin was attributed to slavery by tracing 
 its natural cause to an innate inferiority, both 
 mental and physical, of the negro family of man. 
 It is here that the researches of ethnologists be 
 come particularly interesting to Abolitionists, and 
 furnish them with arguments more generally appre 
 ciable by the mass of mankind than those appealing 
 exclusively to the principles of abstract justice and 
 right. It is worth remarking from how varying and 
 unexpected sources the quiver of the reformer is 
 constantly recruited with fresh arrows, and how the 
 investigations of science, prosecuted in directions 
 which seem the farthest removed from every day 
 
C 28 3 
 
 interests, have yet a practical bearing, more or less 
 decided, upon the humanitary questions of the time. 
 
 Ethnology, or the science of races, is of very 
 recent origin, and, dependent as it necessarily must 
 be on glottology (the science of languages), which 
 is also in its infancy, it must generally make its ap 
 peals to inferences and probabilities rather than to 
 actual demonstration. Its conclusions may in fact 
 be assumed as incapable of experimental proof, since 
 periods of time quite beyond our ordinary concep 
 tions of duration, as derived from human history, 
 might be required to produce any foretold result. 
 And yet a sufficient number of examples may be 
 found of various kinds, in localities widely sepa 
 rated, and wholly independent of each other, where 
 certain causes have produced certain effects, to es 
 tablish a firm basis for reasonable induction. 
 
 The most comprehensive work on the science of 
 races is that of Dr. Prichard, " The Natural History 
 of Man." It is necessarily somewhat deficient in 
 arrangement, because ethnology is as yet less an ex 
 act system than an agglomeration of detached facts, 
 all, however, tending to one result, so that it is 
 not difficult for the reader to generalize for him 
 self. Dr. Prichard is a man of great learning, and 
 apparently of an honest and well balanced mind, not 
 likely to be led astray by theory, nor to form his 
 
C 29 3 
 
 conclusions in advance of his facts. He gives very 
 full extracts from the accounts of particular tribes 
 of men, given by travellers of different nations at 
 different periods of time, so that the reader may 
 form conclusions for himself without being obliged 
 to rely too implicitly upon the conscientiousness of 
 the author. 
 
 The instances hitherto collected by ethnological 
 students seem to put beyond question the fact that 
 difference of physical structure, and of the color of 
 the skin, may all be referred to climatic causes, and 
 do not in the least countenance the theory of essen 
 tial diversity of race. The examples by which this 
 proposition is supported are very numerous, are 
 found among ah 1 races and in all quarters of the 
 globe, and are to our mind perfectly convincing. 
 
 The Jew, transplanted to Poland, becomes red- 
 bearded and blue-eyed. In England his complexion 
 grows gradually fair. In the East Indies, on the 
 other hand, colonies of Jewish stock are found who 
 are entirely black, and that without the least proof 
 or probability of foreign intermixture. In China 
 they are described as having approximated very 
 nearly in complexion and feature to the native 
 type. This is a strong argument, because the uni 
 form reluctance of the Jews, wherever scattered, to 
 contract marriages with other races, puts the purity 
 
C 30 D 
 
 of their blood almost beyond dispute, and refers us 
 to some other natural causes for a solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 These natural causes are to be found in difference 
 of climate, habits, and food. Of the influence of 
 climate a remarkable example is afforded by the Ber 
 bers inhabiting a mountainous region in Africa. 
 Their language, their habits, their history, and their 
 traditions all prove them to be of one unmixed de 
 scent, and yet they differ in complexion and some 
 other characteristics in proportion as the particu 
 lar tribes occupy a position farther from the plain, 
 ranging from yellow hair, fair complexion and blue 
 eyes, to black skins and woolly hair. 
 
 We have seen the influence of climate upon 
 complexion and the color and texture of the hair. 
 Changes equally remarkable in the shape of the 
 skull, in the length and general characteristics of 
 the limbs, and in the development and tissue of the 
 muscular system are brought about by the habits 
 and diet of a race, dependent upon the climate or 
 some other circumstances of local condition. The 
 difference between the Turk settled for four cen 
 turies in Europe and the original race still existing 
 in Asia is so great that nothing but the clearest 
 proof deducible from language and authentic his 
 tory would suffice to satisfy us of their identity. As 
 
n 31 3 
 
 remarkable are the changes which have taken place 
 in the races at present occupying the western portion 
 of Europe. Not to speak of the entire contrast they 
 offer to their original Asiatic type, it will be enough 
 to allude merely to their dissimilarity in general 
 features from their ancestors as described by the 
 earliest trustworthy observers. 
 
 The most important general conclusion to be 
 drawn from the study of ethnology is that the dif 
 ference in type exhibited by different races of men 
 is not greater than may be found existing in indi 
 viduals of the same race subjected for a long period 
 of time to the action of climatic or other physical 
 causes. We may say further that the conclusion to 
 which many inquirers have been led is that the 
 white skin, and not the black, is a divergence from 
 the original type, effected either by climate or by 
 the propagation of an accidental variety, such as 
 we still find to be produced among races naturally 
 black. 
 
 We wish that Dr. Prichard s work might be re 
 printed in this country, since the high price of the 
 English edition places it beyond the reach of the 
 great majority of readers. We have some doubts, 
 however, whether such a book would pass the nice 
 censorship of the press which presides over our 
 American republishers. Slavery demands the ex- 
 
C 32 n 
 
 purgation of science as well as religion, and, like 
 Moliere s " Doctor in spite of himself," would change 
 the heart from the left side to the right, if its ends 
 could be served thereby. 
 
 An excellent summary of the book may be found 
 in the last number of the Edinburgh Eeview, where 
 the reader will also be able to see at a glance 
 the progress of ethnological studies, and the present 
 boundaries of its discoveries. Except for purposes 
 of reference, it will be more interesting and useful 
 than the original book, which we have found to 
 produce some confusion in the mind after a single 
 reading, from the multiplicity of its facts and refer 
 ences. 
 
MR. CALHOUN S REPORT 
 
 A 
 
 THOROUGH practical treatise on the obstetrics 
 of mountains, with a statement of authenticated 
 cases, would seem to be still a desideratum in medi 
 cal science, although the report of ^Esop upon the 
 earliest recorded occurrence of the kind has been 
 sustained by a great deal of experience, since the 
 public mind continues to be roused to an unhealthy 
 state of excitement by the intelligence that an in 
 teresting event is expected to take place in the 
 mountain family. As a general rule, the race has 
 been distinguished for its steady habits, but indi 
 viduals have been known to fall into habits of dissi 
 pation, scattering their pocketfuls of rocks in the 
 most spendthrift manner, and some have displayed 
 a dangerous predilection for playing with fire, which 
 has rendered them very uncomfortable neighbors. 
 Suppose some unbreeched monster should scream 
 for a crater, and an overf ond mother should indulge 
 him with so terrible a plaything, who would answer 
 for the result ? On what kind of a coral shall young 
 Master Mountain cut his ponderous granite molars, 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
c 34 3 
 
 and those canine teeth, productive of so much riot 
 in the nursery, and at midnight compelling the sans- 
 culotted father to an enforced enlistment in the 
 order of peripatetic philosophers ? Members of the 
 family, old enough to know better, sometimes dis 
 cover a mischievous vein : witness the pranks which 
 Emerson has reported of the venerable Monadnock. 
 A dreadful crisis, also, may be expected when the 
 young aspirant, just emerging from hillockhood, 
 shall make choice of a profession. If he should 
 prove of an atrabilious turn, and insist upon being 
 a volcano ! 
 
 These and other such considerations no doubt 
 combined to keep the public in a feverish state of 
 apprehension when it was noised abroad that a very 
 eminent mountain was daily expecting her accouche 
 ment at Washington. If the hitherto spotless Yung 
 Frau had run off with Ben Nevis, or if Jim Borazo 
 and Sary Nevada (of whom we have heard some of 
 our returned volunteers speak) had been looking 
 forward to the birth of an heir, the newspapers 
 could not have been fuUer of it. The services of 
 Mr. Calhoun had been engaged as man-midwife, and 
 everything seemed to portend some tremendous con 
 summation. Nevertheless, at the end of the appro 
 priate period of gestation, nothing but a faint squeak 
 is heard, and it is discovered that mountains con- 
 
c: 35 3 
 
 tinue, as in the days of ^Esop, to bring forth mice. 
 Indeed, in the present instance, even this legitimate 
 progeny is smaller than usual. The offspring of the 
 Southern mountain, like Burns s field-mouse, is a 
 
 " Wee, sleekit, cowerin , tim rous beastie." 
 
 Diminutive, however, as it is, Mr. Calhoun has 
 taken the precaution to muzzle it, threatening to let 
 it loose upon the North unless that section of the 
 country maintains a very respectful and even sub 
 servient demeanor. Probably, from long experience, 
 he conceives of the North, as sagacious Nick Bot 
 tom did of the ladies, that it would be thrown into 
 convulsions of terror by 
 
 " The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on ground." 
 
 Nevertheless, emboldened by such knowledge of 
 natural history as we are masters of, we shall ven 
 ture to approach this prodigious little creature and 
 to describe it for the benefit of our readers. Upon 
 a nearer examination, we even begin to suspect 
 either that mountains have degenerated, or this is 
 no real mouse after all, but a stuffed specimen, a 
 counterfeit, introduced, perhaps, as was rumored of 
 the Pretender, in a warming-pan. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun s document is not so much a report 
 as a Jeremiad. It consists mainly of a catalogue 
 of the wrongs and grievances which the Southern 
 
C 36 ] 
 
 Israel has sustained at the hands of the Heathen 
 round about. In one respect it is meritoriously dis 
 tinguished from the doleful palaver of Northern 
 pro-slavery. Its tone is gentlemanly, and there is no 
 snuffle, no piety in it from beginning to end. Ham 
 is not alluded to, and there is no hypocritical 
 twaddle about the mysterious designs of an inscru 
 table Providence. Let us be thankful that we have 
 at least a pro-slavery appeal in which the slaveholder 
 and not slavery is defended, in which the guilt of 
 wrong and inhumanity is not laid to the charge of the 
 benign Father of us all. The Eeport may also claim 
 another merit, that of adroitness. An aggressive 
 tone is assumed throughout. It is the South that 
 has all along been the injured party, enduring, with 
 too Christian a forbearance, a series of outrages as 
 atrocious as they were unprovoked. Mr. Calhoun, 
 from long experience, evidently understands all the 
 properties of Northern Dough, an article for the 
 raising of which no yeast powerful enough has yet 
 been invented, and which we sincerely believe will 
 be behindhand in rising at the last day. Mr. Cal 
 houn probably remembers the expedient made use 
 of centuries ago by the masters of the insurgent 
 Sicilian slaves, and, when other weapons have failed, 
 brandishes the whip, trusting not vainly to the pres 
 tige of its traditionary terrors. 
 
C 37 H 
 
 Mr. Calhoun s first tears are shed over the fatal 
 Missouri Compromise. This was the first attack 
 upon the rights of the South, the first only because 
 here the earliest opportunity was offered. The ques 
 tion of the admission of Missouri as a slave state 
 for a time rendered the continued integrity of the 
 Union doubtful. An ominous crack already began 
 to run along and to open wider and wider between 
 the opposing sections of the country. The glue of 
 the famous Compromise made all sound again in 
 appearance, but left the cemented members more 
 liable to split asunder at the first throe of convul 
 sion. The mention of the Compromise reminds Mr. 
 Calhoun that, in point of fact, aggression began 
 much earlier, and that nothing but a spirit of self- 
 sacrificing concession on the part of the Southern 
 States rendered the original formation of the Union 
 possible. He must go deeper down and farther back 
 than this for the origin of the anti-slavery move 
 ment, and seek it, if anywhere, in the nature of 
 man. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun and other pleaders for the peculiar 
 institution seem to think that the claim to buy and 
 sell human beings gathers validity by the distance 
 of time at which it was recognized as a portion of 
 our political system, and that its respectability is 
 proportionate to its antiquity. But, however true 
 
C 38 ] 
 
 this may be of just and rightful things, it is certain 
 that age only attracts a deeper damnation toward 
 what is wrong and unjust. The force of the antag 
 onism to it is cumulative, like the poison of arsenic. 
 Every year adds to its horror and its odium, length 
 ening out the loathsome vista with new objects for 
 indignation, and new claims for retribution and re 
 dress. The age of slavery, like the gray hairs of 
 Cenci, only heightens the sense of its atrocity. 
 Shall it claim a privilege for cruelty because it has 
 been cruel long ? Shall it sanctify tyranny by the 
 plea of invariable usage ? 
 
 After showing what divinity doth constitutionally 
 hedge Slavery in the Southern States, Mr. Calhoun 
 proceeds to draw a charming picture of the pre 
 cautions taken to prevent the escape of runaways, 
 and of the assistance which the pursuing masters 
 received from citizens of free states in those earlier 
 and simpler days of the Republic. But, like other 
 pictures of a bygone Arcadia, it unfortunately is not 
 founded on truth. There was never so much or so 
 sincere anti-slavery feeling in the Northern States 
 as at the period immediately following the Revolu 
 tion. This is made evident by the emancipation, or 
 the movements toward it, which took place at that 
 time. That it was not easy to recover fugitives in 
 some of the states, we have ample evidence. There 
 
C 39 ] 
 
 is now in existence an unpublished letter from 
 General Washington to Joseph Whipple, collector 
 at Portsmouth, N. H., asking his aid in the recap 
 ture of an escaped woman, a favorite slave of Mrs. 
 Washington. The general asks the collector s opin 
 ion as to whether an attempt to send her back to 
 Virginia would be likely to excite a popular commo 
 tion and lead to violent resistance. We have seen 
 the rough draught of Mr. Whipple s answer in his 
 own handwriting. He displays a sufficient lack of 
 zeal in the undertaking, thinks the woman could not 
 be peaceably kidnapped, and concludes by hoping 
 that slavery will soon be abolished throughout the 
 country. Whether any further correspondence took 
 place we do not know, but the woman was never 
 molested, and died a few years ago in New Hamp 
 shire. A correspondent of the " Liberator," at the 
 time of her death, sent a notice of it to that paper 
 with an outline of her story as related by herself. 
 Considering that fifty years had elapsed since the 
 date of her escape, her narrative tallied with the 
 facts of the case with truly wonderful exactness. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun next laments the change which has 
 come over the amicable relations of the oppressing 
 race in the two great sections of the country. He 
 shows that in spite of the figurative decision of Mr. 
 Justice Baldwin of Connecticut, who pronounced 
 
I 40 3 
 
 slavery to be the corner-stone on which the fabric of 
 our government rests, the obstacles thrown in the 
 way of the exhilarating sport of man-hunting are 
 becoming daily more insurmountable. A hundred 
 years hence it will be almost incredible that an 
 American Statesman should exhibit such a tender 
 regret over the decline of a pastime so horribly 
 inhuman. 
 
 The next pathetic remonstrance of the Keport 
 is in regard to the Extension of Slavery into the 
 newly acquired territories. It appears that it is the 
 insult of the thing which our too sensitive Southern 
 brethren feel so keenly. They do not wish to extend 
 slavery to California and New Mexico, not in the 
 least. They merely wish to emigrate thither with 
 their slaves ! A distinction as nice as that of An 
 cient Pistol between stealing and conveying. " Con 
 vey, the wise it call." They would like to convey 
 slavery thither, not to extend it. This metaphysi 
 cal sublety indicates Mr. Calhoun s Scotch extraction 
 as plainly as where he says, " we would (should) in 
 a word change conditions with them " (the slaves), a 
 piece of Christian fellowship very far, we suspect, 
 from the thought of the Chairman of the Southern 
 Committee. 
 
 A Southern Keport on Slavery in which Captain 
 Bobadil did not have a finger would be incomplete. 
 
C 41 3 
 
 Accordingly Mr. Calhoun goes on to mourn that 
 partial surrender of independent sovereignty to the 
 exigencies of the Union which precludes the gallant 
 South from an appeal to arms. He seems entirely 
 to overlook the fact that such a position of affairs 
 would bring about emancipation in the speediest 
 and least satisfactory way. The compensation, in 
 that case, would be exacted by the other party to 
 the Institution, and would have to be paid in some 
 thing redder than gold. May Heaven avert so 
 righteous yet so dreadful a consummation ! We must 
 in justice say that this is the only part of Mr. Cal- 
 houn s Keport which is absolutely boyish. Could 
 we put its subject wholly out of view, could we for 
 get that it is a plea for the most enormous tyranny 
 which (taking it in relation to the age and country 
 in which it exists) the world ever saw, we should 
 say that the tone of the whole document was digni 
 fied and gentlemanly. 
 
 As to what is said in regard to the number of 
 volunteers for the Mexican war furnished by the 
 North and South, respectively, we are very glad to 
 accept Mr. Calhoun s statistics. It is gratifying to 
 know that the most populous and civilized portion 
 of the country supplied only half as many maraud 
 ing barbarians as the other. This was to have been 
 expected. 
 
C 42 3 
 
 On the whole the Report may be considered as 
 one of the most cheering signs of the times. Its 
 tone of confidence is evidently an assumed one. It 
 is the stratagem of a general who kindles needless 
 watchfires in his camp to convey an impression of 
 his strength to the enemy, and who seems to threaten 
 an assault when there is nothing to dread so much 
 as an engagement with the enemy. There is a slight 
 quaver of shaken confidence perceptible throughout, 
 and the effect of it ought to be to redouble the 
 efforts of the enemies of oppression. In particular 
 we hope that the friends of the Slave in Congress 
 will be only impressed with the apprehensions which 
 Mr. Calhoun expresses in regard to emancipation 
 in the District of Columbia, and will be encouraged 
 to more strenuous exertion by his prophecies of 
 the effects likely to follow thereupon. We believe 
 with Mr. Calhoun that the first break in the line of 
 slavery will be fatal, the speedy precursor of total 
 rout. Already it is more than probable that deser 
 tions will soon take place from the ranks of the 
 enemy. It is only the first step which is difficult, 
 and, that once taken, the rest will be only matter of 
 course. 
 
THE MORAL MOVEMENT 
 AGAINST SLAVERY 
 
 WEEK or two ago the editorship of the Boston 
 " Republican " passed into new hands. The new 
 editor signalizes his advent by disclaiming for his 
 party any responsibility for the opinions of disun- 
 ionists. But, in repudiating the doctrine of dissolu 
 tion, as if it were something odious and shameful, we 
 think he acts unwisely. Men may honestly entertain 
 opinions in favor of a division of the Union, with 
 no reference whatever to the question of Slavery. 
 If any person who has got enough knowledge of 
 the externals of history to believe that the Roman 
 Empire fell asunder because of its vast extent, 
 should Phillips publish a tract to-morrow recom 
 mending a peaceable dissolution in order to avoid 
 the catastrophe necessarily incident to territories of 
 our size, no editor would calumniate about parrici 
 dal hands and no orator would allude to Casca and 
 Brutus. It is for the simple reason that the Ameri 
 can Anti-Slavery Society advocates disunion on anti- 
 slavery grounds that it draws up to itself odium and 
 
C 44 I] 
 
 denunciation. The Quaker still continues to enter 
 tain a traditional and entirely respectable aversion 
 from a Church and a hireling priesthood, without 
 exciting any animadversion. But let Parker Pills- 
 bury or Abby Foster do the same, and they may 
 reckon with tolerable security on being pelted. 
 The reason is plain enough. The Quaker appeals 
 to dead George Fox, the Abolitionist to the living 
 heart of man. It is because the American Anti-Sla 
 very Society touches Church and State in a rotten 
 place that it is hated and feared. Men call it a lit 
 tle knot of fanatics. But a little knot of fanatics 
 is a great force. Indeed the men who do anything 
 great must be fanatics. Poets prophesy what is 
 right, philosophers see it, fanatics accomplish it. 
 
 Whatever opinion the editor of an anti-slavery 
 paper may entertain as to the evils or benefits which 
 would result from a dissolution of the Union, he 
 should never himself (nor let his readers) lose sight 
 of the fact that those who urge that measure do so 
 from an intense appreciation of the horrors of slav 
 ery. They are men and women who keep the pop 
 ular mind alive to an example of self-devotion in 
 behalf of a purely moral object and charge it with 
 a portion of the magnetism of their self-sacrifice, 
 who attack fearlessly and without question of odds 
 every institution, however venerable with time or 
 
C 45 3 
 
 hallowed with associations, which affords shelter or 
 vantage ground to the forces of the evil principle 
 they are at war with. Who that has a heart capa 
 ble of the kindred thrill of heroism, who that in a 
 world slippery with compromise and conventionali 
 ties loves the firm feel of earnestness, but must 
 honor these faithful few ? Shortsighted men may 
 not appreciate the importance of their victories. 
 Their results may not yet be palpable on the Ex 
 change. But it is no small triumph that they have 
 achieved for themselves an existence and maintained 
 it. And courage, devotion, loyalty to conscience, 
 are not these indefeasible successes ? 
 
 The Disunionists can afford to do without the 
 Free Soil Party, but can these do without the Dis 
 unionists ? Wisdom may break down a bridge be 
 hind, but not a bridge before. We were among 
 those who were rejoiced at the Buffalo Convention 
 and the formation of the new party. Opposition to 
 the extension of Slavery opened a door by which 
 men could escape from the two irretrievably cor 
 rupt parties to higher ground (for any anti-slavery 
 ground was higher), and the Buffalo platform offered 
 common footing where all who hoped to achieve the 
 defeat of slavery by political action could stand to 
 gether. We believed that the step from anti-slavery 
 feeling to abolition principle would (with sincere 
 
C 46 3 
 
 men) be a short and necessary one, that men would 
 see, as it was pithily expressed the other day in the 
 " Chronotype," that there was no essential difference 
 between extending slavery in space and in time. 
 We believe so still, and that the leaders of the Free 
 Soil Party must advance to a better defined and 
 more commanding position. After exciting the en 
 thusiasm of their followers, after showing them the 
 wrong, and crying charge ! they cannot stand still 
 or they will be trampled to death. If to keep soil 
 free be good, then to make it so must also be good. 
 If fetters must not be carried into Oregon and Cal 
 ifornia, why should they not be stricken off in Vir 
 ginia and South Carolina ? 
 
 Had anything been wanting to convince us of 
 the necessity of a purely moral anti-slavery organiza 
 tion the result of the Free Soil agitation would have 
 supplied it. Political parties have their crises of 
 enthusiasm. Their zeal rises before an election and 
 as naturally subsides after it. The course of these 
 things is as natural and as easily to be foretold as 
 that of the tides. They have their regular ebb and 
 flow. An unsuccessful election contest, moreover, 
 is a defeat, and defeat is discouragement. During 
 the long interval between election and election, the 
 forces of a defeated political party must suffer the 
 demoralization of inaction. Like the troops of a 
 
C 47 ] 
 
 partisan and irregular army, they gather suddenly 
 for an immediate object and disappear as rapidly. 
 Their orators, wanting the customary excitement of 
 controversy, become silent. It is quite a different 
 thing to harangue a crowd of benches, and a crowd 
 of eager men. 
 
 Meanwhile, a pure Ethical Idea can never be de 
 feated. It cannot, indeed, be brought into conflict 
 with material organizations, but only applied to them 
 as an impartial test. It cannot attract to itself the 
 rancorous animosity, nor the imputation of motives 
 of personal aggrandizement, to which a political as 
 sociation, however pure, is liable. It does not pre 
 sent to the gross and indiscriminating popular eye a 
 divided object. Its activity is not sensible of any 
 seasons of peculiar intensity or depression. It is not 
 restricted to time and place the year long caucuses 
 are held in the family and the workshop. It knows 
 no distinctions of age or sex, but draws to itself the 
 yet undissipated sympathies of youth and contracts 
 indissoluble alliance with the finer instinct and more 
 persistent enthusiasm of woman. 
 
 Two things especially absorb the admiration and 
 sympathy of men practical success and that wea 
 riless devotion which does not need the stimulus of 
 success. The former is the key to the popularity of 
 Taylor, the latter to the power of Garrison. People 
 
c 48 n 
 
 without ideas laugh at the man of one. But these 
 men are not so common as is generally imagined. 
 That mind is of no ordinary strain which, through 
 long years of obloquy and derision, can still keep its 
 single object as fresh and attractive as at first. It 
 is the man of one idea who attains his end. Narrow 
 ness does not always imply bigotry, but sometimes 
 concentration. 
 
 At the present moment the natural reaction which 
 has followed a crisis of extraordinary anti-slavery 
 excitement in politics, shows not only the policy but 
 the absolute necessity of a distinctly moral organi 
 zation against slavery. The Free Soil Party lacks 
 any attraction which might arise from success. It 
 has so cautiously secluded itself from every imputa 
 tion of fanaticism that it has deprived itself of an 
 other and no inconsiderable element of strength. It 
 has been diverted into many by-questions and dis 
 putes with regard to the merits of individuals, and 
 so, in a great measure, failed of concentrating the 
 public attention upon things. It has not made itself 
 numerically terrible, and, by its necessary devotion 
 to a candidate, it has lost the prestige which be 
 longs to devotion to an idea. Already its best news 
 papers are failing, thus giving to the movement the 
 appearance of a transitory convulsion instead of a 
 revolution, and losing the benefit of that supersti- 
 
C 49 3 
 
 tion with which the notion of permanence enthralls 
 the fancies of men. 
 
 We say these things from no prejudice, but state 
 them only as matters of fact affording matter for 
 reflection. The Free Soil movement has done as 
 much as we expected. If it has not broken in pieces 
 the two old parties, as we hoped it might, that con 
 summation will be brought about at no distant day 
 by the administration of General Taylor. But the 
 necessity of renewed and continuous exertion on the 
 part of non-political abolitionists is enforced by all 
 the signs of the times. It is they who keep alive 
 the scattered sparks which are fanned into flame 
 during the gusty days of electioneering excitement. 
 Nay, at what altar was the firebrand lighted which 
 the Fox of Kinderhook carried into the standing 
 corn of the Philistines ? 
 VOL. n. 
 
THE ABOLITIONISTS AND 
 EMANCIPATION 
 
 N, 
 
 i EXT to the charge of being possessed of only 
 a single idea, the accusation most often brought 
 against Abolitionists has been that they have re 
 tarded the progress of emancipation and made more 
 galling the fetters of the slave. If emancipation at 
 all hazards be the one idea of the Abolitionists, 
 this is the one idea of their opponents. As far as 
 the comparison goes, the advantage is clearly on the 
 side of the former. 
 
 From the frequency and bitterness with which 
 this reproach is urged, one might suppose that an 
 amelioration of the slave s condition was the object 
 which the whole community had most at heart. As 
 that fine pagan emulation of the trophies of Milti- 
 ades would not let the young Athenian sleep, so a 
 purer and more Christian solicitude for those in 
 bonds would seem to make uneasy the pillows of all 
 classes of society, and especially of the politicians. 
 In all ages of the world the Mob have displayed the 
 keenest anxiety for the preservation of an undefined 
 
C 51 3 
 
 religion, and it was accordingly to be expected that 
 they should not be indifferent while the kindred 
 cause of philanthropy was in danger of receiving 
 detriment. It is doubtless not without some of that 
 exultation which springs from conscientious self-de 
 votion that thousands of Christian philosophers and 
 patriots deposited their ballots for a slaveholder, 
 sacrificing their natural desire to express immedi 
 ately their harassing Anti-slavery zeal to the yet 
 stronger desire of seeing the slave emancipated at 
 an earlier period by means of prudent concession. 
 But martyrologies are not the pleasantest kind of 
 reading, and we gladly turn from the contemplation 
 of such sufferings. Let us rather consider whether 
 they are necessary, and whether the cause of eman 
 cipation has been in reality so greatly put back. 
 
 In the first place has there really been a change 
 of public opinion for the worse, either at the North 
 or the South, since the Liberator came into existence 
 eighteen years ago ? We select this period as the 
 point of departure, and not because we have for 
 gotten Woolman, Benezet and Lundy, but because 
 these stand in the same relation to the Anti-slavery 
 movement in America that Dante, the Lollards and 
 Huss hold in respect to Luther. 
 
 That Anti-slavery was regarded with less repug 
 nance by many persons at that time than now, we 
 
C 52 1 
 
 are ready to admit. The naked question, presented 
 to any mind not deadened by custom or blinded by 
 interest, was very certain to receive an affirmative 
 answer. But there are many intellects so constituted 
 that an object loses its interest in proportion as it 
 grows less novel. There are many which weary of 
 a long and barren march without apparent results. 
 There are many which estimate the common enthu 
 siasm by their own, and are disheartened by meet 
 ing with coldness and sluggishness. Moreover, at 
 the time when the movement began, Slavery was 
 regarded as a distant and detached object. The 
 immense spread of its roots, and how they had forced 
 themselves into every crevice in the foundations of 
 Church and State, was not even suspected. Men 
 were ready enough to condemn an alien sin which 
 concerned only their neighbors, but were soon satis 
 fied that what they were themselves interested in 
 could be no sin. The Politician, the Merchant, the 
 Clergyman, each in turn found that it would not do 
 to be an Abolitionist, and, as they were naturally 
 unwilling that anybody should be better than them 
 selves, and as the large majority of the Community 
 was either influenced by, or dependent upon them, 
 it is no hard matter to come at the result. When 
 we add to all this the widespread influence of that 
 common self-deception which leads men to believe 
 
C 53 3 
 
 that they are acting with prudence and wisdom, 
 when they are really held back by coldness and 
 timidity of nature, or by regard for what they sup 
 pose to be their interest, we shall see with how much 
 Anti-slavery had to contend. 
 
 Any one who has read Clarkson s "History of 
 the Abolition of the Slave Trade " cannot fail to be 
 struck with the similarity of the objections brought 
 against the advocate of that measure in England 
 and those which are constantly thrown in the way 
 of American Anti-slavery. Prominent among these 
 was this same one, that they were retarding the 
 accomplishment of their object by their intemper 
 ate zeal. But the result showed that success drew 
 nearer in proportion as they grew more daring in 
 their reproaches and sharper in their denunciations. 
 
 So far as there being any truth in this charge of 
 having retarded emancipation, the simple fact un 
 doubtedly is that were the Abolitionists now to go 
 back to the position from which they started, they 
 would find themselves less fanatical than a very re 
 spectable minority of the people. The public fol 
 lows them step by step, occupying the positions they 
 have successively fortified and quitted, and it is ne 
 cessary that they should keep in advance in order 
 that people may not be shocked by waking up and 
 finding themselves Abolitionists. The Garrison of 
 
C 54 3 
 
 1831 might be a popular man and a member of 
 Congress now. But it is part of the order of Pro 
 vidence that there should be always Garrisons as 
 well as popular men and members of Congress. 
 
 It would seem at first sight that the recent elec 
 tion of a slaveholder was a sign of retrogression. 
 That the Whigs stultified themselves and gave the 
 lie to the professions of years in nominating Taylor 
 there can be no doubt. That the temptation of 
 political preferment made many renegades is equally 
 certain, though there is the consolation of reflecting 
 that a man who could become a renegade was never 
 worth having. But never at any former presiden 
 tial election was the slavery question so prominent. 
 Indeed it was the only question. The great quarrel 
 which the Whigs had with Cass and Van Buren 
 was not that they were opposed to Bank and Tar 
 iff, but that they could not be trusted on the slav 
 ery question. The very majority which secured 
 Taylor s election professed to vote for him reluc 
 tantly and as a choice between two evils. We are 
 not now concerned with the absurdity of voting for 
 a slaveholder to restrain slavery, but only with the 
 ostensible motives which influenced a very large 
 number of voters. The motives which men pretend 
 for their conduct show clearly what public sentiment 
 is. So widely spread was the Anti-slavery feeling, 
 
C 55 3 
 
 and so exactly did the Buffalo Convention harmo 
 nize with the public sympathies, that even wary pol 
 iticians were for the moment staggered. Had the 
 election taken place in August, the result would 
 have been widely different. Three months gave 
 time for enthusiasm to subside, for old associations 
 to regain their hold, and for the whole disorgan 
 ized machinery of party to be repaired and set in 
 motion. 
 
 So much for the retarding effect of the Anti-slav 
 ery agitation at the North. At the South, if vio 
 lent opposition has been excited, it has been a mere 
 offset to equal violence on the other side. It has 
 arisen from the fact that the defenders of slavery 
 instinctively felt that their weakness was in their 
 own camp. How could what is in its own nature the 
 most unreasonable of institutions, be reasonably de 
 fended ? How could that which is founded on force 
 and fraud be gently and honestly supported? How 
 could the vilest of existing tyrannies find countenance 
 from any but the vilest arguments ? But it is said 
 that the condition of the slave has grown worse, and 
 that the laws against him have been made more 
 severe. If this were true, the lapse of eighteen 
 years, and the necessity of other injustices which 
 one injustice entails would be enough to account for 
 it. But it is not true. The efforts of the Aboli- 
 
C 56 3 
 
 tionists have drawn so much attention toward slav 
 ery, and their sentiments have found so much sym 
 pathy even in some of the Slave States themselves, 
 that every evil, cruelty and misery belonging to 
 the system has become painfully conspicuous. The 
 slaveholder in the remotest rice swamp of Florida 
 feels that the walls have eyes and ears. 
 
 The fanaticism of the Abolitionists has retarded 
 emancipation, just in the same way that Luther 
 retarded the Reformation. Considering the im 
 mense odds against which they have had to struggle, 
 they have brought about a revolution in a wonder 
 fully short space of time. It does not matter that 
 the advocates of emancipation in the Slave States 
 shrink from accepting the abolition doctrine in all 
 its length and breadth. However they may deny 
 all sympathy and connection with those whom it is 
 the fashion falsely to call advocates of violent meas 
 ures, it is no less plain that their strength is derived 
 from those very persons. It is these fanatics who 
 have put them in connection with the moral senti 
 ment of the whole world, and who make their op 
 ponents feel that behind them He encamped the 
 great moving forces which have given every forward 
 impulse to man. Along the slender wire of North 
 ern Anti-slavery the Southern Abolitionist receives 
 the inspiring influx of the religious sentiment, the 
 
C 57 3 
 
 love of freedom, and the humanity of entire Chris 
 tendom. Slavery has nothing behind it but the 
 sheer precipice, nothing before it but the inevitable 
 retributive Doom. 
 
GENERAL TAYLOR 
 
 T 
 
 HE long succession of Democratic rulers has at 
 length been broken. Mr. Polk has laid aside and 
 General Taylor has put on that striking likeness 
 of a kingly crown which our republican rulers are 
 permitted to wear. But, though an undoubted 
 change has taken place in the person of our chief 
 magistrate, and a presumed one in his political 
 principles, the Dynasty remains the same, and one 
 slaveholder has quietly taken the place of another 
 in the presidential chair. Whatever doubts there 
 may be with regard to some articles of the Consti 
 tution, it seems to be generally understood that there 
 exists somewhere in that august instrument a pro 
 vision settling the order of succession in the South 
 ern line. It is an instrument on which the politi 
 cian s cunning finger can play what stop he please 
 only it must be to a slaveholding tune. 
 
 As far as the North is concerned, General Tay 
 lor comes into office as the avowed opponent of the 
 extension of slavery. The assertions of the Whig 
 Press upon this point were unanimous throughout 
 
C 59 ] 
 
 the Free States, and here and there a fortunate gen 
 tleman carried in his pocket a letter from the Can 
 didate provisionally defining his position as Presi 
 dent. These letters the inteUigent voters of the 
 country were not permitted to see, and we have very 
 great doubts whether they will ever form part of 
 any collection which some future Sparks may make 
 of the writings of the second father of his country. 
 It was enough that they entirely satisfied the Anti- 
 slavery requirements of such original (highly ori 
 ginal) Abolitionists as Mr. Lawrence. It has been 
 an honor to that gentleman and a benefit to the 
 community that his pocket has not generally been 
 so retentive or so tightly buttoned as on this partic 
 ular occasion. 
 
 But General Taylor is the representative of the 
 Whig Party, and that party has hitherto been the 
 Anti-slavery party of the Country. It has battled 
 for the Right of Petition, and has elected such men 
 as John Quincy Adams, Giddings, and Palfrey. This 
 was to a certain extent true as long as the Whigs 
 stood in need of Anti-slavery aid, and thought that 
 aid worth bidding for. At that time not Garrison 
 himself could have been more bitter in denouncing 
 the unholy alliance between Northern Democracy 
 and Southern Patriarchalism. But this was the jeal 
 ousy of disappointed rivalry. The South, fickle in 
 
C 6o 3 
 
 everything but devotion to itself, and the Whig 
 Party, destitute of every principle but that of self- 
 preservation, have struck up a match. The Whigs, 
 compulsory renegades from Anti-slavery doctrines 
 which they never sincerely believed in, assail the 
 consistent men in their late party with all that blus 
 tering rancor with which renegades endeavor to be 
 wilder themselves out of the feeling of their own 
 self-contempt. Having caught their fish, they toss 
 regardlessly overboard the bait no longer fresh. 
 They would make an auto dafe of Giddings and 
 Palfrey if they had the power and the opportunity. 
 It would be laughable were it not disgusting to 
 read the diatribes of some of the editorial turn 
 coats. It is common to call such personages Bene 
 dict Arnolds and Judases. But the memory even of 
 traitors should be treated with justice. Arnold was 
 a man of ability, and Judas had so much right feel 
 ing left in him as to go and hang himself. We can 
 only say that if the Whig Party paid thirty pieces 
 of silver (even of the smallest denomination) for 
 some of these gentry, they paid a most unconscion 
 able price. 
 
 In speaking of parties, it is only just to make a 
 distinction between the leaders and the led. We 
 believe that the majority of the Whig Party at the 
 North have never been dissatisfied with anything 
 
C 6l 1 
 
 but the meagreness of the Anti-slavery diet allowed 
 them by their providers. But the masses of a party 
 are necessarily passive and not active politicians. 
 They are accustomed to order and subordination, 
 and to have their work cut out for them by the 
 comparatively few who make politics their profes 
 sion. Discipline is as necessary as in an army. 
 They obey orders without asking any questions. 
 The officers of this great voting militia are men who 
 embark in politics as in any other trade. In the 
 ordinary transactions of life they have morals as high 
 as the cis-penitentiary degree, enough, that is, to 
 keep them out of the State s Prison. But in politics 
 they make no scruple to lie, to bear false witness, to 
 forge, to obtain votes under false pretences. If suc 
 cessful, they enjoy a four years quiet to plunder 
 and to be forgotten in. At the end of that time, 
 the people are ready to be swindled and they to 
 swindle again. 
 
 The Whig managers have now fairly gone over 
 to the South and the party has instinctively followed. 
 We have gained a great victory, say the Managers, 
 but over whom or for what, the Party has as little 
 idea as the boy Peterkin in Southey s ballad ; over 
 the principles they have professed for the last ten 
 years, we should be inclined to say. The child who 
 goes for the first time to the wharf and sees the 
 
C 62 3 
 
 troop of urchins busy with their sticks at the bungs 
 of the molasses-hogsheads, says to himself why, 
 this is stealing ! But presently the impulse of gre- 
 gariousness seizes him. The sin, dissipated among 
 so many blithesome perpetrators, loses its intensity 
 and sharpness of outline. Divided among so many, 
 it becomes infinitesimal. Presently he takes a small 
 stick and, by and by, as long a one as he can get, 
 and is as busy as the rest. Still, he reserves to him 
 self a conscience, and regards as disreputable petty 
 larcenors those who transfer their luscious booty to 
 a kettle. These are the abstruser distinctions of 
 ethics. The Whigs saw the Democrats enjoying the 
 plunder won by base compliances with slavery. At 
 first they only remarked the compliance, but, ceas 
 ing gradually to be shocked at what they habitually 
 witnessed, they at last beheld nothing but the plun 
 der. 
 
 So far, then, from expecting any Anti-slavery 
 measures from the Whig Party, we shall be sur 
 prised if their movement be not henceforth decid 
 edly retrograde. They have taken the costly first 
 step. They have already undergone that initial 
 slump in the mire, after which one is careless about 
 picking his steps. The fact that General Taylor 
 has summoned to his cabinet as prime minister a 
 gentleman who, as senator, has proposed a compro- 
 
C 6 3 ] 
 
 mise on the question of slavery in the territories, 
 indicates the future policy of the administration. 
 It remains to be seen whether the hope of govern 
 ment patronage, and the desire of preserving the in 
 tegrity of the Party, will furnish the President with 
 a compliant House of Representatives. 
 
 General Taylor has all along professed his entire 
 unfitness for the office to which he has been pro 
 moted, and his unwillingness to ascend the danger 
 ous elevation of the Presidency. This petty affec 
 tation of coyness he has kept up even on his way to 
 Washington. It is like the nolo episcopari of a 
 bishop. He pointed out a log cabin on the banks 
 of the Ohio and informed his admiring hearers that 
 he would rather occupy that mansion than the White 
 House. It would be a matter of economy in Con 
 gress to make an appropriation for building him 
 such a dwelling at Washington. We confess that 
 this cant of the General has not tended to convince 
 us of that straightforward sense and frankness which 
 have been so liberally attributed to him. Our public 
 men are not so shy of the Presidency that it would 
 have been difficult to find another candidate if the 
 General had resolutely resisted. He reversed the 
 Irishman s bull, and, instead of being forced to vol 
 unteer, volunteered to be forced. 
 
 No augury of the President s future conduct can 
 
C 64 ] 
 
 be drawn from an inspection of the entrails of his 
 inaugural discourse. It has the merit of brevity, a 
 questionable one, after all, when it is not combined 
 with fulness of meaning. Major Bliss can express 
 himself with distinctness, witness some of his dis 
 patches to the War Department. The Whigs pro 
 fess to see in the address a reduction of the golden 
 age of the Republic, and cry with one accord redeunt 
 Saturnia regnal The General declares that he 
 shall be governed by the Constitution, and, where 
 there is doubt, that he shall follow the interpreta 
 tion of the earlier presidents, particularly Washing 
 ton. Where these guides are wanting he will sub 
 mit himself to the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 Unsafe pledges these in the matter of slavery. The 
 question of its extension had not arisen in Washing 
 ton s time, and a majority of the Supreme Judges 
 are slaveholders. As to the General s own opin 
 ions on the subject, we can only judge them by the 
 fact that he has extended the institution over some 
 thing like a hundred new victims since he became a 
 candidate for the Presidency. But we must wait 
 and see. An Inaugural Address is no safe criterion. 
 We have no doubt that the speech of his majesty 
 King Stork on ascending the throne of the frogs 
 was as liberal and as full of respect for the consti 
 tution as that of his predecessor King Log. 
 
MR. CLAY AS AN ABOLITION 
 ISTSECOND APPEARANCE IN 
 FIFTY YEARS 
 
 politics have presented no more singu 
 lar phenomenon than the popularity of Henry Clay. 
 As Napoleon seems to be the fashionable nickname 
 now, one being the Napoleon of Peace, another of 
 Finance, and a third of Magnetic Telegraphing, we 
 may call him the Napoleon of Defeat. He has 
 achieved more signal unsuccesses than any states 
 man in the country. His popularity has never 
 struck down any deep root into the heart of the 
 people. Old Hickory, who put a great deal of 
 straightforward sense into very crooked spelling ; 
 who hanged the Bank as he had hanged Ambrister 
 in Florida ; who bullied France, who dragooned South 
 Carolina, and swore by the Eternal now and then, 
 had a far stronger hold upon the masses because he 
 reflected them more truly. But Clay somehow con 
 jured an enthusiasm into merchants and cotton-spin 
 ners. He found, and had a way to set on fire the 
 hearts of Banks and Brokers Boards. Though a 
 VOL. n. 
 
C 66 3 
 
 slaveholder, uttering sentiments which would have 
 authorized his own chattels to cut his throat, he was 
 the idol of those whose enthusiasm for freedom is 
 multiplied by the square of the distance at which 
 the struggle for it takes place. Though not im 
 maculate in private character, he attracted to himself 
 the support of the religious classes. Bible, Tract, 
 Missionary, and Magdalen Societies were well-nigh 
 unanimous for him. Washington was the Jerusalem 
 and he the Godfrey of a new Crusade. Was not all 
 this because he was the genius of Compromises, of 
 middle courses, of blowing neither hot nor cold, 
 in short, of the American System ? Whatever the 
 cause, the loyalty to him has no parallel except in 
 the history of the House of Stuart. In this view it 
 becomes poetical. As a forlorn hope, as a devotion 
 to disinterested defeat, it has gained, here and there, 
 a recruit from a different order of minds. Whittier 
 addressed to him the most poetical of modern polit 
 ical verses. And even now, as Hogg wrote Jacob 
 ite songs after the last of the Stuarts had for years 
 been laid in his mockery tomb at Rome, Greeley turns 
 sadly away from the solid Rough and Ready pud 
 ding, to sup full of the east wind of long ago hope 
 less hopes, and to compose cold water dithyrambics 
 to the patriarch sitting over his wine at the St. 
 Charles Hotel. 
 
C 67 ] 
 
 The Whigs have at last grown weary of the at 
 tempt to make bricks without straw out of their .Clay. 
 The wreck of the great Western politician lies, a 
 weather-beaten beacon, upon the shoals of Compro 
 mise. Ships of larger rate and stouter timbers are 
 thumping there which might be got off by backing 
 the sails and throwing overboard a little constitu 
 tional ballast, which, among other disadvantages, 
 has the prime one of shifting. 
 
 Mr. Clay has been the most unpolitic of politi 
 cians. He has made, at best, only coasting voyages, 
 hugging the shore closely all the while. He has 
 never struck out into the open deep of great princi 
 ple, for his navigation is not by compass or by the 
 eternal stars, but like that of other fishermen who 
 venture in their own private dories, by certain land 
 marks on the shore, such, for example, as the White 
 House. A fog leaves him bewildered with a pair of 
 arms and oars, and his good or bad luck, as it may 
 happen. 
 
 Mr. Clay has in his time split as many hairs as 
 another, and, as Alexander ordered a bushel of pease 
 to the dexterous pea-shooter, the Whig Party, in 
 giving their will-o -the-wisp leader the mitten, should 
 have been careful that it was a hair one. His 
 philanthropy embraced all races, but embraced the 
 African with a difference that is, with a handcuff. 
 
C 68 3 
 
 He was a republican of the sternest pattern, but who 
 could conceive of a republican blacking his own 
 boots ? Indeed we think it would be hard to prove 
 that Cincinnatus, the favorite sample of that sort, 
 ever did anything of the kind. He was willing to 
 allow that slavery was a moral and political evil to 
 both master and slave, but were not his chattels fat 
 and sleek? He was opposed to the annexation of 
 Texas, but then, he was in favor of it. He was 
 torn by conflicting emotions. Northwardly he was 
 anti, southwardly he was pro. He was opposed to 
 the Mexican War, but would have relished slaugh 
 tering his private Mexican in a humble way. On 
 the question of the Wilmot Proviso, we suppose he 
 would be against the extension of slavery into new 
 territory, but would be in favor of allowing " South 
 ern gentlemen " to emigrate thither with their flocks 
 and herds. In reviewing his political life, what 
 great principle do we find that he was ever capable 
 of appreciating ? One, and only one that Henry 
 Clay of Kentucky ought to be the next President 
 of these United States. But unfortunately he has 
 always had a fancy that the Presidential Chair was 
 situated somewhere between two stools, and has ac 
 cordingly several times seated himself with an un 
 comfortable rapidity upon the floor. This mistake in 
 reckoning the locality of that desired object has mis- 
 
C 6 9 D 
 
 led others. It left General Cass lately with his heels 
 in the air. And yet General Taylor found it in that 
 very position and succeeded in sitting down in it. 
 
 We have said that the name of Mr. Clay comes up 
 to the mind associated with the advancement of no 
 great principle, of no interest that has bearings more 
 general than a locality or a class. It is true that he 
 was an advocate of Emancipation in Kentucky half 
 a century ago, and he tells in his recent letter that 
 his opinions have remained unchanged ever since. 
 That fifty years have wrought no advancement or 
 ripening of his ideas on this subject does not tend 
 to raise him in our minds as a statesman. But in 
 truth his views of slavery have never been those of 
 a statesman nor of a philanthropist. Statesmanlike 
 they could not be, for they were limited by the sup 
 posed interests of a single class and they have re 
 ceived no forward impulse and no expansion during 
 the period of more than an entire generation, a gen 
 eration which has accomplished more than any other 
 in the propagation of social and humanitary science. 
 Truly philanthropic they could not be, for they were 
 smothered by the pressure of a merely physical 
 majority. 
 
 The medical history of the human mind exhibits 
 many instances of sufficiently ludicrous hallucina 
 tions. Men have fancied themselves to be teapots, 
 
C 70 ] 
 
 junk-bottles, and what not. Lord Timothy Dexter 
 had a penchant for considering himself dead, and we 
 have known those who took it for granted that they 
 were alive with as little substantial foundation in 
 fact. But we have never met with any vagary of 
 mental assumption more preposterous than that Mr. 
 Clay should suppose himself an Abolitionist. 
 
 His letter reminds one of Governor Panza s din 
 ner in the island of Barataria. The preparations 
 for the meal seem satisfactory enough and we sit 
 down expecting a substantial repast. But, one by 
 one, the dishes are whisked away from us and we 
 are finally left to make such an arrangement with 
 our importunate appetites as the assets left to us in 
 the shape of knife, fork and napkins will admit of. 
 
 We have no complaint to make of the three or 
 four introductory paragraphs. Mr. Clay treats all 
 the nonsense about the benefits of slavery contempt 
 uously enough. But he immediately proceeds to 
 consider the question with sole reference to the pre 
 sumed advantage of the white race. He takes the 
 case out of the court of conscience where alone it 
 can be decided absolutely and without appeal, and 
 puts it at the mercy of the never ending litigation 
 of political economy. If there be no moral wrong 
 in the robbery of one half of the community by the 
 other half, the problem of the advantages of such a 
 
i: 71 3 
 
 system would meet with a very different solution 
 from each moiety respectively. But, if the system 
 be wicked, and unprofitable because that is one 
 necessary condition of wickedness, the chances of 
 prolonged debate are greatly lessened. 
 
 Even after taking it for granted that Emancipa 
 tion is for the interest of Kentucky, Mr. Clay humbly 
 concludes by saying that if the majority decide 
 against him, he shall submit. The majority of the 
 people of the United States has several times de 
 cided against Mr. Clay and yet he has shown no 
 bashful reluctance to being again a candidate. 
 " Pick your flint and try again " was his motto a 
 few years ago. Is a question which concerns an en 
 tire race to be given up more readily than the shadow 
 of a dream of a chance for the Presidency ? If the 
 majority be thus absolute in deciding what things 
 are right and what wrong, what office would insure 
 the throats of the masters in any state where the 
 slaves become numerically superior ? 
 
 The truth is that Mr. Clay s letter is disgraceful 
 to the community in which it is written. We admit 
 that deliberation should characterize the movements 
 of states, and such deliberation will necessarily, 
 without any precaution of ours, characterize the 
 movement of large masses of men living under a 
 long established social system, providing they are 
 
C v 2 n 
 
 begun early enough and are made in accordance 
 with the spirit of the age. For example, if the slaves 
 of Kentucky were liberated to-morrow and relieved 
 from every political disability, the question of their 
 position in the social order would settle itself by 
 the slow and gradual operation of natural causes. A 
 social wrong, based originally upon brute force and 
 perpetuated by it, may be reached and remedied by 
 legislation, and the sooner the better. Why wait 
 for the rust to eat handcuffs asunder, when there is 
 a key ready to unlock them ? We concede to Mr. 
 Clay that deliberation should characterize statesmen 
 no less than states. The rudder which determines 
 the direction of the intellectual or ethical advance 
 ment of any age may be behind it, as in a vessel, 
 but the steersman at the wheel in front, and with a 
 clear outlook forward. Mr. Clay s notion of the 
 duty of the man at the helm seems to be that he 
 should be keeping his balance astride of an empty 
 cask out of sight in the rear of the ship. 
 
 We shall not trouble ourselves with an analysis of 
 a document which all our readers will probably read 
 for themselves. The spirit of barbarism which dis 
 tinguishes it would alone be a sufficient argument 
 in condemnation of a system which could so blunt 
 the sensibilities of an originally fine nature and ob 
 scure the perceptions of a keen and quick intellect. 
 
C 73 ] 
 
 The Letter is valuable chiefly as a curiosity and 
 as a sign of the times. It is the unwilling creaking 
 of a rusty political weather-cock which begins to 
 feel the first indications of wind from a new quarter. 
 One thing is very certain. It is not of such mate 
 rial that reforms are made. Here is compromise out- 
 compromised, and terms offered to the Devil such 
 as he would not have dared to ask. Here is wrong 
 to be treated on the principle of similia similibus 
 curantur, but with no homoeopathic dose. The poor 
 slave, if he escape being sold out of the state, and 
 if he survive the thirty-nine years administration of 
 hairs of the dog that bit them prescribed by Mr. 
 Clay, is to be transported to a fever manufactory at 
 his own expense. 
 
 A man is drowning and Dr. Clay is called in. 
 The following is his prescription, " Take of 
 water (if distilled the better) enough to submerge 
 the patient. Keep him carefully sunk therein 
 thirty-nine hours, or more in proportion to the 
 length of time he has already been under water. 
 Then raise him carefully, attach a fifty-six pound 
 weight to each ankle, transport him to the middle 
 of the Atlantic Ocean (at his own expense), and 
 then drop him overboard. I think he will never 
 be liable to a recurrence of the complaint. 9 
 
SLAVEHOLDING TERRITORIES 
 
 JL HE German poet Schiller, in a little poem, the 
 humor of which is delightfully interpenetrated with 
 graver meaning, has imagined a new division of the 
 earth. Let us suppose such a partition to be once 
 more about to take place. A claimant comes for 
 ward and says, "I have invented and brought to 
 perfection the great doctrine of human freedom. 
 But, in order that freedom may be fully appreciated 
 (such is the weakness of human nature), a strong 
 contrast is necessary. Our light, that it may draw 
 the eyes of men, must have a background of dark 
 ness. Accordingly I have appropriated unto myself 
 the bodies and souls of one hundred of my bre 
 thren after the manner of thy servant Abraham. 
 These toil and spin for me to the end that I may 
 be even as a lily of the field, and that the desire of 
 other men to be like unto me may be increased. 
 These are the bushel whereupon the divine idea of 
 liberty being set in my unworthy person (an unde 
 serving candle) may give light to the whole world. 
 
i: 7.5 3 
 
 Without this system, pride, the habit of command, 
 the aversion from labor, and other virtuous charac 
 teristics of the Christian freeman could never be 
 brought to their fullest and healthiest activity in the 
 naturally wicked heart of man. Now the earth is 
 like a nursing mother and must herself be fed that 
 she may give sustenance to her children. But it is 
 one of the unfortunate contingencies of my system 
 that under its operation she soon becomes exhausted. 
 Therefore it is fitting that I should have a larger 
 proportion than my brethren, lest I and these my 
 menservants and maidservants should starve upon 
 the soil I have received from my fathers as a herit- 
 age." 
 
 The answer should doubtless be, " Who art thou 
 that I should be mindful of thee? Have I not 
 given the earth among all my children that they 
 should use it as not abusing it? Which of you 
 shall say he is a first-born son that his portion may 
 be double that of his brother ? Behold, I have made 
 the locust and the caterpillar. These I know, and 
 that they devour every green thing, making no 
 return for that which they have taken. Man also 
 have I made, but not as the locust and the caterpil 
 lar. Art thou a creeping thing that thou shouldst 
 blacken and desolate, or is it a good thing in thee 
 that thou shouldst make a desert where the garden 
 
C 76 3 
 
 now is? And what pratest thou of Abraham? 
 He also was good in his season. If thou seest thy 
 son, being a boy, tearing off the wings and legs of 
 flies, thou excusest him. Not so, being a man. 
 Neither shall the world s boyhood be for an example 
 to thee, nor shall Abraham stand between thee and 
 guiltiness toward thy brother." 
 
 We have stated the matter in this form simply 
 because it brings the enormity of it more palpably 
 before the mind. This was precisely the demand 
 which slavery made in regard to Texas, and obtained 
 all that it asked. It puts forward its claim again as 
 to the new territory, with a fair prospect of getting 
 half of it allowed. It is now spinning its web for 
 the larger prey of Cuba. 
 
 According to the cosmogony of the Singalese, the 
 earth itself was originally edible, and, without suf 
 fering diminution, afforded sustenance to the beings 
 that inhabited it. These, at first, held it contentedly 
 in common, but, after a time, the fear lest this mirac 
 ulous food should fail them, engendered selfishness 
 and the desire of private property. They therefore 
 parcelled out the earth among them, and from that 
 day it lost its property of food. Next, a kind of 
 grain was self -produced, which, without labor on the 
 part of men, supplied all their necessities. This again 
 was divided, and in consequence was taken away. 
 
C 77 ] 
 
 Thus by degrees the earth was brought to its present 
 condition, demanding constant toil to make it pro 
 ductive. 
 
 This is a pretty parable of the common right to 
 the soil, a doctrine the number of whose advocates 
 is increasing every day. Some sufficiently conser 
 vative political economists have given their assent 
 to it as an original principle, the gradual reproduc 
 tion of which in practice will remedy many of the 
 evils of our present civilization. The more limited 
 principle that the title to the soil is in him who can 
 most profitably use it is gaining a more general ad 
 mission. Something like it lies at the bottom of the 
 proposition which Sir Robert Peel has lately brought 
 forward in Parliament for bettering the condition of 
 Ireland, a scheme, by the way, advocated several 
 years ago by Mr. Richard D. Webb of Dublin. 
 
 Now, is it not wonderful that, with the experience 
 of the Old World before our eyes, we should for a 
 moment allow it to be a Debatable question, whether 
 slavery should be permitted, not only to defile, but 
 to blast a territory whose future destinies we may 
 shape as we please ? It is the merest folly to talk 
 of it as a constitutional question. The Constitution 
 has sins enough to answer for already. That which V 
 is palpable treason against God, man, and the nature 
 of things cannot be a question at all. According to 
 
C 78 3 
 
 our thinking, radicalism is not that system which, 
 like an over-hasty child, is continually pulling up 
 its plants to see if they be well rooted, but that 
 which takes good heed that the plant be originally 
 well set, and that it have every reasonable chance to 
 grow and thrive to afford fruit and shade to our 
 sons sons. 
 
 The terror which in the mind of Richter s 
 Schmelzle finally swallowed up all the rest, was lest 
 some chemist (as he had heard of the invention of 
 such a process) should suddenly extract all the oxygen 
 from the atmosphere of the earth. Slavery does liter 
 ally worse than this in the territory over which it ex 
 tends itself. Not only does it rob the moral atmos 
 phere of that oxygen which is necessary to the lungs 
 of free labor, but it also extracts from the soil itself 
 those nutritive properties which render it capable of 
 supporting life. Suppose the inhabitants of one of 
 our territories should apply to Congress for admis- 
 sion into the Union as a State, with a provision in 
 their Constitution binding them within a certain 
 number of years to reduce all the arable land within 
 their boundaries to the condition of the Desert of 
 Sahara. Would Congress entertain the petition for 
 a moment ? Yet these are virtually the terms upon 
 which a slaveholding territory would demand to be 
 admitted. It is mere nonsense to say that the people 
 
C 79 H 
 
 of a territory have a right to establish whatever 
 Constitution they please, provided it do not infringe 
 the Constitution of the United States. Is it, then, 
 a greater crime to violate the Constitution of the 
 United States than to violate the Constitution of the 
 Universe? We rather think that some of our pro 
 found Statesmen who have got the President s chair 
 in their eyes and so are unable to see that it is mor 
 ally wrong for man to blast and embrute God s chil 
 dren, would hesitate before they acknowledged the 
 rightfulness of deliberately blighting and laying 
 waste God s earth. 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY CRITICISM UPON 
 MR. CLAY S LETTER 
 
 J_T has not surprised us that Abolitionists should 
 be found fault with for not being entirely satisfied 
 with Mr. Clay s plan for emancipation in Kentucky. 
 It is generally expected of them that they should be 
 
 " Contented wi little 
 And cantie wi mair." 
 
 Nay, they are looked upon as peculiarly ungrateful 
 and impracticable (that is the favorite term) if they 
 do not devote their entire energies to soliciting 
 nothing, and express a thankfulness amounting 
 almost to rapture when they get it. For eighteen 
 years they have received their regular allowance of 
 it, have thriven and grown upon it, and their de 
 mand for an extra spoonful or two is received with 
 as much amazement as Oliver Twist s petition for 
 more. 
 
 That the Anti-slavery criticism of Mr. Clay s letter 
 should be blamed for severity was to be expected, but 
 we confess that the quarter from which some of the 
 
C 81 3 
 
 reproof has emanated has excited our amazement. 
 Abolitionists cried out against the scheme of the 
 Kentucky statesman as coldblooded, and as leaving 
 out of sight altogether the rights and wants of the 
 chief party to the act of emancipation. But the 
 " Tribune " defends Mr. Clay on the ground that mod 
 eration is the best policy and that he is better able 
 to judge how large a dose of freedom the Kentucky 
 stomach is at present able to bear. The patient is 
 on the verge of delirium tremens, and the " Tribune " 
 would not recommend total abstinence, but would 
 think it wiser for him to mix enough spirits with 
 his water just to kill the insects. 
 
 We take no one to task for inconsistency simply 
 as such. It depends entirely on the direction which 
 the inconsistency takes, whether it be glorious or 
 shameful. It is certainly no disgrace to a soldier to 
 be able to run swiftly. It is even a desirable accom 
 plishment. Swift-footed is Homer s favorite epithet 
 for Achilles. Yet in a battle (such are the prejudices 
 of education) our opinion of the soldier s merit is 
 entirely determined by the consideration whether he 
 exercised his pedal gift toward the enemy s lines 
 or away from them. So, when an inconsistency takes 
 a backward direction, we are inclined to look upon 
 it with suspicion. Mr. Greeley s enemies have been 
 in the habit of charging him with being under the 
 VOL. n. 
 
C 82 3 
 
 exclusive domination of the sign Capricorn, being 
 thereby impelled to butt violently against whatever 
 is constituted and established. Nevertheless, in the 
 matter of Slavery we think we find indications of 
 the influence of Cancer, the inspirer of retrogression. 
 If he be about to butt also against the Peculiar In 
 stitution, he runs backward so far to get a start that 
 we well-nigh lose sight of him altogether. We speak 
 of Mr. Greeley by name because he is identified (and 
 honorably so) with the " Tribune " and has given to 
 that paper its peculiar character. We intend no vio 
 lation of editorial decorums, nor shall we forget the 
 efficient service Mr. Greeley has rendered to the 
 cause of Progress, because we find his judgment in 
 some respects so entirely perverted. The Whig seems 
 now and then to slip down over his eyes. 
 
 Before alluding to matters of wider bearing, we 
 wish to say a few words upon a point of more exclu 
 sively individual interest. On several former occa 
 sions, as well as in connection with Mr. Clay s letter, 
 Mr. Greeley has taken the opportunity to indulge in 
 contemptuous expressions toward Garrison and those 
 who are nicknamed Garrisonians. That truly illustri 
 ous name needs no defence and no eulogium of ours. 
 It may be safely transmitted to the guardianship 
 of the Future. But that Mr. Greeley should charge 
 Garrison with fanaticism as a fault has, we confess, 
 
C 8 3 ] 
 
 been a matter of wonder to us. Why, God sent him 
 into the world with that special mission and none 
 other. It is his peculiar glory that he has fulfilled 
 it so entirely. It is that which will make his name a 
 part of our American history. We would not have 
 all men fanatics, but let us be devoutly thankful for 
 as many of that kind as we can get. They are by 
 no means too common as yet. Let us remember Dr. 
 Johnson s excellent advice, above all things to en 
 deavor to clear our minds of cant. And there is no 
 cant more foolish or more common than theirs who 
 under the mask of discretion, moderation, statesman 
 ship, and what not, would fain convict of fanaticism 
 all that transcends their own limits, and then abolish 
 it as dangerous to the body politic. From the zoo 
 phyte upward everything is ultra to something else. 
 And oddly enough Mr. Greeley owes his success to 
 the fact that the element of ultraism slightly pre 
 ponderates in his composition. Undoubtedly the 
 zoophyte taxes the barnacle with a rash activity, and 
 considers the framework of society endangered by 
 the unsettled notions of the periwinkle. The friends 
 of every class of Reform in America owe a debt to 
 Garrison, and in such matters there should be no 
 repudiation. Especially let not the butt end of the 
 wedge sneer at the ultraism of the entering part. 
 How does it happen that only abolitionists are 
 
[ 84 ] 
 
 charged with wanting moderation, and that slave- 
 holding is the one sin that is to be treated with 
 tenderness ? Is there then a scale of meritoriousness 
 in crimes? Mr. Greeley subscribed five hundred 
 dollars to assist insurrection in Ireland. We freely 
 admit that, if ever rebellion were justifiable, it was so 
 in that case. And why ? Because no plan of relief 
 was sufficiently radical, and because all of them 
 looked to the interests of the great landholders 
 rather than of the great body of the people who 
 were chiefly concerned. But let us apply here Mr. 
 Greeley s reasoning in regard to Kentucky. Surely 
 Lord Clarendon and the great landholders who were 
 on the spot could judge better than anybody else 
 what measures were most judicious and most likely 
 to have a salutary effect. If what the law makes pro 
 perty be property in Kentucky, why is it not so in New 
 York, and how will Mr. Greeley defend his anti-rent 
 doctrines? But perhaps a man s property in the 
 bodies and souls of his fellow citizens is more sacred 
 and indefeasible than his title to the soil. 
 
 We did not think that rebellion was the best 
 medicine for Ireland, nor should we recommend a 
 servile war as a cure for Kentucky. The cold-blood 
 cure is not to our fancy. But it seems to us that 
 Mr. Greeley was more nearly right in his Irish than 
 in his Kentucky prescription. In that case, at least, 
 
C 8 5 3 
 
 he followed the diagnosis of his heart. We humbly 
 conceive that, when justice is to be done, some por 
 tion of consideration and even of redress is due to 
 the injured party. The very same arguments are 
 brought against the Irishman and the African. He 
 is improvident, he is lazy, he cannot take care of 
 himself, he is creation s natural loafer. In short, 
 there is a wonderful sameness in the arguments of 
 oppression all the world over. 
 
 It is said that the Abolitionists, while they are 
 dissatisfied with the plans of everybody else, offer 
 no plan of their own. This is not to be complained 
 of in them, for it is the necessity of their position. 
 They are critics and not constructives, it is true, but 
 they are fulfilling their appointed destiny. Criticism 
 must precede construction. But, if ever there was 
 a case where criticism is the one thing needful, it is 
 in regard to American Slavery. Here is a case where 
 the primary laws of Nature are violated. All that is 
 necessary is that this violation should cease, and that 
 Nature, always organizing, always constructive, should 
 be left free to work a cure. A limb of the body 
 politic has fallen asleep. Remove the unnatural 
 pressure and the blood will circulate freely again. 
 The Abolitionist unquestionably is a bore. So was 
 the old Eoman with his Delenda est Carthago, his 
 old-fashioned protective tariff. But he carried his 
 
C 86 ] 
 
 point, and so will the Abolitionist. It is true that 
 the Abolitionist plan does not please the slaveholder. 
 Neither does the associative plan carry instant con 
 viction to the minds of the civilizees. But that is no 
 argument against either of them. 
 
 We ask again what claim the slaveholder has to 
 peculiar tenderness of treatment ? Is the holding of 
 slaves more innocent than the holding of locofoco 
 opinions ? Mr. Greeley can find it in his heart to 
 denounce that offence. Will denunciation convince 
 the one and only exasperate the other ? We agree 
 with Mr. Greeley that society needs a radical reor 
 ganization. Perhaps he thinks that Slavery is one of 
 those natural conditions in the progress of society 
 which natural progress will remove without inter 
 vention of ours. If society must go through all 
 these natural stages before it reaches that point of 
 disorganization where reorganization will be for the 
 first time possible, why oppose the introduction of 
 slavery into the new territory ? It cannot survive its 
 dissolution in older states. The plan of the Aboli 
 tionist, if it do not look to natural laws for the ex 
 tinction of the evil, is willing to trust to them for 
 the safety of society whenever its extinction can be 
 brought about. All that it asks is that these natural 
 laws shall be disentangled from the snarl of an odi 
 ous and fatal discord. 
 
C 87 ] 
 
 But, while Mr. Greeley seems to deny, at least by 
 implication, that the occasion for anti-slavery action 
 has yet arrived, he also impliedly admits that the 
 golden moment of opportunity is numbered some 
 where upon the dial of time. In noticing some Vir 
 ginian comments upon the letter of the " Tribune s " 
 Fairfax correspondent, Mr. Greeley says that " he 
 (the correspondent) is not disposed to act against 
 Slavery till the proper time comes." We quote from 
 memory, but with enough exactness, we believe, to 
 be guilty of no misrepresentation. Now, who is to 
 set the alarm of the clock at the fitting hour ? Mr. 
 Greeley was willing to take the word of Paddy as to 
 Ireland, will he consult Pomp as to Virginia? Or 
 must we leave it to Pomp s master? Those who 
 profit by any abuse are not apt to be in any particular 
 hurry about reform. Let us remember that stanza 
 of good Dr. Watts which we learned when we were 
 children, 
 
 " T is the voice of the sluggard ! 
 I hear him complain : 
 
 You have called me too soon ! 
 Let me slumber again." 
 
 We rather think this would be the answer Mr. Greeley 
 would receive from the slaveholder when, satisfied 
 that the " proper time has come," he comes forward 
 to shake him by the shoulder and arouse him to the 
 
C 88 3 
 
 exigencies of the occasion. The sauce to which the 
 Garrison has been treated would be liberally dis- 
 pensed to the Greeley also, or there is not so much 
 human nature in man as is generally suspected. But 
 then Mr. Greeley would doubtless have a plan. This 
 unquestionably would be a philosophical mode of 
 proceeding, but how are we to be sure that it will 
 suit the slaveholder ? We are tolerably confident 
 that it would not. The slaveholder, when Mr. Greeley 
 would politely request him to state what method 
 would be most consonant to his feelings, would an 
 swer, as did the " impracticable " boy whose mother 
 asked him what he would like for breakfast, " Just 
 what you ain t gut ! " 
 
 Mr. Greeley does not stop to enquire whether " the 
 proper time has come " to lament prostitution or to 
 rebuke bitterly the causes of it. He can denounce 
 land-monopoly and wages-slavery. Yet all these, as 
 well as African slavery, would naturally cease to exist 
 were society once reorganized upon a scientific basis. 
 The time to cry out against any popular sin has 
 come whenever God has sent a message to that effect 
 to any ardent and fearless soul. It is only Jonah 
 who turns back, and it is he also who gets thrown 
 overboard for his pains. If Mr. Greeley cannot unite 
 the Whig and the Reformer in his own person, it 
 does not necessarily follow that Abolitionism is the 
 
impracticable element which prevents fusion. The 
 Reformer must expect comparative isolation, and he 
 must be strong enough to bear it. He cannot look 
 for the sympathy and cooperation of popular majori 
 ties. Yet these are the tools of the politician. A 
 man can be a politician, and at the same time a re 
 former to a certain extent. He cannot be wholly 
 both, but he has his choice which he will cleave to 
 and which he will cast from him. It is for him to 
 judge whether of the two be the most valuable. 
 
 All true Reformers are incendiaries. But it is the 
 hearts, brains, and souls of their fellow-men which 
 they set on fire, and in so doing they perform the 
 function appropriated to them in the wise order of 
 Providence. 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 
 
 " It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary social revo 
 lutions which have taken place in England that revolution which in the 
 thirteenth century put an end to the tyranny of nation over nation, and 
 that revolution which a few generations later put an end to the property of 
 man in man were silently and imperceptibly effected. They struck eon- 
 temporary observers with no surprise, and have received from historians a 
 very scanty measure [sic !] of attention. They were brought about neither 
 by legislative regulation nor by physical force. Moral causes noiselessly 
 effaced, first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, and then the 
 distinction between master and slave. None can venture to fix the precise 
 moment at which either distinction ceased. Some faint traces of the old 
 Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in the fourteenth cen 
 tury. Some faint traces of the institution of villeinage were detected by 
 the curious so late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution 
 ever, to this hour, been abolished by statute ! " MACAULAY S History of 
 England. 
 
 the " Standard " of April 19th an article was 
 copied from the Louisville (Kentucky) "Journal," in 
 which the foregoing extract from Macaulay s history 
 is taken for a text, and the conclusion drawn from it 
 that Slavery in Kentucky were better left to itself 
 to perish by natural causes. Now, though we are 
 no friends to the material gallows, we do not think 
 that society has yet reached a stage where the moral 
 gibbet may safely be dispensed with. Great offend- 
 
C 91 3 
 
 ers against humanity must be hung up, as hawks 
 are nailed upon barn doors, for an example and warn 
 ing to their predaceous fellows. The newspaper is 
 the modern pillory and the amount of mud and the 
 quality of the eggs are matters of editorial taste. 
 The nineteenth century has shown nothing stronger 
 or more instructive than a French Emperor, the 
 emulator of Charlemagne, suing an English editor 
 for libel. The great statutes of humanity get passed 
 silently and suddenly. Sometimes it is only a poet 
 or two who compose the parliament. Hood held two 
 short sessions and laid the seducer and the needle 
 woman s employer under pains and penalties unheard 
 of before. In such cases the criminal pleads in 
 vain that he has done but what his fathers did before 
 him without hindrance, and that he was ignorant of 
 the law. Eob Koy s son without avail claims an 
 cestral prescription against hemp, and is brought to 
 the woodie in extreme bewilderment, and amid much 
 lamentation from the lovers of border romance. Sic 
 itur ad astra is the moral of Plutarch, but we want 
 not only finger-posts for the starry road, but warn 
 ing-boards to tell us what ways are unsafe. The in 
 vention of the newspaper has supplied the Jonathan 
 Wilds of the world with their unwished-f or Plutarch 
 also, who closes every column with a surly sic itur 
 ad patibulwn. 
 
C 93 3 
 
 History, it was long ago said, is philosophy teach 
 ing by example, but it is only those who have some 
 touch of philosophy in themselves who make apt 
 scholars in that High School. With most of us even 
 the a-b ab s have to be feruled in, lessons in one 
 syllable demand personal applications of the historic 
 birch, and a fresh breeching must go with every 
 added syllable to make it stick. After all, Common 
 Sense is as good a teacher as any. Every fresh gen 
 eration, like every fresh little boy, must be put to 
 school to its own experience. No histories of former 
 Tommies will avail to keep the new Tommy s fingers 
 out of the fire, a piece of wisdom which a live coal 
 will ineffaceably inculcate in a second. 
 
 Yet it is in such minor and personal prudences 
 only that History is good for anything as an in 
 structor. Human nature undoubtedly remains un 
 changed from age to age. But it is very question 
 able whether the height and the depth of it have 
 ever been wholly revealed in the conduct of affairs. 
 We are speaking of human nature as it has been illus 
 trated by nations and societies of men, not by the 
 individual. In this respect it has been constantly 
 working itself through a process of development and 
 disentanglement. The average has been rising from 
 generation to generation. Accordingly the relation 
 in which any people stands to history can never find 
 
C 93 3 
 
 an exact parallel or a guiding precedent in its own 
 failures or successes at a different epoch, or in those 
 of another people whose conduct has been shaped 
 and whose history has been imperceptibly deter 
 mined by the influence of social and religious ideas 
 clearly intelligible only to itself and upon the spot. 
 For example, the success of the American Revolu 
 tion, wrought by a people accustomed to self-gov 
 ernment, perplexed by no social problems, and scat 
 tered over a country where there was more work to 
 be done than hands to do it with, could afford to no 
 thinking man a base whereon to erect the horoscope 
 of the France of 1845. The noble Lamartine has 
 been sniffed at as a very French Washington. The 
 absurdity was in expecting the French to have a 
 Washington at all. Washington, the heroic flower 
 of Common Sense, was, intellectually and physically, 
 and by constitution and temperament, ordained to 
 the leadership of men of the English stock, a stock 
 the least of all influenced by its poets, or fitly repre 
 sented by them. Lamartine showed himself the man 
 for the occasion, and Washington did no more. In 
 the great Frenchman s case, it was not the man, but 
 the occasion that was less fortunate. Another in 
 stance is offered us in Hungary and Ireland. The 
 territorial position of the people of both countries 
 in relation to the central government is very similar. 
 
C 94 3 
 
 Hungary is also, to all intents and purposes, an 
 island. The people are without arms, and the armies, 
 the discipline, and the prestige of a powerful empire 
 are directed against them. Yet Ireland will not fur 
 nish the premises for a logical syllogism in regard 
 to Hungary. In short, there is no such thing as a 
 syntax of History. The verb signifying to reform 
 will require one case in one people or generation 
 and another in a different one. 
 
 To come back now more immediately to our text. 
 And let us say in advance how agreeable it is to 
 find a Southern editor who is willing to speak tem 
 perately and reasonably on the subject of Slavery, 
 who is desirous of drawing philosophical conclusions 
 (however unsuccessful he may be), and who is able 
 to speak of Garrison, not as a monster, but as a 
 legitimate product of the order of Nature. 
 
 Are there, then, any points of resemblance be 
 tween the causes which brought about the abolition 
 of villeinage in England and those which are in 
 operation against slavery in America ? Without 
 doubt there are, but they lead directly to conclu 
 sions which would not be particularly palatable to 
 the Kentucky editor. One thing is tolerably certain, 
 that the son of Zachary Macaulay (however unphilo- 
 sophic he may be in regard to Whig principles as 
 a panacea for all the social diseases of England) 
 
C 95 H 
 
 would never find in the history of Saxon enfran 
 chisement an excuse for the continuance of African 
 bondage. 
 
 Let us remember, at the outset, that, although the 
 social condition of Kentucky may find a parallel (it 
 self no very encouraging circumstance) in that of 
 England in the 13th century, the comparison, how 
 ever generally true, fails in particulars. That is a 
 sufficiently loose kind of reasoning which quietly 
 leaves six centuries out of the question. If we could 
 have supposed villeinage to have continued in a par 
 ticular county of England, after the progress of 
 ideas had indignantly expelled it from all the rest 
 of Christendom, the comparison would be more legit 
 imate. 
 
 The only safe argument that can be drawn from 
 the abolition of Slavery in England, and the fact 
 that it was accomplished silently and without leav 
 ing any scars, would tell in favor of the Kentucky 
 emancipationists and not of their opponents. If his 
 torical precedents are to be admitted at all, there 
 should be an exact coincidence in all particulars 
 (external and internal) between the ancient case and 
 the modern. In the present instance the precedent 
 settles one thing clearly, that slavery must be abol 
 ished in one way or another. The question is 
 whether the same natural causes are at work in both 
 
C 96 3 
 
 cases. If not, the moral of the three wise men of 
 Gotham might have been brought against Columbus 
 with unanswerable force. 
 
 One great "natural cause" was wanting then 
 which is in full activity now, a cause, which, by les 
 sening the chances of an appeal to brute force, in 
 creases the necessity of moral agitation. This is the 
 newspaper. Had this existed in England during the 
 time that the villein was struggling upward to the 
 ownership of himself, we should find traces enough 
 of violent fermentation. In truth the contest was a 
 long one between the feudal lord and his serf, and 
 the latter finally attained not his natural but his 
 legal rights, a resource from which the Kentucky 
 slave is wholly excluded. The Southern slave has 
 one remedy which the serf also frequently relied on, 
 namely, his legs, and the lawyers at last, by their 
 construction of the law, made recapture so expen 
 sive, harassing, and difficult an operation, that the 
 lords gave up all attempts at it. The abolition of 
 villeinage was in truth the fulcrum on which origi 
 nally rested that great lever of opinion which over 
 turned the African slave trade first, and then West 
 Indian slavery. The famous Somerset case was de 
 cided in accordance with English precedents of the 
 time of the abolition of villeinage, and so important 
 and close was the bearing of those precedents upon 
 
C 97 3 
 
 the case of African slavery that Granville Sharp wrote 
 a History of Villeinage and its abolition, that the 
 analogy of the two cases might influence the public 
 mind. 
 
 VOL. n. 
 
MOBS 
 
 JjJ_OBS as often wear velvet as fustian, and hard 
 words are as commonly their missiles as brickbats. 
 Wherever force and majorities are appealed to against 
 reason or right, there is a mob, whether led by an 
 anointed king or an unanointed Bynders. Anax- 
 agoras was mobbed by pagan, Galileo by Christian 
 priests ; Wordsworth by reviewers ; the Abolitionist 
 first by the populace, and since by editors. An in 
 vading army is only a mob organized and put into 
 regimentals. America, France, Austria, and England 
 in turn mob Mexico, Kome, Hungary, and India. 
 So clumsily have we managed matters hitherto ! 
 
 It is curious to observe who and what have been 
 subjects of mob law. The printing-press, the revolu 
 tion of the earth round the sun, the circulation of 
 the blood, the spinning-jenny. Indignant Marblehead 
 made a kind of Stephen of the Salem lawyer who 
 first displayed to them the ungraceful succinctness 
 of the spencer. Mr. Kaebuck, opening the first um 
 brella in England, was pelted with something harder 
 than raindrops. Shakespeare has Cinna threatened 
 
C 99 3 
 
 with tearing in pieces for his bad verses a terrible 
 but ineffectual example. Toward the close of the last 
 century, the London mob made as recognized a part 
 of every day s performance as the Chorus in the 
 Greek tragedy. They seem to have been enthusiastic 
 but rude practitioners of a primitive species of hy 
 dropathy. A douche under the pump, a plunge in 
 the Tower-ditch, and applications of mud in various 
 stages of dampness, seem to have made up the sum 
 of their simple pharmacopoeia. Their range of prac 
 tice was extensive, from the king to the pickpocket, 
 inclusive. A criminal, acquitted by the ordinary 
 courts, had still to pass the Rhadamanthine tribunal 
 of the mob. A ducking or a pelting formed the 
 colophon to the daily volume of nearly every public 
 performer s biography. " The MOB then took him 
 and proceeded to, etc. ; " this is the way in which 
 the "Annual Register" concludes its account of the 
 appearance of most actors on those perilous boards. 
 A deputation of periwig-makers waits upon the king 
 to desire his countenance in the present depressed 
 state of their trade. His majesty gives a gracious 
 answer, and the consoled artists withdraw with our 
 sincere sympathy. But it appears that two or three 
 of them have basely compromised their principles by 
 wearing their natural hair ! These the fate of Absa 
 lom is to overtake. Accordingly the MOB at once 
 
C 100 3 
 
 enters as retributive justice, seizes the renegades in 
 the very fact of trampling on their principles, and 
 puts them upon a severe course of ditchwater. 
 
 But of all the mobs of which we ever heard, the 
 late one in New York was the most causeless in its 
 inception and the most melancholy in its results. 
 The joke of a king, certainly not exceeding either in 
 point or delicacy the average of royal facetiae, once 
 brought fire and sword upon France. But this is not 
 so strange as that a theatrical criticism in the Lon 
 don " Examiner " should have occasioned the deaths 
 of twenty-one persons in Broadway. Are we to have 
 war between America and England because an Eng 
 lish critic does not happen to agree with the Bowery 
 " b hoys " in his estimate of Mr. Forrest ? Are Amer 
 icans to be prevented from hearing Macready because 
 Englishmen did not care about hearing Forrest? 
 We might apply to the mob the words of the strange 
 lady in " Christabel," - 
 
 " Vainly thou warrest, 
 For this is alone in 
 Thy power to declare : 
 That in the dim Forrest 
 Thou heard st a low moaning." 
 
 The Forrest was " dim " enough, beyond a doubt ; 
 but the moaning would have been in better taste 
 and more innocent if it had been lower. 
 
C 101 1 
 
 It has been judicially decided in England that an 
 actor is not protected by the usages of civilized soci 
 ety, that a person who enters a play-house gives up 
 his gentlemanly feeling with his ticket at the door, 
 and is at liberty to express his disapprobation of a 
 performer in any less emphatic way than tearing the 
 house down. We have always thought the position 
 of an unpopular actor peculiarly hard, a single man 
 at bay before a whole audience and subjected to 
 the grossest insults and indignities. It is the natu 
 ral impulse of right feeling to take sides with the 
 weaker party. If an actor be dull, the benches and 
 boxes will tell him of it soon enough in their quiet 
 way. We should have a terribly mauled and bat 
 tered community if all dull people were to be pelted. 
 There were particular reasons why Mr. Macready 
 should be sustained and protected. We leave en 
 tirely out of the question the fact that he is a scholar 
 and an artist, and that he bore himself with singular 
 forbearance and dignity under the gross insults of 
 Mr. Forrest. It is enough that he was a stranger 
 alone in a strange land. The question was not merely 
 one between two actors. If it had been, there was 
 no reason why justice should not be done. But it 
 was more : it was a matter of national fairness and 
 courtesy. 
 
 We did not intend to enter upon a controversy, 
 
which every reasonable person in the country has 
 already decided in favor of Mr. Macready. We in 
 tended to show that the Respectability of New York 
 had only itself to thank for the late dreadful occur 
 rences, and that the monster set at work fifteen years 
 ago with general applause to put down the Abolition 
 ists has returned to plague the inventors. The dis 
 graceful riots which took place in July, 1834, were 
 first instigated and afterward excused by some of 
 the leading journals of the city. After the first riot 
 (at the Chatham Street Chapel), the " Courier and 
 Enquirer " published the following paragraph : 
 
 " Learning that there is to be another meeting at 
 the Chatham Street Chapel to-night, we caution the 
 colored people of this city against attending it. No 
 one who saw the temper which prevailed last night 
 can doubt that if the blacks continue to allow them 
 selves to be made the tools of a few blind zealots, 
 the consequences to them will be most serious" 
 
 A few days after, the same paper, speaking of the 
 Abolitionists, says, 
 
 " When they openly and publicly promulgate 
 doctrines which outrage public feeling, they have no 
 right to demand protection from the people they 
 thus insult." 
 
 " On the whole, we trust the immediate Aboli 
 tionists and amalgamators will see in the proceedings 
 
C 1Q 3 3 
 
 of the last few days sufficient proof that the people 
 of New York have determined to prevent the propa 
 gation amongst them of their wicked and absurd 
 doctrines, much less to permit the practice of them. 
 If we have been instrumental in producing this 
 desirable state of public feeling, we take pride 
 in it." 
 
 This was after a brutal mob had had its own way 
 in the city for several nights, during which it had 
 entertained itself by sacking the houses of those 
 who happened to be obnoxious to it. Nor did those 
 journals which took the most decidedly the part of 
 law and order fail to attribute the chief blame in 
 the matter to the Abolitionists. Undoubtedly the 
 frogs were very much in fault because the boys 
 stoned them. 
 
 The other day we saw the remarkable phenomenon 
 of a mob-captain waiting on the Mayor and offering 
 him favorable terms of capitulation. " If Macready 
 performs to-night/ says the generous Rynders, con 
 fident in his superior forces, " there will be a riot. 
 But we will let you off if you will close the Opera 
 House. Trust yourself confidently to the magnani 
 mous forbearance of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail." 
 
 Now, in this case Rynders only made a logical 
 deduction from the premises of 1834. It is lawful 
 and praiseworthy to mob unpopular persons and 
 
C 
 
 things : Mr. Macready is an unpopular person, and 
 the Opera House an unpopular thing ; therefore we 
 may mob Mr. Macready and burn the Opera House. 
 How must the sensibilities of the brave Bynders 
 have been lacerated by finding the Opera House 
 open ! How must his humanity have been outraged 
 by finding it protected ! Nevertheless the path of 
 duty was clear enough. The obnoxious edifice must 
 be destroyed in tenderness to the feelings of the 
 people. Accordingly the attack was made under 
 leaders (perhaps) who had their military education 
 in the successful campaigns of 1834. 
 
 An investigation into the causes of the riot is 
 now going on in New York, and we hope that it 
 will be extended far enough back in point of time. 
 It would be a pity that so salutary an instance should 
 be lost of the evil influence of a press which encour 
 ages brutal violence in the lower ten thousand by 
 pandering to brutal prejudice in the upper. The 
 homely old proverb says that, as you make your 
 bed, so you must lie in it. If you educate mobs you 
 must expect to have them, and make up your mind 
 to consider them as a political engine not always 
 under exact control. 
 
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 
 
 T 
 
 wo years ago Pius IXth was the most popular 
 man in the world. Even the thrifty descendants of 
 Puritan ancestors paid their quarter-dollars for a 
 sight of his portrait. It was believed that, as former 
 great pontiffs had extended the spiritual dominion 
 of the Papacy by the arrogance of their claims and 
 the astuteness of their priestly Diplomacy, so he was 
 to render that ill-gotten ascendency permanent by 
 the policy of renunciation. Like the tradesman who 
 threw Fox s promises to pay into the fire, he seemed 
 inclined to elevate into debts of honor a portion of 
 those hereditary dues whose liquidation appeared 
 otherwise doubtful. 
 
 His career was watched anxiously by all Christen 
 dom. Particularly nervous was that large class of 
 Protestants who continue to do nothing but protest, 
 though the day has long since gone by when they 
 should have begun to assert. Their sole vocation 
 had been to expose the errors and denounce the en 
 croachments of Popery. As long as the Pope pushed 
 one way and they the other, they were sure of sup- 
 
C 
 
 port, but, if the opposing object were suddenly with 
 drawn, what was to hinder their falling flat upon 
 their faces ? Moreover, if the Pope of Kome were 
 overthrown, the claims of Protestant popelets who 
 domineer in single parishes might be too closely 
 scrutinized. 
 
 In spite of all that has since happened, we believe 
 that Pius IXth was sincere in his desire for reform. 
 But it was a hard thing to be at the same time 
 a Luther and a Pope, still harder to weld together 
 spiritual and temporal sovereignty. Even as head of 
 the Church his freedom was sufficiently circum 
 scribed, but as temporal prince he could scarcely 
 make a move without being checked by the wooden- 
 est pieces on the chess-board of Europe. He found 
 himself a compulsory fellow-conspirator with every 
 empty head that wore a crown, and with every base 
 heart that beat under royal purple. Italy was ready, 
 and needed but the introduction of one more ele 
 ment a great leader to crystallize into a distinct 
 nationality. It is not likely that Pius loved to see 
 his native land lying like a pearl beneath the sordid 
 hooves of Austrian swine, but the papal robes en 
 tangled his feet and denied him all freedom of mo 
 tion. There is no middle ground between good and 
 evil. The first backward step carries us across the 
 boundary line. This step Pius has taken. He who 
 
C 10 7 3 
 
 might have shown himself to be holder of the keys 
 by unlocking a glorious future to united and re 
 deemed Italy, chose rather to prove himself the repre 
 sentative of Peter by a too hasty appeal to the sword. 
 
 No motive of piety can be assigned for the attempt 
 to reinstate Pius in his temporal sovereignty. It is 
 not as head of the Church that Absolutism feels 
 any interest in him, but simply because it is not safe 
 that a single link should be broken out of that in 
 tolerable chain of hereditary privilege which binds 
 the nations of Europe hand and foot. A rupture in 
 one part loosens and lightens it in all. Absolutism 
 has a true etymological sense of the word Religion 
 and is resolved that it shall not depart from its ori 
 ginal signification of a binding again. 
 
 It is sad and strange that so entire an apathy 
 should be manifested in America to the movement 
 now going on in Europe, a movement so pregnant 
 with gigantic results that even the Reformation can 
 hardly be called the prelude to it, but only the tun 
 ing of the instruments. The peoples have at length 
 begun their exodus from the house of bondage. 
 There may be a passage through the Red Sea, and 
 after that a forty years wandering in the wilderness, 
 but we believe that the road to the land of promise 
 is found. There are everlasting principles working 
 at the bottom of the present commotions. Reform 
 
[ 108 ] 
 
 has become more than ever terrible to the selfish 
 Maintainers of whatever exists, because it has turned 
 practical in its radicalism. It will no longer content 
 itself with lopping here and there a limb from the 
 poisonous upas, but will grub up the widespread 
 root from which new suckers continually spring. 
 Anarchy and atheism were the mad-dog epithets with 
 which the first French Revolution was hunted down, 
 but it is found needful to invent the yet more terri 
 ble bugbear of socialism to demoralize the last. One 
 would think that the editors of English journals, 
 from whom the greater part of our own take their 
 cue, were disciples of Burritt from the horror they 
 express at armed insurrection. But armed suppres 
 sion is quite another matter. For our own part, 
 if arms are to be used at all, we had rather see them 
 employed to obtain rights than to maintain privi 
 leges. Not glory, not conquest, but only freedom 
 has ever sanctified the sword. 
 
 If a broken statue be dug up in the garden of an 
 Italian nobleman, the event shall be chronicled in 
 the newspapers of the whole civilized world. But 
 when heroic men have disinterred from the gathered 
 rubbish of ages the noble image of a Republic, of 
 a Republic, too, whose history is taught us before 
 that of our own country, it must be buried out of 
 sight again as quickly as possible. Even the absurd 
 
cool I Y \ 
 JJ 
 
 .^^? 
 
 libel that the Roman triumvirate had sold those 
 works of art which alone draw foreigners and their 
 gold to the eternal city, caused more execration a 
 thousand-fold than that the liberty of a nation should 
 be trampled to death by the army of a man who has 
 shown himself the equal of Bourbons in treachery 
 and incapacity, and their superior only in this 
 that he has been able to exorcise the unlaid ghost of 
 a great name by rendering it contemptible. So much 
 profounder a sentiment is our dilettantism than our 
 humanity. 
 
 History has hitherto been not so truly Philosophy 
 as Conservatism teaching by example. As yet the 
 people have been dumb, and the historian has writ 
 ten in the interest of the governing or conquering 
 class. Accordingly the cause of insurrections and 
 attempted revolutions has been sought in the natural 
 turbulence of the mob, in the inconstancy of the 
 popular mind, anywhere, indeed, but in the right 
 place. But the truth is that the people are always 
 politically consistent. Theirs is the consistency of 
 the needle in its loyalty to the pole. For, where 
 want is, there will desire be also, the strongest mo 
 tive of human action. It is all one whether the want 
 be of bread, of a free activity, or of recognition as 
 fellow-men. Bring into conjunction a ruler with an 
 empty head and a people with empty stomachs, and 
 
C no 3 
 
 you have the sure materials of popular explosion. 
 The people are singularly unexacting. The very 
 least modicum of concession will keep them quiet 
 for centuries. For theirs is always the largest share 
 of loss by an unsettled state of things, and their 
 gain from revolution comes slowly, if at all. It is 
 only intolerable grievances that can force those ac 
 customed to the endurance of authority to attempt 
 a change. Hitherto no populace has kicked from 
 waxing fat. 
 
 The Roman revolutionists have been denounced 
 as a bloodthirsty rabble who coerced the orderly 
 citizens by terror. This would be a priori an ab 
 surdity, even had it not appeared that no city could 
 be so vigorously and successfully defended except 
 by a unanimous people. It is a disgrace to America 
 that she is not represented at Rome by a man with 
 brain enough and heart enough to sympathize with 
 the struggles of a race in whom fifteen centuries of 
 bad government have not extinguished the memory 
 of a glorious past. Bishop Hughes says sneeringly 
 that the Roman Republic has been recognized only 
 by the " female plenipotentiary of the Tribune. 
 It is a pity that America could not be always as ade 
 quately represented. But Miss Fuller has not merely 
 contented herself with the comparatively cheap sym 
 pathy of words, though even brave words are much 
 
C i" 1 
 
 if spoken at the right time. We learn from private 
 letters that, the last American left in Rome, she was 
 doing duty in the hospitals as a nurse for the 
 wounded, thus performing also her mission as wo 
 man. Women have been sainted at Rome for less, 
 and the Bishop is welcome to his sneer. 
 
 We cannot too often repeat that it is slavery which 
 has benumbed the heart of the American people. 
 It is one chain which binds down the oppressed of 
 whatever race or complexion all over the world. As 
 long as we have our own private sham to maintain, 
 we are co-partners with all other speculators in sham 
 wherever they may be. Nicholas and Calhoun are 
 in precisely the same category. We cannot encour 
 age resistance against the one without stimulating 
 it also against the other. But it is impossible for us 
 to be allies of the oppressed and the oppressors at 
 the same time, so we judiciously present our com 
 pliments to the strongest. 
 
FOURTH OF JULY IN 
 CHARLESTON 
 
 T 
 
 HE fourth of July is an anniversary which well 
 deserves commemoration. On that day ideas which 
 had hitherto been considered as the waking dreams 
 of scholars, beautiful inutilities like the metallic trees 
 of boy chemists, were first recognized as principles, 
 and embodied in the political creed of a nation. 
 Yet even these ideas were not practically but only 
 theoretically received. This was one of those rare 
 occasions when a whole people, inspired by the re 
 sentment of a common injury and the sympathy of 
 a common struggle, rose for a moment above the 
 plane of circumstances into that of the ideal. In 
 the Declaration of Independence was embodied the 
 youthful aspiration of America. What Goethe said 
 of the individual is true also of the nation that 
 there is no hope for it when it has ceased to rever 
 ence the dreams of its youth. 
 
 In view of the course which events have since 
 taken, perhaps we ought to look upon the Declara 
 tion rather in the light of a vow made during peril 
 of shipwreck, or a sick-bed resolution of virtue. 
 
n us 3 
 
 " When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be ; 
 When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he." 
 
 But, however this may be, it will be worth our while 
 to see how the Fourth of July was celebrated in 
 some parts of our Confederacy. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that South Carolina 
 would permit so fine an opportunity for fustian to 
 pass by unimproved, or that she would be content 
 with any ordinary way of expressing her patriotism. 
 Her position among her sister states is somewhat 
 like that of Lord Brougham in the English house of 
 peers. No one denies that she possesses many bril 
 liant qualities, nor questions her fatal facility in ren 
 dering herself ridiculous. To the true South Caro 
 linian, Charleston is a metropolis to which the rest 
 of the world stands in the relation of a dependent 
 suburb. The view which such a city takes of con 
 temporaneous history is accordingly of considerable 
 (not to say of the first) importance. 
 
 A celebration of this kind would of course be in 
 complete without an oration. In the present instance 
 we have not only an oration, but one pronounced by 
 no less a personage than a General. This in itself 
 may be considered as a circumstance of some sig 
 nificance, since the post is generally conceded to a 
 civilian, and affords the young politician an oppor 
 tunity to fly the American eagle for the first time. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
C "4 3 
 
 The following is the sketch which the Charleston 
 " Mercury " gives us of the General s discourse : 
 
 " Looking beneath the surface of historical events to the hid 
 den causes, perceptible only to the eye of the philosophical reader 
 of history, the orator traced the causes of the American Revolu 
 tion far back into the history of Europe, and proceeded to show 
 the successive development and progress of the Democratic prin 
 ciple ; the various modifications to which it has been subjected 
 by the varying circumstances under which it has been brought 
 into action ; the checks and safeguards necessary in the circum 
 stances or character of a people to prevent its excesses ; its more 
 recent progress in Europe, and the causes which have produced 
 the tendency there exhibited to perversion and abuse ; the causes 
 now in operation and daily increasing in the Northern States of 
 this Union, destined ultimately to prove fatal to free institutions ; 
 the superior adaptation of Southern institutions to produce and 
 preserve that conservatism absolutely essential, under Repub 
 lican forms of Government, to well regulated liberty ; the grad 
 ual progress and present threatening aspect of the slavery ques 
 tion, and the utter hopeless and universal ruin which must 
 overtake the South if it be not arrested ; the immeasurably su 
 perior importance of the preservation of our institutions to the 
 preservation of the Union. These, and other positions, the orator 
 illustrated and enforced with masterly ability, and concluded by 
 an eloquent appeal to the South to rally in defence of her dear 
 est rights, her interests, and her honor." 
 
 We do not know how far back in the history of 
 Europe the orator traced the causes of the Ameri 
 can Revolution, but it seems to us it would have 
 been more philosophical to have looked for its origin 
 
C "5 ] 
 
 in the nature of man. The events of history are not 
 causes but results, and those of modern European 
 history are the results of a movement of the general 
 mind tending steadily in one direction. If the Gen 
 eral has looked deep enough to discover that the 
 sacrifice of one class in society to the luxury of an 
 other has ever been the conservative element of social 
 organization, his philosophic eye must have pene 
 trated to the very mud at the bottom, where theory 
 is an easier process than accurate investigation. 
 The great landmarks of Christian history show as 
 distinctly the lines which indicate the successive sub 
 sidences of Privilege as the surface of the earth 
 does those of ancient sea-levels. No system of gov 
 ernment can be secure which has not for its founda 
 tion the satisfied intelligence of the governed. Dark 
 ness, however it may sometimes be called solid by 
 the poets, is not the safest basis of political institu 
 tions. A crude idea of Partnership, becoming ever 
 more and more distinct, may be traced through all 
 the varying phases of the social state. Intellect and 
 personal courage, in proportion as these were neces 
 sary in the ruder ages to foster and defend that in 
 dustry to which all communities have owed their 
 permanent well-being, were allowed to draw a larger 
 proportion of the profits. Hence aristocracies, whose 
 lion s share was not disputed as long as they con- 
 
tributed their share of mental and physical capital 
 to the common stock. But as the average of the 
 popular intelligence gradually became higher and 
 higher, a readjustment of the terms of the partner 
 ship became necessary, and the middle class, an aris 
 tocracy of wealth, came into being. More recently, 
 Labor, which no longer feels the need of protection, 
 and which has learned that it creates capital but is 
 not created by it, has begun to demand a new set 
 tlement, in which its claims shall be duly regarded. 
 Our Carolinian orator seems unconscious that there 
 is such a thing as an anachronism, and that slavery 
 is an eminent one. Men talk very sagaciously of 
 this, that, and the other thing as the conservative 
 element of society. In England it is the Church or 
 the House of Lords, in America generally it is the 
 Senate, in South Carolina it is Slavery. But this is 
 all the merest gabble. There is no conservatism for 
 society short of the perfection of social order. One 
 might as well hope to put out Hecla with a candle- 
 extinguisher as to repress the natural aspirations of 
 man toward a juster and more perfect organization 
 of society by any such temporary makeshifts. The 
 only conservatism to be depended upon must be a 
 system as harmonious and as subject to eternal prin 
 ciples as that of the planets. All that will be ne 
 cessary will be to allow the laws of social gravitation 
 
C 117 ] 
 
 to act unimpeded. It may be presumptuous in us 
 to argue with a General, but we would suggest to 
 him that it is a singular conservative principle which 
 itself requires to be conserved, and which by the 
 operation of natural and irresistible causes is brought 
 every year nearer and nearer to the point of explo 
 sion. That is an expensive species of industry, and 
 conservative only in some sense hitherto unrecog 
 nized, which uses up territory, instead of rendering 
 it more productive, and whose motive power is the 
 cart whip. We are afraid, after all, that the most 
 sensible thing uttered at the Charleston celebration 
 was the following toast offered by a Mr. Clark, 
 
 " South Carolina and her institutions, if the rest 
 of the world go crazy." 
 
 We confess our sincere belief that this melancholy 
 contingency of universal bedlam will be the only one 
 in which the institutions referred to will have any 
 chance of security. If the rest of the world go 
 crazy, there will be nothing peculiar about South 
 Carolina. 
 
 It is certainly a singular circumstance that the 
 Fourth of July should be selected for the delivery 
 of an oration in defence of slavery. There is some 
 thing melancholy in it, mingled with a strong sense 
 of the ludicrous. For example, " Edwin De Leon, 
 Esq., editor of the Telegraph/ " gives the following 
 
1 118 3 
 
 toast, " The Southern Address, the first step 
 toward a second Declaration of Independence." 
 Fancy a " second Declaration" beginning "All men 
 are not born free and equal " ! Indeed, so great is 
 the repugnance felt in South Carolina toward that 
 famous sentiment of initial equality that we should 
 not be surprised at a document commencing with 
 the assertion that some men are not born at all, a 
 theory at which Mr. Calhoun more than hinted in 
 his address, a production which came as near not 
 being born at all as anything we ever heard of. 
 One other toast is worth quoting. It is by " Dr. 
 J. H. Morgan." " Resistance to aggressions upon 
 Southern rights by the whole South if it will ; but 
 by South Carolina anyhow, at all hazards, and to the 
 last extremity." This in a city which, as our readers 
 saw last week, was thrown into a tremble by the es 
 cape of twenty unarmed negroes from the workhouse ! 
 Why, if the protection of the United States were 
 withdrawn, the city of Charleston might be bom 
 barded by a squadron of oyster-boats. 
 
MODERATION 
 
 J_ HE old fable of the bat who would be at the same 
 time both bird and beast, and who ended by being 1 
 neither, is unconsciously illustrated every day by 
 very excellent persons. They flit about in that ves- 
 pertinal region through which light fades by imper 
 ceptible degrees into darkness, gently reprehending 
 the culpable extremes of noontide and midnight. 
 They take mediocrity to be the happy mean of life, 
 and by the silent example of their twilight virtue, 
 convict both the eagle and the owl of an unwise ex 
 cess. We do not accuse persons of this stamp of a 
 conscious hypocrisy : we will only say that they mis 
 take prudence for philosophy and respectability for 
 virtue. 
 
 We wish to make a few comments upon an article 
 by Dr. Peabody, of Boston, in the July number of the 
 " Christian Examiner." We doubt not that in writ 
 ing it he was actuated by sincere motives, and we 
 should not have thought it worth while to call atten 
 tion to it, had we not seen it noticed as a model of 
 philosophical reasoning. We admire as much as any 
 
C 12 3 
 
 one can that profound and kindly insight which can 
 see the soul of goodness in things evil, but we think 
 that one buys equilibrium of mind at a dear rate 
 when he is fain to keep the balance poised by seek 
 ing only the soul of evil in things good to put in the 
 other scale. 
 
 There is no more pernicious cant than this of 
 moderation, no opiate which is at once so agreeable 
 and so stupefying to the conscience. After reading 
 such an article as this of Dr. Peabody s we are in 
 clined to ask ourselves Are there no such things, 
 then, as positive Eight and positive Wrong ? and 
 does wisdom occupy a middle ground between the 
 two? It does not touch the question at all to say 
 that there are slaveholders who are pious, benevo 
 lent, kind-hearted, and the like. Granting that there 
 are, it is clear enough that, quoad their slavehold- 
 ing, they are none of these things. They are apt to 
 think a particular course of conduct wise and pru 
 dent in proportion as it is convenient, and in the 
 present condition of our politics and religion it is 
 exceedingly convenient to sympathize with the 
 wrongs and sufferings of the two hundred and fifty 
 thousand slaveholders at the expense of the three 
 million slaves. With our present light we are unable 
 to see how a minister of Christ can make out the mas 
 ter to be any more his brother than the bondman. 
 
C 121 j 
 
 Dr. Peabody closes one of his paragraphs with a 
 pretty sort of antithesis about " a philanthropy which 
 goes far enough to be indignant, but which will not 
 take the trouble to be just." But are not indigna 
 tion and justice sometimes at one ? And this broad 
 mantle of the Doctor s charity which he stretches 
 over the Slaveholder, could he not have pieced it out 
 so that it would have covered the Abolitionist also ? 
 Yes, very clearly, it is hard to be just. If Dr. Pea- 
 body can read Theodore D. Weld s " Slavery as It 
 is" without feeling indignation, the boiling point 
 of his blood must be at a vastly higher mark than 
 that of most. When he will show us a reform that 
 has been carried on without enthusiasm, we will on 
 our part do the hardest thing we know of we will 
 find an article on the Anti-slavery movement writ 
 ten by a Northern clergyman, the staple of which is 
 not a conscious or unconscious justification of the 
 writer s apathy or opposition. God makes fanatics 
 as well as philosophers. Every man has his particu 
 lar functions to perform, and is more or less of a 
 nuisance until he has found out what he can do and 
 [has] done it. We see no good that can come of 
 telling people that fanatics are fanatical. You may 
 drive out the wasp that flies in at your study-win 
 dow a hundred times, but she will come back again 
 prying into every gimlet-hole till she has got quit 
 
C 122 3 
 
 of the last egg which it is her duty to lay. We pre 
 sume that Dr. Peabody never reads the Prophets 
 to his congregation. We mean no disrespect either 
 to him or his profession when we say that nature 
 puts something more (fire, or whatever it be) into 
 the reformers than she expends in the composition of 
 her Doctors of Divinity. For ourselves we can toler 
 ate both these classes, and we suggest to Dr. Pea- 
 body that, if he were fitting out a vessel which was 
 meant to go, he would not rig her exclusively with 
 anchors and ballast. He would reconcile himself, we 
 fancy, to the somewhat violent persuasion of canvas, 
 or even to the fiercer enthusiasm of steam. 
 
 Against Dr. Peabody we will quote the excellent 
 Dr. Jostin, certainly a moderate man and with 
 nothing of the zealot in him. " A reformation," 
 he says, " is seldom carried on without a heat and 
 a vehemence which borders on enthusiasm, and, as 
 Cicero has observed that there never was a great 
 man sine afflatu divino, so in times of religious con 
 tests, there seldom was a man very zealous for lib 
 erty, civil and evangelical, and a declared and active 
 enemy to insolent tyranny, blind superstition, polit 
 ical godliness, bigotry, and pious fraud, who had not 
 a fervency of zeal which led him on some occasions 
 somewhat beyond the bounds of temperate reason." 
 Now Mr. Peabody is not unwilling that there should 
 
C 12 3 H 
 
 be Anti-slavery feeling at the North, and a judicious 
 expression of it ; all that he desires is that the reform 
 should be carried on so as to exclude the reformers 
 from any share in it. He even undertakes to show 
 that those who express themselves most strongly feel 
 the least interest in the subject. He says, as Cole 
 ridge had said before him, that men speak calmly 
 when they are most deeply interested. But he lacks 
 that fitness and fervour of illustration which Cole 
 ridge brought to the succour of his theories. Dr. 
 Peabody cites to us the example of a merchant who 
 will talk violently of politics, but subsides at once to 
 plain matter of fact when trade is introduced. The 
 only difficulty about this comparison of the merchant 
 with the reformer is that there is not even the ap 
 pearance of parallelism. Neither politics nor trade 
 appeals to the highest nature of man. Ask Garrison 
 how much two and two make and he will not tell 
 you twenty, ask him how many slaves there are and 
 he will not multiply the real number by a thousand. 
 But tell him some story of wrong and suffering, and 
 the fervidness of his nature will multiply the impres 
 sion of it a thousandfold. No, Dr. Peabody cannot 
 have his cake and eat it, any more than the rest of 
 us. He cannot have reformers with milk and water 
 in their veins. All deacons are goody says the 
 Yankee proverb, but there s a difference in deacons. 
 
c 
 
 The rule which governs deacons a fortiori includes 
 the humbler orders of mankind. "What is the 
 reason/ said Gargantua, "that Friar John hath 
 such a goodly nose ? " " Because/ said Grangou- 
 sier, " that God would have it so, who frameth us 
 in such form and to such end as is most agreeable 
 to his divine will, even as a potter fashioneth his 
 vessels." We are not more fond of violence or ex 
 travagance than Dr. Peabody, but we endeavour 
 to reconcile ourselves to the operations of Provi 
 dence, tolerably well convinced that the world is as 
 well peopled in the average, as if we could have had 
 the pleasure of having all men made in our image. 
 
 Dr. Peabody censures the fire and enthusiasm of 
 Douglass, but gently and with an evident sympathy 
 for the man. It is his associates, he thinks, who 
 have corrupted him. We have a suspicion that if 
 Dr. Peabody had seen his own sister whipped, the 
 King s Chapel on the next Sunday would echo with 
 an entirely unwonted kind of preaching. It is evi 
 dently the Garrisonians that he has no bowels for. 
 He indulges in a sneer at them (a temperate and 
 judicious kind of sneer) as " gentlemen of ease " 
 who make speeches in Faneuil Hall. We rather 
 think that even now it is easier to preach at King s 
 Chapel than to make Anti-slavery speeches in Fan 
 euil Hall, and we doubt whether Dr. Peabody would 
 find it easy to make one of Wendell Phillips s 
 
c 
 
 speeches anywhere. Must Dr. Peabody live in a 
 Broad-street cellar before he could venture to speak 
 of poverty in Boston without being silenced as a 
 " gentleman of ease " ? It is not easy, God knows 
 it is hard enough, to have a hope and a faith whose 
 triumph depends on the conversion of many mil 
 lions of people continually backsliding, continually 
 taking the evil for the good, absorbed in the world 
 and its cares. 
 
 However Dr. Peabody may understand the influ 
 ence of the Abolitionists, it is very clear that but 
 for them he would never have written such an article 
 in the " Examiner." He remains at anchor, it is true, 
 but the tide has turned, and, without his knowing it, 
 he has swung round to the length of his hawser. He 
 is subject to the human weakness of not being will 
 ing to acknowledge the source of his change of opin 
 ion. In a few years the tide will set strongly enough 
 to make him drag his anchor a little and get still 
 farther down the stream. In a few years he may be 
 willing to acknowledge some merit in the men who 
 are nearly as violent as Luther, and who have formed 
 their style by the Hebrew prophets. We could not 
 avoid the conclusion in reading his article, that the 
 author of it had voted for Taylor. If this be so, it 
 is to be viewed rather as a sort of apologetic defence 
 of that act than as an expression of opinion un 
 biassed by the writer s position. 
 
CRITICISM AND ABUSE 
 
 o 
 
 UR readers have had, from time to time, the 
 privilege of seeing extracts from Southern news 
 papers directly referring to the " Standard." Most 
 of these, we are sorry to say, have not been so com 
 mendatory as even a moderate self-esteem might have 
 desired. Indeed many of them have been so childish 
 that we are almost inclined to believe that the foun 
 tain of youth does really bubble up somewhere in 
 the South, and that some of our editorial brethren 
 there have drunk a little too much of it. 
 
 One of these reciprocations of courtesy had cer 
 tainly the charm of being pithy and to the point. 
 We are sorry that so forcible a writer should refuse 
 us a periodical sight of his lucubrations. 
 " You and your paper be damned ! " 
 We have no clew to the authorship of this elo 
 quent denunciation, but we have a fancy that it 
 came from the editor of a religious paper. People 
 of that class are uncommonly fond of these sulphur 
 ous haruspications, and it must have been a special 
 relish to the author of this compact refutation of 
 
C 
 
 Abolitionism to encounter an adversary with whom 
 no formalities need be observed, and who could be 
 treated at once to the marrow of all theological con 
 troversy. We shall give the destiny which he re 
 commends a proper amount of consideration. His 
 including the " Standard " in the anathema would 
 seem to indicate that he attributes a soul to it, 
 which, as newspapers go, may be reckoned no small 
 compliment. 
 
 We had no idea that we were such terrible fel 
 lows. To be sure, we knew before that we were 
 incendiaries, but we have been taught to believe 
 that it was the happy and contented peasantry who 
 made up the combustible and explosive matter of 
 the Southern Social System. However, it seems to 
 be the editors whom we have touched off, and they 
 very naturally treat us to a blowing-up in return. 
 We have never had any doubt that Anti-slavery was 
 more than a match for them, but we should like to 
 know whether any of them rubbed the " Standard " 
 against a piece of sand-paper to see if it would 
 ignite. 
 
 We wonder if the keeper of a powder magazine 
 ever gets to look upon ah 1 his fellow citizens who 
 wear iron nails in their shoes as incendiaries ? if he 
 considers flint and steel as inventions of the enemy 
 of man, and the lightning, that ever busy scavenger 
 
c 12 : 
 
 of the aerial highways, as a personal injury ? Such, 
 at any rate, seems to be the mental condition at 
 which our Southern friends have arrived. Though 
 they profess to live in a house of such asbestic qual 
 ity as might defy the final conflagration, they are in 
 such constant dread of fire that Mr. Calhoun has even 
 attempted to put out the sun with a four-ounce squirt. 
 The contradictions in which the advocates and 
 apologists of slavery involve themselves are certainly 
 diverting. According to these more voluble than 
 logical persons, the Abolitionists are retarding the 
 progress of emancipation. Yet it is these very co- 
 workers whom the Perpetualists would crush at all 
 hazards. Nothing, not even invasion, could induce 
 a servile revolt, and yet the mails must be robbed 
 lest a stray eopy of an Anti-slavery journal should 
 fall into the hands of a wretched helot who could as 
 easily read the inscriptions of Nimrud. We have 
 before us the Southern " Quarterly Review " for July, 
 1849, containing an article upon Elwood Fisher s 
 notorious pamphlet. From this we propose to cull 
 an extract or two for the amusement of our readers. 
 It is written in an argumentative tone, keeps toler 
 ably clear of declamation, and is wholly free from 
 that vulgar and snobbish manner of alluding to the 
 North which is a too common characteristic of 
 Southern literature. 
 
Considered as a plea in favor of Slavery (even if 
 we admitted the accuracy of the preposterous statis 
 tics on which it is based) it is entirely aside from the 
 point at issue. The question of Slavery is not a 
 sectional or political one, nor can it be determined 
 by an array of figures, still less by such a FalstafTs 
 regiment of statistics as those at the head of which 
 Mr. Fisher has been sent to Coventry by all honest 
 men. It is not a squabble of emulous provincialisms, 
 nor a party expediency. It is a matter of ethics, 
 which includes statistics (because prosperity de 
 pends always at last upon righteousness), but which 
 cannot be included by them. We are quite willing 
 that our reviewer should prove to his own satisfac 
 tion that the South is richer, wiser, stronger, and 
 more religious than the North. Nay, we are only 
 amused when another writer in the same number of 
 the " Keview " (who confesses with singular hon 
 esty that "it is impossible for any man to learn to 
 talk like a gentleman but by being bred among 
 gentlemen ") tells us that the English language is 
 only spoken in its purity to the south of Mason 
 and Dixon s line. This is written and published in a 
 city whose leading men are of French or Scotch de 
 scent, and printed in a journal which does not know 
 the difference between " shall " and " will." 
 
 We did not suppose that even a gudgeon could be 
 VOL. n. 
 
[ ISO 3 
 
 found anywhere who would so much as nibble at 
 the palpably artificial bait with which our Fisher 
 decorates the ends of his lines. Our simple-minded 
 reviewer evidently has his suspicions. He swims 
 around every surprising " fact/ sniffs at it, and says 
 doubtfully once or twice, " if this be true." He has 
 evidently a faint and far-off consciousness that this 
 consideration is of some import. But presently he 
 remembers that there is a gudgeon-public waiting 
 for its quarterly dividend of flummery, and so makes 
 a bold gulp. Yet he cannot help murmuring plain 
 tively to himself, as Mr. Fisher furnishes him with 
 " fact " after " fact," if this be true ! A melan 
 choly reflection after supping so luxuriously at this 
 Barmecide table, whether one has got nothing but 
 east wind in his belly after all. 
 
 After demonstrating that the " peculiar form of 
 civilization " at the South is the very best and hap 
 piest for both master and slave, our reviewer glances 
 hastily at the risk of insurrection. But how is this ? 
 Is there a man anywhere who cannot tell on which 
 side his bread is buttered, when it is spread thickly 
 on both ? In Sheridan s " Critic," Father Thames 
 makes his entrance at the rehearsal with both his 
 banks on one side. Our author is clearly a little 
 puzzled by finding his " facts " in the same position. 
 But instead of rectifying the error like Mr. Puff, 
 
C isi 3 
 
 and making Thames go out triumphantly " between 
 his banks/ he goes all the way back to ancient 
 Athens for a precedent in favor of the less natural 
 arrangement. In the nineteenth year of the Pelopon- 
 nesian War, Agis seized and fortified Deceleia, a vil 
 lage only twelve miles distant from Athens, as an 
 asylum for fugitive slaves. Yet, after ten years, only 
 twenty thousand had availed themselves of the refuge. 
 Spartan protection, however, was not precisely what 
 a slave of judgment would fly to. Our author seems 
 to forget that Deceleia on the other side of the great 
 lakes, somewhat more than twelve miles away, to 
 which already more than thirty thousand slaves (ac 
 cording to Mr. Calhoun) have achieved their exodus. 
 He tells us that there is no instance in history of any 
 serious servile insurrection, although in ancient times 
 there was no difference of color between master and 
 slave. Are we to understand, then, that there is more 
 antipathy between races of the same complexion than 
 between white and black? He allows that there 
 have been "uprisings of people whose undoubted 
 rights were trampled on not of slaves." The in 
 ference from this would seem to be that the more 
 people s undoubted rights were trampled on, the less 
 danger there is of their seeking redress. The insur 
 rection of Haiti our author attributes to the instiga 
 tion of the French Directory. The slaves of South 
 
C 132 ] 
 
 Carolina, he affirms, " in cases of emergency would 
 bare their faithful bosoms in defence of our families 
 and their own/ etc. This is on page 307. Turning 
 over the leaf, we find on page 308, that " if ever 
 danger or suffering occur to us from our slave-sys 
 tem," " from reckless enthusiasts associated with us 
 in one government, etc., will come all the mischief." 
 But what conjuration and what mighty magic are 
 these enthusiasts to use in order to make rebels of a 
 people who would remain obstinately loyal even in 
 " a contest conducted as the Deceleian War, for the 
 express purpose of giving them liberty ? " Father 
 Thames will get between his banks after all. 
 
 Our author next endeavors to persuade himself 
 that in case of disunion the South would be stronger 
 than the North. It would then have (as it ought) 
 all the cotton, and all the manufactures, and all the 
 commerce which are now shared between the two 
 sections. Moreover it "might bring into the field 
 a million of armed men, men born on horseback 
 and with arms in their hands." Cavalry of this sort 
 must be inexpensive, and we admit that we have 
 heard of no such births at the North. 
 
 On the whole we take leave of our worthy re 
 viewer in perfect good-humor. Like an unskilful 
 chemical manipulator, he tells his audience that 
 when he pours the liquid in one phial into the other 
 
C 133 1 
 
 a fine blue color will be produced. Unfortunately 
 the impression produced upon the mind of the spec 
 tator is of a vivid and undeniable green. But this, 
 the confused demonstrator assures him, is of no con 
 sequence, since, had the materials been what he took 
 them for, the experiment would have been success 
 ful. 
 
 We do not need the assurance which is given us 
 in another article that our Southern friends " strive 
 to keep the Yankee schoolmaster at bay." We are 
 quite certain that if either Mr. Fisher or his reviewer 
 could have had the benefit of a winter s attendance 
 at one of our district schools, neither the one nor 
 the other of them would have been capable of such 
 vile cyphering. We are afraid that both of them re 
 ceived their educations where the birch is an exotic 
 tree. 
 
PUTTING THE CART BEFORE 
 THE HORSE 
 
 E 
 
 (VERY now and then we see it asserted that the 
 system of chattel-slavery at the South is no worse 
 than that of wages-slavery at the North, and that 
 land monopoly is at the bottom of the evil. The 
 apostles of this gospel are not content with the sim 
 ple preaching of their doctrines, but pepper their dis 
 courses with inter jectional sniffs at the Abolitionists. 
 We confess that we can see no logical continuity 
 here, any more than in Charles Lamb s famous case 
 of the turnip crop and the boiled shoulders of mut 
 ton. If wages-slavery were the worse of the two, 
 the Abolitionists would not be guilty of making it 
 so, nor does it follow that chattel-slavery is not bad 
 enough because it is not so bad as something else. 
 But it is the fashion for every one who has a pana 
 cea for our social evils to head his advertisements 
 with a Beware of Quacks ! 
 
 The Abolitionists do not profess to have found 
 any panacea. One particular evil has presented it 
 self prominently to their minds, and they set to work 
 
C 135 3 
 
 to eradicate it. For so it is that by its own elective 
 affinities each mode of reform takes up the minds 
 that belong to it and are suited to carry it on, and 
 leaves all the rest. We smile sometimes when we 
 see an honest person stumbling over the Lazarus 
 lying on his own doorstep in his hurry to drop in 
 his mite for another Lazarus at the Antipodes. But 
 meanwhile, perhaps, another sympathy is making its 
 way over from the Antipodes under precisely similar 
 circumstances. It is not till we have reached the 
 highest class in the school of life that we learn the 
 great lesson that Nature is wiser than we. Nor are 
 we satisfied that the walls of limitation which she 
 has built up around us have any solidity, till we 
 have knocked our heads against them all. And then, 
 perhaps, we spend the rest of our days in rubbing 
 our sore pates. No doubt the ravens which supplied 
 Elijah left some poor fellow bewailing the loss of his 
 dinner, and wishing for bow and arrows to make in 
 stant examples of those thievish birds. Let us en 
 deavor, brother land-reformer, not only to be sat 
 isfied, but even to be thankful for each other, and 
 go about our respective works with a better heart. 
 Perhaps we Abolitionists have but one idea, but that 
 is no reason why you should endeavor to take away 
 from us the one idea that we have. Concede for the 
 argument s sake that you are in the same predica- 
 
C 
 
 ment, and suppose we should try the experiment of 
 clubbing our two ideas for the benefit of those that 
 have none. Here would be practical Association. 
 We are not entirely prepared to grant that the Abo 
 litionists are totally depraved, for we have never yet 
 found a man without some good in him, no, not 
 even a doughface. 
 
 Suppose there is no adequate help for us but in a 
 thorough social reorganization, yet we must remem 
 ber that the first thing needful is to convince the 
 stupid Body Politic that he is sick at all. Or rather, 
 perhaps we must begin by waking him up to make 
 him capable of conviction. Once waked and con 
 vinced, it will be for the patient himself to choose 
 between our respective pathies. We confess that the 
 arguments of the anti-land-monopolists are entirely 
 conclusive, and we admit the great importance (espe 
 cially in our new and as yet not fully peopled coun 
 try) of beginning rightly. But after all, if the 
 remedy is to be a radical one, and of that compre 
 hensive kind before spoken of, it may be questioned 
 whether the scheme of either the Land-reformer or 
 the Abolitionist alone will be sufficient. 
 
 On the whole we think it wise for each man to 
 put his hand strenuously to that work which has for 
 him the strongest attraction. We may then be sure 
 that we are all working together for good. Let us 
 
C 
 
 take courage and be thankful that the good Father 
 has ravens ready for every Elijah perishing in the 
 wilderness. We will not complain that they are not 
 all detailed for the particular service which we think 
 most important, and surely we will not shoot poisoned 
 arrows at the divinely commissioned birds flying 
 with the bread of life in any direction. Or, suppose 
 the ravens fall to quarrelling with beak and claw 
 among themselves, what becomes of the bread, and, 
 worse yet, of the Elijahs ? 
 
 We do not see how any advantage is to spring 
 from disputes as to whether this or that injurious 
 system is entitled to an evil preeminence, but we 
 are not to be supposed as granting that chattel-slav 
 ery is no worse than wages-slavery. It is one of 
 those assertions which recoil disastrously upon those 
 who make them. Opinion resembles a pendulum in 
 this, that it swings as far back beyond the gravitat 
 ing point on one side as it has been forced beyond 
 it upon the other. And here the parallel unfortu 
 nately too often ends. For, having an inward faculty 
 of resistance, it ceases to oscillate and remains ob 
 stinately fixed in its retrograde position. 
 
 This matter of comparative miseries is hardly one 
 to be settled by argument. Our human instincts de 
 cide it for us at once, and without appeal. We do 
 not believe that there is a hired laborer (man or 
 
C 138 n 
 
 woman) in America who would exchange conditions 
 with the fattest and sleekest slave at the South, not 
 even though it were to be owned by Henry Clay or 
 General Taylor himself. Were the question one 
 solely of physical well-being, it would not bear argu 
 ment for a moment. The Southern " Quarterly Ee- 
 view " estimates the annual expense of a plantation 
 slave at thirty-five dollars a year, or less than ten 
 cents a day. 
 
 But it is not a question of mere bodily comfort. 
 The condition of the hired laborer everywhere is one 
 which admits of exceptions in favor of superior en 
 ergy and intelligence. That of the slave knows no 
 exceptions, but crushes all to one dead level of stupid 
 animalism or sullen despair. The slave had no hope 
 but that weary northward flight, the bloodhounds, 
 the worse than bloodhounds at his heels, and that 
 horrible distrust of every human being in his heart. 
 And at the very outset we are met by this great dis 
 tinction of complexion which makes the poor run 
 away an object of suspicion south of Mason and 
 Dixon s line, and of lifelong contumely north of it. 
 
 Nor is it only in the condition of the slave that 
 the Abolitionist finds an imperative reason for com 
 bating the atrocious system of which he is the vic 
 tim. Slavery has paralyzed those fine instincts and 
 energies of our republic which should have rendered 
 
C 139 3 
 
 it not only the example but the protector and de 
 fender of freedom all over the world. It has cor 
 rupted the integrity of our public men and made 
 them as statesmen only not reproaches to each other. 
 Worse than this, it has corrupted the foundations 
 of our humanity itself, and made things customary 
 with us which ought to thrill us with indignation 
 and horror. 
 
 Allow that by freeing the slave you only raise 
 him to the ownership of himself, and that this in 
 the present condition of society is a losing species 
 of property. But you also do more. The same blow 
 which strikes off the fetters of the slave makes our 
 public men (the exemplars and moulds of our youth) 
 also owners of themselves, nay, to a greater or less 
 degree, liberates every one of us. Then you and I 
 and all of us rise up. If it be said that slavery is 
 only one pustule indicating the presence of disease 
 in the whole social system, we are not concerned to 
 deny it. Only, let not this be an argument for 
 apathy, for letting alone, or for so generalizing and 
 dissipating the efforts of reform that they fail of 
 reaching particular evils. 
 
 We have great doubts of the possibility of arous 
 ing a community to the wickedness of monopolizing 
 land, who feel no stings of conscience at monopoliz 
 ing man. We do not believe that a man can be con- 
 
C 
 
 vinced of the sinf ulness of paying small wages, while 
 he is allowed to retain his belief in the rightf ulness 
 of paying none at all. In short, we do not feel en 
 tirely convinced that it is best to put the cart before 
 the horse. At the same time we are willing to grant 
 the perfect right of our neighbor to do so, if he find 
 it profitable. 
 
 It is best to proceed gradually with the poor old 
 World and satisfy it of its miserable condition by de 
 grees. Let us assault (at least, let those of us who 
 feel it a duty) the largest sins first, for we may be 
 sure that if one devil brings seven others in with 
 him he takes at least as many out. At present there 
 are so many kind friends speaking at once and divid 
 ing their breath between recommending their own 
 particular pills and charging each other with the 
 intention to poison, that the world seems really in 
 danger of a serious relapse. There is nothing to be 
 eaten, drunk, or avoided, but some one has found in 
 it the root of all evil, and amid so much confusion 
 of Indian Doctors, Vegetable Doctors, Cold and Hot 
 Water Doctors, and what not, this generation feels 
 inclined to go on in the old way as its elders had 
 done before it. Meanwhile the rightfulness of our 
 own opinions and measures in no wise depends upon 
 the wrongfulness of those of anybody else, nor has 
 any natural connection with it. The first thing is 
 
C 141 3 
 
 to know our own business and the next to mind it. 
 We think that the Abolitionists are laboring in their 
 proper vocation, and are happy to think that there 
 are others doing the same. 
 
CANADA 
 
 _L HE gathering of money is the only thing that 
 withdraweth the hearts of Englishmen from the 
 prince/ said Sir Thomas More nearly three centu 
 ries and a half ago, and the saying is as fresh still 
 as if it had been made by a poet instead of an un- 
 der-sheriff. Among the Spanish race, revolution has 
 almost supplanted the bull-fight as a popular amuse 
 ment, in France it is a kind of recognized make 
 shift for election, in Germany it is arrived at by 
 something like a chemical analysis, but among the 
 Anglo-Saxon family it continues to be an explosive 
 gas generated in the dark void of the empty pocket. 
 The desideratum of English statecraft would seem to 
 be a kind of Davy s safety-lamp with which the adven 
 turous ChanceUor of the Exchequer might descend 
 to glean the last particles of ore from that long- 
 worked mine without danger of being blown out of 
 office. A fall in public securities is the change whose 
 fear perplexes English monarchs, and the hand which 
 writes mene, mene on the walls of Downing Street 
 is that of the Reporter of the Stock Market. 
 
C 
 
 As long as x remains an unknown quantity, the 
 oretic demonstrations make small impression upon 
 the mind of John Bull, but let him understand that 
 x and bread and butter are equal terms, and he is 
 awake at once. In regard to Canada, John has been 
 slowly coming to the conclusion that, whatever else 
 it might be, it was certainly expensive. But here 
 another quality of his mind becomes active, namely, 
 his pride. He is one of the largest landholders on 
 the planet, and he is fearful lest he should lessen 
 his consideration among his fellows by giving up 
 even a piece of territory which is draining his 
 pockets. The physical strength of England is Saxon 
 chiefly, but the hard, sharp Norman intellect stamped 
 itself easily and durably upon the yielding clay of 
 the softer conquered race. In the common law of 
 England the Saxon element predominates, but pub 
 lic opinion is largely Norman. The Norman was a 
 robber, and stealing was in his view honorable if 
 the object were a kingdom or a province, and the 
 theft were accomplished by violence and demanded 
 courage for the perpetration. He was the Colonel 
 Blood of the middle age, too much of a gentleman 
 and soldier to pick a pocket, but not above the 
 grander larceny of crowns. He could endure any 
 hardship but that of getting an honest livelihood. 
 Though the strength and greatness of England have 
 
C 144 ] 
 
 for centuries rested mainly upon trade, yet trade has 
 not hitherto achieved for itself the prestige of en 
 tire respectability in the English mind. The British 
 Merchant is the toast of public dinners, but no 
 sooner has the British Merchant acquired a fortune, 
 than he sets about contriving how he shall save his 
 children from the contamination of the paternal 
 caste. He gets his sons into public office, into the 
 Church, the Army, or the Bar. Some kind of a 
 living upon others they must have, something that 
 approaches the Norman standard of respectability, 
 honorable plunder. 
 
 The Colonies are dear to England as matters of 
 pride, disconnected from any sordid idea of profit, 
 and as supplying offices for young men of what are 
 oddly enough called good families, by which those 
 are meant which have not been generally distin 
 guished for the purity of their public and private 
 morals. Canada is especially dear as a trophy won 
 from her ancient enemy, France. But England is 
 beginning to have some dim appreciation of so vul 
 gar and tradesmanlike a thing as the balance-sheet. 
 The figures and statistics of the calculating Saxon 
 force themselves upon her attention more and more. 
 Glory must nowadays bring an indorser with her to 
 the Rothschilds. England is fast finding out that her 
 colonies are dear in another sense. The question is 
 
C 145 J 
 
 one between pride and expense, and it asks no super 
 natural power of prophecy to foretell how it will be 
 eventually settled. What length of time must elapse 
 before the empty pocket starves her into concession 
 is a point of obscurer speculation. 
 
 At any rate the question of the separation of the 
 North American Provinces from the Mother Coun 
 try has now fairly begun to be discussed on both 
 sides of the ocean. That it would be wise in Eng 
 land to yield gracefully, we think is beyond a doubt. 
 If it be the mission of the English race to plant the 
 germs of self-government in every quarter of the 
 globe, it is most desirable that the different portions 
 of that race, wherever settled and however governed, 
 should be able to communicate everywhere the entire 
 moral force of a great united nation. The ties of 
 ancestry and of a common past, so rudely snapped 
 between the Mother Country and the Thirteen Col 
 onies by the American War of Independence, are 
 beginning to reunite themselves. Every steamer car 
 ries and fastens a spider-thread of sympathy and 
 interest, each invisible, but the sum of which will 
 at last rebind firmly together the little Island and 
 the Daughter it had disinherited and disowned. It 
 cannot be but that the experience of seventy years 
 has made England wiser and that she will be slow 
 to estrange another child. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
C 146 ] 
 
 As to the probability o the separation of the 
 Canadas from Britain, speculation is useless, since 
 time and circumstance will decide the question soon. 
 We are not inclined to think, however, that such a 
 movement as that lately begun in Montreal will go 
 backward. Here, at least, there is manifest destiny. 
 England is no longer the only central sun of an 
 Anglo-Saxon system. The great fragment which 
 wandered off, a separate planet, and has become the 
 United States, begins to pull, with gradually increas 
 ing force, the nearer satellites. Canada gravitates 
 toward the larger and more neighboring body. This 
 is not the manifest destiny of aggressive rapine, as 
 in the case of Texas, but obedience to the attraction 
 of natural laws. 
 
 But, setting aside for the present the attraction of 
 the American Kepublic, it is at least certain that the 
 centrifugal force of the Provinces is steadily increas 
 ing and carrying them farther and farther from the 
 British centre. Interest draws the Colonists of Eng 
 lish descent in a direction opposite to predilection 
 and habit. And, even supposing an undiminished 
 loyalty in these, there must be taken into account 
 the presence of a neutral body in a large subjugated 
 population, which has retained its language and tra 
 ditions, and whose vis inertice must be overcome by 
 an intenser loyalty on the part of the rest. 
 
[ 147 3 
 
 In case of separation, two plans have been pro 
 posed, independence and annexation to the United 
 States. Here again the French element in the popu- 
 lation must be considered. If not numerous enough 
 to set up for themselves, they would certainly offer 
 very perplexing material to be worked into the fab 
 ric of the new Kepublic. This with other circum 
 stances of convenience and interest would certainly 
 lead to a proposal for annexation. The proposal once 
 made, annexation may be looked upon as a certain 
 event. 
 
 As enemies of Slavery, we should consider it an 
 event to be desired. It will give greater preponder 
 ance to the Free States, and infuse into the veins of 
 the Kepublic fresh blood uncorrupted by the scrofula 
 of slavery. The mere proposal of it will do what 
 principle and conscience have never yet been strong 
 enough to accomplish, and divide the national par 
 ties into a northern and a southern organization. It 
 will unite whatever of Anti-slavery there may be at 
 the South with the northern party, thus giving it 
 more confidence and strength and preparing it to 
 receive more radical ideas. 
 
 But it will do a great deal more than this, and al 
 ready the well-trained noses (of wax) of the editor 
 hounds who hunt down the prey for the old parties 
 begin to snuff the lion crouching hard by. In case 
 
C !48 3 
 
 of annexation the first question to arise will be as 
 to the consenting of the new States to that clause 
 in the Constitution which provides for the surrender 
 of fugitive slaves. This will be rather a perplexing 
 affair to our hitherto prosperous politicians. We 
 shall get some new ideas on the however-bounded- 
 ness of our glorious country. How fearful will our 
 Democrats become of a rupture in our peaceful re 
 lations with England, our Whigs how careful for 
 the strict maintenance of treaty stipulations ! We 
 shall find that the area of freedom can only be ex 
 tended Southward, and shah 1 discover the enormous 
 difference twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee when 
 the breath of freedom and not that of slavery fills 
 the pipe. 
 
 The constitutionality of annexation has been set 
 tled by recent precedent. Or rather it has been 
 settled that what the slave power demands is always 
 constitutional. Should Canada apply for admission 
 to the Union, we shall have an opportunity of learn 
 ing whether the Constitution is capable of becoming 
 pliable under the hands of Freedom. Any event is 
 desirable which shall exhibit the Southern oligarchy 
 in its true light, and which shall reduce the slave 
 holders to a more odious and contemptible minority. 
 Therefore we hope before long to hear the knock of 
 Canada at the door of the Confederacy, and to see 
 
C 
 
 the inhospitable confusion produced within by the 
 advent of so awkward and unseasonable a visitor, 
 at the moment, too, when we were expecting Miss 
 Calif ornia with a slave to carry her parasol. 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 VJONTRARY to the well-founded apprehensions of a 
 large majority of the opponents of Slavery, Califor 
 nia has adopted a Constitution excluding the curse 
 of human bondage from her borders. If we may be 
 lieve the Whig newspapers, the abolitionists are dis 
 appointed at this result. Since the election of General 
 Taylor, it has been discovered that these unhappy 
 Ishmaelites make a trade of Anti-slavery, a reproach 
 which comes somewhat ungracefully from those (at 
 least) who professed a willingness to join the Free 
 Soil party if it were only sure of success. It is a re 
 proach, moreover, which we who live in Mr. Palfrey s 
 district find it hard to comprehend. We cannot 
 conceive how any trader should be able to make his 
 political fortune out of an abolition venture, unless 
 by some such happy contingency as enabled Lord 
 Timothy Dexter to enrich himself by sending warm 
 ing-pans to the West Indies. 
 
 Abolitionists are not so unanimous that it is safe 
 to speak for more than one of them at a time. We 
 know one, certainly, who is sincerely thankful for 
 
C 
 
 the result of the Convention in California, hampered 
 as the slavery restriction is with a spirit of foolish 
 and inhuman exclusiveness toward the African race. 
 But the experience of an abolitionist is not such as 
 to render him childishly confiding. In America the 
 poet s saw is reversed, and it is slavery s battle 
 
 which, 
 
 " Though seeming lost, is ever won." 
 
 From year to year we grow more nervously sus 
 picious of Trojan horses and are especially fearful 
 when either of the great political parties offers us 
 anything in the way of gift. With regard to Cali 
 fornia the Whigs occupy very much the same posi 
 tion which Caleb Balderstone did to Mr. Gilder and 
 his advancement as Queen s cooper. Though he 
 had no concern in it whatever, he was very willing 
 to claim the merit of the appointment after it was 
 made. We are as ignorant as a " Washington Cor 
 respondent " of the object of Mr. Butler King s 
 mission, but he was certainly an odd person to select 
 as an Anti-slavery propagandist. There is no want 
 of charity in supposing that General Taylor will at 
 least be lenient toward Southern institutions, and 
 accordingly we already hear rumors that California 
 is to be divided into four states, two north and two 
 south of the Missouri Compromise line. Ominously 
 enough, the name of Mr. Clay is mentioned in con- 
 
[ 152 3 
 
 nection with this movement of Mr. Clay, the re 
 presentative American man on the subject of slav 
 ery. Abolitionists must be upon the watch. They 
 should not regard the exclusion of Slavery even 
 from the whole of California as an Anti-slavery tri 
 umph. It is no such thing, but merely Freedom 
 holding her own. The game of Mr. Calhoun and 
 the advocates of Slavery has always been to demand 
 a great deal more than they cared about getting. 
 This worked well in two ways. They gained the 
 credit of conceding all above the point they were 
 really anxious to attain, and, at the same time, 
 Northern doughfaces could make their peace with 
 their constituents by assuming to have gained all 
 that they had merely not basely surrendered. Be 
 yond a doubt this will be Mr. Calhoun s course 
 in regard to California. He will resist the admis 
 sion of that territory as a free state to the last mo 
 ment, and at last consent to divide it equally between 
 freedom and slavery, playing Mr. Clay, the apostle 
 of compromise, as the last trump-card. Mr. Calhoun 
 is a cunning jockey. He asks twice as much for 
 his horse as he means to take, and finally persuades 
 his unlucky victim (who does not want the ani 
 mal at all) to buy it for twice its worth, because 
 it is such a bargain. But these horses of his are, 
 like those of Diomed, foddered with human flesh, 
 
n 153 3 
 
 and the North has bought too many of them 
 already. 
 
 On the other hand it is possible that it is not the 
 half of California, but the whole of New Mexico, 
 which Mr. Calhoun intends to struggle for. And, if 
 this be the case, we confess that we have little hope 
 of seeing him defeated. Nothing is to be expected 
 of the Democratic party, who have lost office and 
 are willing to regain it at any expense of their cardi 
 nal principles, nothing from the Whigs, whose com 
 plexion could hardly be heightened by a blush for 
 any new piece of treachery. When men have been 
 treacherous, and the evidence has been found in 
 their pockets, they hate more than anything else the 
 cause which they have betrayed. It is really amusing 
 to see the Whigs forced to capture and spike their 
 own Anti-slavery batteries which they erected against 
 the Democrats. Affirming that their President and 
 his cabinet are Anti-slavery, they use their utmost 
 endeavor to keep out of Congress every Anti-slavery 
 Whig. We can only compliment their honesty at 
 the expense of their intelligence. If the aim of Pre 
 sident Taylor s administration be to keep slavery out 
 of the territories, and the Democrats in Congress are 
 not to be relied on, why make a point of sacrificing 
 every member who would add one to the chances of 
 attaining an end so ardently desired by the adminis- 
 
C 154 H 
 
 tration ? We commend to the serious reflection of 
 the Whig party the following stanza from Cole 
 ridge s " Devil s Walk : " 
 
 " Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide, 
 
 A pig with vast celerity ; 
 
 And the Devil looked wise as he saw how, the while, 
 It cut its own throat : * There ! quoth he, with a smile, 
 Goes England s commercial prosperity. " 
 
 It seems to us that there is a pretty analogy here 
 with the political prosperity of the Whigs, only that 
 in their case the satire is heightened by the poor 
 creature s cutting its throat in an attempt to swim 
 up Salt River instead of down. 
 
 It is fortunate for the cause of Right and Free 
 dom that the Whigs have not succeeded against Gid- 
 dings as they have (hitherto) against Palfrey. It is 
 well that there should be one watchful eye in Con 
 gress to detect, and one fearless tongue to expose, 
 any trick which the party at present dominant may 
 attempt to play upon the nation. The more fully the 
 hollowness and duplicity of either of the great par 
 ties is exposed, the better. The Whigs might have 
 defeated the annexation of Texas as a slave state, if 
 they had thrown themselves boldly upon the Anti- 
 slavery side of the question. But, having made a 
 Constitutional point of it, and that having been de 
 cided against them, Texas will afford a precedent 
 
C 155 U 
 
 and apology for New Mexico and Santa Fe. Let 
 Abolitionists, meanwhile, continue to sow the seed 
 of abhorrence of slavery as a moral and not a polit 
 ical question, and they may be certain that, like the 
 Scotch gardener s trees, it will be growing while 
 they are sleeping. 
 
GENERAL BEM S CONVERSION 
 
 T, 
 
 HOSE who have consistently maligned the cause 
 of order and constitutional freedom in Hungary 
 have extracted what poisonous acid they were able 
 from Bern s assumption of Mahometanism. This 
 acid they would fain apply as a test whereby to ap 
 prove the heroic Magyars plated ware and not pure 
 metal. The systems of such persons must be so con 
 stituted as to secrete venom from mother s milk. 
 
 We confess that we see nothing very extraordinary 
 in Bern s conduct. He had lived in every Christian 
 territory of Europe except Russia. He had in his 
 own person experimentally tried the Christianity of 
 all Christendom. If he had no country, it had been 
 taken from him by Christian princes. If he were an 
 Ishmaelite, he had been made so by those who pro 
 fess the religion of Jesus. He had seen his country 
 women scourged in Christian market-places with 
 Christian knouts, and his friends starving in Chris 
 tian exile or entombed alive in Christian dungeons. 
 They were most Christian Majesties who demanded 
 of the Turk that he should violate the sacred rites 
 
C 157 ] 
 
 of a hospitality as old as the human heart, by deliv 
 ering up the suppliants who sate at his gates to the 
 justice of Haynau and the Orthodoxy of Nicholas. 
 Bern might have addressed the Sultan in the words 
 of Coriolanus to Aufidius, 
 
 " Now this extremity 
 
 Hath brought me to thy hearth ; not out of hope 
 Mistake me not to save my life, 
 
 . but in mere spite, 
 To be full quit of those my banishers, 
 Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast 
 A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge 
 Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims 
 Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight, 
 And make my misery serve thy turn ; so use it 
 That my revengeful services may prove 
 As benefits to thee, for I will fight 
 
 . with the spleen 
 Of all the under fiends." 
 
 Had Bern turned renegade for the mere sake of 
 saving his own life, he should have taken (as there 
 is already a Keshid Pasha in Turkey) the title of 
 Wretched Pasha. But it was the ghost of murdered 
 Poland which beckoned him to the Turkish Camp, 
 that ghost which for the last forty years has glided 
 ominous into the vacant chair whenever the Mac- 
 beths of Austria, Prussia, and Russia have held 
 council or festival. Revenge is as good a Christian 
 as Persecution. 
 
TURKISH TYRANNY AND AMER 
 ICAN 
 
 T, 
 
 HE last European steamer brings us what is said 
 to be the final determination of the Turkish Gov 
 ernment in regard to the Hungarian exiles. The 
 Sultan will not be the Czar s jackal, but only his 
 jailer. " Allah forbid," says the pious Ottoman, 
 " that I should break the law of the prophet ! I will 
 not only not surrender these unhappy fugitives who 
 have sought my protection, but I will so far extend 
 the rites of hospitality, that they shall remain my 
 guests for life." 
 
 " Will you walk into my parlor ? 
 Said the spider to the fly." 
 
 There needs no farther proof that the Turk has be 
 come thoroughly Occidentalized. We shall not be 
 surprised to hear before long that he is an attendant 
 on stated preaching. He certainly behaves very 
 much like a Christian. We see no escape for Kos- 
 suth and his fellow fugitives, unless their jailer has 
 daughters enough to give all of them a chance 
 
I 159 3 
 
 at the good fortune of Gilbert h Becket and Lord 
 Bateman. 
 
 Doubtless this conduct of the Sultan will excite 
 the reprobation of nearly all Christendom, although 
 the Turk, being no reader of newspapers, is not 
 likely to be much influenced by public opinion. 
 Probably, as is usual in such cases, the occupants of 
 glass houses will be the most eager to throw stones. 
 Brother Jonathan will be among the first to begin 
 the experiment of lapidation. Already we see our 
 editorial brethren picking up their smoothest and 
 hardest pebbles, though we think that the strongest 
 arm among them will hardly contrive to get his mis 
 sile over the three thousand miles of ocean. With a 
 longer or shorter parabolic curve, each makes its 
 momentary splash and sinks forever. 
 
 We will say this for Brother Jonathan, that his 
 first impulses are commonly right and generous. 
 But, before he commences oculist, he should bethink 
 himself that there are beams enough in his own eye 
 to answer the demands of half the lumber-yards of 
 Europe. It is very weU to be indignant at the " ex 
 tradition " of Kossuth and his friends, or rather at 
 the Czar s demanding it. Extradition is as good a 
 word as another to pick a quarrel out of, but the 
 act implied in it would stink as foully in the nostrils 
 of all honest men though wrapt up in the lavender 
 
1 16 3 
 
 of choicest phrases. Suppose the Czar should send 
 to President Taylor an autograph letter of somewhat 
 the following purport : " To our well-beloved cousin 
 Zachary, President of the North American Republic, 
 Defender of the Punic faith (toward Mexico), Hered 
 itary lord and owner of Cuffee, Sambo, Juno, &c., 
 &c., Greeting : We, Nicholas, Emperor, &e., being 
 conscious that we are subject to the like infirmities 
 as our fellow mortals, and being at present especially 
 afflicted with a tender conscience in regard to the 
 failings of our neighbors, do most heartily recipro 
 cate the solicitude of our most excellent Brother 
 Jonathan in behalf of our health and well-being, 
 and desire to know whether it be true (as we have, 
 with pain, heard) that the Constitution of our said 
 brother is suffering from the effects of poison ad 
 ministered in the year of God 1787 in the following 
 form, to wit : Article IV., section 2, paragraph 3 " ? 
 This would be rather an awkward missive to an 
 swer. We do not think that Brother Jonathan is 
 worse than his neighbors, only he has got into the 
 habit of setting himself up to be unco guid. It 
 is only a month or two since he read in the papers, 
 seeming to think it rather a good joke than other 
 wise, a story something like this. A taker of Da 
 guerreotype likenesses in Indiana was applied to by 
 a colored man to take a miniature of him to be sent 
 
C 
 
 to his betrothed. Discovering in some way that his 
 sitter was a fugitive slave, he hired him as a servant, 
 and, under pretence of going to Philadelphia, took 
 him to Kentucky and betrayed him to his former 
 master, receiving for this constitutional act the stip 
 ulated reward. Truly the sun, which shines alike 
 upon the just and the unjust, and which took the 
 portrait that served for the poor runaway s identifi 
 cation, was never before made the accomplice of so 
 base an act. We wish that the name of this paltry 
 betrayer might be made known, that in it we might 
 be supplied with a synonym for the meaner and 
 baser kinds of treachery. It would be unjust to de 
 grade Judas, or Arnold, or Gorgey, to such com 
 panionship as this. 
 
 Now, good Brother Jonathan, can you rise chuck 
 ling from a story like this to hearten the Sultan 
 against the demands of Russia ? What, as Whittier 
 has said somewhere, 
 
 " Would not the burning answer come 
 From Turbaned Turk and bearded Russ, 
 Go, free your wretched slaves at home, 
 Then turn and ask the like of us ? " 
 
 Why, " extradition " is only the diplomatic word 
 for what some of our sister States do every day in 
 the week, for what we consent to for the sake of pre 
 serving the unity of the great Whig or Democratic 
 
C l62 3 
 
 party. We cannot admit Kossuth into our Valhalla 
 and shut Toussaint and Madison Washington out 
 of it. 
 
 This is one great curse of our system of Slavery, 
 that it compels our great statesmen into a dishonest 
 connivance with it, and keeps out of politics all who 
 are too upright to be accessories in such a crime. It 
 chills the eloquence of our great orators with a sense 
 of painful inconsistency. When we read Webster s 
 fine denunciation of Nicholas, where he speaks like 
 a lawyer inspired, we cannot help thinking of the 
 Capitol steps at Richmond, and of the schoolmaster 
 who sets no disagreeable lessons. Too literally does 
 our Daniel come to judgment. Is that good inter 
 national law between Russia and Turkey which is 
 bad between Virginia and Massachusetts ? Interna 
 tional law is a good phrase, but what is the worth of 
 international law without an international tribunal 
 which can be appealed to for its enforcement? In 
 ternational law has been of use to diplomatists some 
 times in arranging matters where matters of dollars 
 and cents were concerned, but in questions of jus 
 tice it has always been the law of the strongest. Mr. 
 Webster seemed tacitly to acknowledge that it was 
 merely the public opinion of nations, and he wished 
 to have the force of this brought to bear upon the 
 Czar by excluding him from the rights and courtesies 
 
C 
 
 of the civilized world. This is very well in itself, 
 but should we wish to have the same rule applied to 
 ourselves ? 
 
 Even as regards such of our State Governments 
 as practically nullify that article of the Constitution 
 which requires the surrender of escaped slaves, the 
 parallel with the conduct of Turkey is tolerably 
 exact. They do not, it is true, agree to shut up the 
 fugitives in a fortress and keep them harmless for 
 life. But there are dungeons not built with stone 
 and mortar as dark as any in Turkey. There are 
 boundaries harder to climb over than fortress walls, 
 and restraints as galling as those of iron fetters. 
 The colored man in the free States, whether a fugi 
 tive or not, finds the avenues to every social and 
 political distinction shut fast against him. It has 
 even been decided lately by the Secretary of State 
 that he is not a citizen of the United States. The 
 Indiana taker of Daguerreotype likenesses is an or 
 nament of society sufficiently important to have the 
 " aegis of the Union " held over him in case he 
 should leave the country (as we hope he may), but 
 Frederick Douglass is, according to Mr. Clayton, 
 nothing at all. He is neither denizen, nor citizen, 
 nor an all-other-person-including-Indians-not-taxed. 
 He is absolutely and literally annihilated. Verily we 
 must set to work upon the beam that is in our own 
 eye! 
 
THE SOUTH AS KING LOG 
 
 w. 
 
 HEN King Log first made his avatar among the 
 frogs, he invaded his future dominion with such a 
 splash that even the oldest croakers, to say nothing 
 of the pollywogs, fancied that his ligneous majesty 
 was a cross-grained piece of Kingship that would 
 maintain order not without a certain stolid severity. 
 The deep-voiced seniors of the swamp prophesied of 
 a closer adherence to ancient wont, and of a return 
 of those always legendary days when age was rever 
 enced, experience valued, and religion cherished. 
 Certain pollywogs, who had not yet doffed their 
 tails, which, like Plato s trails of glory, they had 
 brought with them into their amphibious world, and 
 who had formed an association of young frogdom 
 with strong radical tendencies, and a plan of pro 
 viding every niarish citizen with a tussock and a lily- 
 pad to himself, augured martial law and the sup 
 pression of clubs. Accordingly, for a day or two, 
 the Nestors chanted jubilate, expecting the forma 
 tion of a cabinet, and the liberals cast about to find 
 a Brutus, who would solve all doubts by sudden 
 
t 
 
 and secret thrust of bulrush. Those of the juste 
 milieu were not wanting to the occasion, and, mount 
 ing as an appropriate rostrum the floating rail of a 
 fence, proposed the settlement of all difficulties by a 
 compromise which should satisfy all parties by yield 
 ing just what they did not wish for to each. Mean 
 while his royal woodenness lay quiet, keeping his 
 designs closely to himself. Vainly did choruses of 
 ardent loyalists sing the new national anthem, God 
 save great Log the First, every evening in front of 
 the royal residence. At last a committee of both 
 houses was deputed to wait upon the King and hum 
 bly desire him to summon a ministry. The address 
 was honored with no sign of recognition, fears be 
 gan to be entertained that all was not right, and the 
 royal leeches being called in, gave a verdict of Coma 
 produced by a superabundant presence of sap in the 
 brain. Kemedial measures were tried without effect, 
 the awe inspired by the royal descent wore gradu 
 ally off, the late majesty was openly declared a 
 blockhead, and his remains were treated with down 
 right contumely, and Humbug! resounded in all 
 varieties of intonation from one end of marshland 
 to the other. 
 
 Precisely such a King Log is the Southern threat 
 of Disunion, thrown down periodically to scare the 
 croakers in our political morass, only this year it has 
 
C 1663 
 
 descended with more force, and the wake set in mo 
 tion by the plunge has spread itself in wider circles. 
 The quarrel between the North and the South re 
 minds one of that famous duel in the " Pickwick 
 Papers/ when the antagonists only met as both were 
 endeavoring to escape a meeting. But, in the mean 
 time, the pretended fear of dissolution is to be made 
 the fulcrum upon which to rest the lever of reac 
 tion against freedom. Mr. Clay makes his third ap 
 pearance in his famous part of Mr. Facingbothways, 
 to propose a middle course, which simply means that 
 the North shall sit down, with what grace it may, 
 between the two stools. One would think that two 
 experiments upon the hardness of the floor would 
 leave no need for the confirmation of a third. The 
 South has certainly by this time squared all old 
 scores in the way of wooden nutmegs and white-oak 
 cheeses. Missouri and Texas were not ill done, but 
 it will be long ere the North gets any spice out of 
 the one, or any caseine out of the other, though 
 there has been grating enough and to spare. We 
 are now to have a wooden ham traded off upon us 
 in our bargain about New Mexico. 
 
 Intimidation and wheedling have been mingled in 
 very adroit proportion. First a grain of dissolution, 
 then a grain of assurance that the Wilmot Proviso 
 is of no practical importance. Mr. Winthrop writes 
 
C 1673 
 
 home that the present Congress will outlast the 
 Union, and yet runs away from a chance to vote 
 against a resolution whose passage is to lead to an 
 immediate disruption. " Under which King, Be- 
 zonian ? Speak, or die ! " Which horn of his own 
 dilemma will Mr. Winthrop choose as the most com 
 fortable to be gored with ? Whether is Disunion not 
 fraught with national ruin, or does the Wilmot Pro 
 viso not bring us in danger of it? There is one 
 consolation, which is that the memory of whosoever 
 elects the fence to sit on will be retributively ridden 
 upon the rail he was so fond of by Posterity. 
 
 It is curious to observe how diverse a morality 
 obtains in political matters from that which governs 
 in the other affairs of life. The editor of the Bos 
 ton " Daily Advertiser," a man universally respected 
 for private virtue and integrity, and whose word 
 would be esteemed solid as a bond by any of his 
 fellow citizens, indulges the readers of his journal 
 with the following odd Kilkenny-cat-isms (" Adver 
 tiser " of February 9th) : 
 
 "MR. ROOT S RESOLUTION. Some newspapers 
 and some letter writers attach a degree of importance 
 to the vote by which Mr. Root s resolution was laid 
 on the table, on Monday, in the House of Represen 
 tatives, which we cannot think it deserves. The reso 
 lution was a proposition to instruct a committee 
 
C 168 3 
 
 with regard to an abstract question, a question, too, 
 which in more practical forms was certain to come up 
 before the House, and it was laid aside. If by our 
 own voice we could have passed the resolution, and 
 secured a prudent action under it, that voice would 
 have been given it, and we can well see why the 
 Massachusetts members voted against laying it upon 
 the table ; but we do not see that the result is a very 
 important one, or that the vote indicates in one way 
 or the other anything very definite with regard to 
 the slavery question. 
 
 " The following was the resolution as finally 
 amended by Mr. Root : 
 
 " Resolved, That the Committee on Territories be 
 instructed to report to the House, with as little delay 
 as practicable, a bill or bills providing a territorial 
 government or governments for all that part of the 
 territory ceded to the United States by Mexico by 
 the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, lying eastward of 
 California, and prohibiting slavery therein. 
 
 " It will be observed that this is a distinct enun 
 ciation, in a disagreeable form, of one part of a 
 general proposition which it is hoped may be made 
 a subject of compromise. While other statesmen are 
 engaged with the whole subject in dispute, Mr. Root 
 selects a part, and hurries in an order, not to ask 
 a committee to consider the propriety of a particular 
 
C 169 3 
 
 course, but to instruct them to report a bill, with a 
 proviso annexed, which proviso it is known is ob 
 noxious to nearly half at least of the members of the 
 House. 
 
 "All the Massachusetts members present voted 
 against laying the resolution upon the table, and so 
 did right. But if any of them supposed that by its 
 passage the great question of the session was to be 
 settled, or if Mr. Boot thought that in pressing his 
 resolution he was doing anything more than to throw 
 a firebrand into the national councils, we mistake 
 its purport, force, and effect." 
 
 This editorial comments sufficiently upon itself 
 without any glasses of ours. A few days later the 
 editor proposes that a public meeting shall be held 
 in Boston to proclaim devotion to the Union, in 
 other words, to protest against the Wilmot Proviso. 
 
 A few years ago, in looking up the history of the 
 Missouri Compromise, we had occasion to refer to 
 the files of the Boston " Repertory," edited, we be 
 lieve, by the same gentleman who now conducts the 
 " Advertiser." We have not those files at hand, but 
 if we can trust our recollection, the ground taken 
 by the " Repertory " was that the admission of Mis 
 souri as a slave state would add to the already undue 
 preponderancy of the South in the national politics. 
 We think the same argument equally conclusive 
 
c: 1703 
 
 now (to leave the higher ethical view out of the ques 
 tion) against a Compromise in the case of the terri 
 tory acquired from Mexico. But this is not the only, 
 or the chief, importance of the Proviso. Without it, 
 any of the new states, though they might enter the 
 Union with satisfactory constitutions, could amend 
 them so as to establish slavery at any moment, 
 whereas, as long as the Proviso remained in force, 
 the holding of a slave would be illegal, and the mat 
 ter would be decided as formerly in Massachusetts 
 by a suit before the proper tribunals. 
 
 Moreover, when any affair, private or public, is to 
 be settled, wisdom and justice are always found to 
 be coincident at last. Righteousness and expediency 
 turn out in the end to be identical. How lasting 
 was the truce patched up by the Missouri Compro 
 mise ? The admission of Texas with a pro-slavery 
 Constitution, did that tend to allay the Anti-slavery 
 agitation ? It is surely time that our legislators 
 should learn to look forward beyond the limit of a 
 session or a presidential term. It is no wonder that 
 an apt compromise cannot be found, since between 
 right and wrong there is no possibility of compro 
 mise. Justice exacts her dues more slowly of nations 
 than of individuals, but she always contrives to get 
 payment of the uttermost farthing from both. 
 
COMPROMISE 
 
 JLF there were a Saint Compromise, it would be his 
 image that ought to be stamped upon the Coins of 
 our Republic. Our very existence as a Nation at all 
 is due, we are told, to a compromise, and one of a 
 somewhat ignoble sort, not between God and Satan, 
 but between Trade and Slavery. So that Satan and 
 Mammon were represented at the formation of the 
 Compact, but not God. Since the sticking together 
 of the Union, this patron Saint Compromise has in 
 tervened on several occasions to preserve the work 
 of his clients. 
 
 This patching up of expedients is justified by a 
 system of reasoning falsely termed Common Sense. 
 Everything, they say, is the result of Compromises. 
 Conventionalism is a Compromise between the indi 
 vidual and Society. Respectability is a Compromise 
 between Virtue and Vice. Nay, life itself is a Com 
 promise between Health and Disease. We are taught 
 to believe that half a loaf is not only better than no 
 bread at all, but better than any amount of bread. 
 
 Now this is not truly Common Sense at all, for 
 
[ 172 n 
 
 that is the result of experience and practical saga 
 city teaching the best means of reaching a desired 
 point, not a makeshift for getting half way to it. 
 Facts are things to which we must all make up our 
 minds, however distasteful they may be to us. No 
 matter what our own hurry must be, we must con 
 sent that Destiny shall not make advances per saltum, 
 but with an almost inappreciable slowness. The 
 most vehement Reformer must endure that his very 
 existence shall depend upon that of his opposite 
 pole, the unyielding Conservative. We must either 
 get out of the way of facts or be run over by them, 
 like the old philosopher who denied the existence 
 of matter. 
 
 One of these tough facts is the presence and force 
 of Evil, Unwisdom, Satan, or whatever we choose to 
 call it, in human affairs. We may say what we 
 please, there it is, and we must make the best of it. 
 A great part of valuable human activity is wasted in 
 the futile work of building barriers against the In 
 evitable. This, then, is the true problem to find 
 out what the Inevitable is. It is inevitable that 
 when two forces join at an angle, a new direction is 
 generated proportioned to the relative quantities of 
 force. And this is the truth on which is based the 
 fallacy that Compromise is the dictate of Common 
 Sense. Practical wisdom, it is said, lies in the nat- 
 
C 178 ] 
 
 ural ground, the balance between opposite poles. 
 In spite of this, nevertheless, all that mankind has 
 ever recognized as uncommon sense has been that 
 which has come bluntly and face to face against 
 whatever was established theory or usage. 
 
 The difficulty is that all our Compromises have been 
 no compromises at all, at least in this sense. They 
 have rather realized the old meaning of the word, 
 which implied a Conspiracy. They have not been 
 modifications springing from a meeting of the two 
 antagonistic principles of Good and Evil, but Con 
 spiracies by which Good has been uniformly be 
 trayed. In the great game which began with the 
 birth of the Constitution, Slavery has all along 
 played with loaded Dice. She has put on the mask 
 of Destiny, and acted the part so well that our 
 Statesmen have always taken defeat for granted be 
 forehand. 
 
 Slavery, being an acknowledged evil, the very 
 permission to exist was at first a concession and a 
 surrender. This was called a Compromise. Then 
 Slavery desired to extend itself and treachery al 
 lowed it. This was called a Compromise. Again the 
 monster felt the pains of hunger, and Texas was 
 thrown to it. This was called a Compromise. Now, 
 affairs have thriven so well that Freedom sits an 
 outcast and a beggar at the gates of her own an- 
 
C 174 3 
 
 cestral dwelling. And this is also called a Compro 
 mise. Better strangle at once that " bird of our 
 Country " of which our orators are so fond of talk 
 ing, than let her go on hatching eggs of all manner 
 of unclean birds. 
 
 It is hardly a year since the Northern Whig 
 presses were vying with each other in their zeal for 
 the Wilmot Proviso. The universal Whig Dough of 
 the Country, fermenting with the yeast of an ex 
 pected victory, forgot for a moment that it was 
 Dough. Nothing was too bad for that sour and 
 heavy Democratic batch which could not rise. Now 
 that aspiring Dough is flat and lifeless. Even Gen 
 eral Taylor ivas in favor of the Proviso, and North 
 ern Whigs were seduced to vote for him upon that 
 pretence. Let a man cheat his neighbor out of a few 
 hundred dollars and he goes to the State Prison. 
 But to what Penitentiary of public contempt shall a 
 Party be consigned, which obtains a President under 
 false pretences ? When the eye of the People be 
 comes clairvoyant, it will behold, we fancy, certain 
 unconscious gentlemen working in Congressional 
 Committees, clad in symbolic suits of blue and red 
 perpendicularly halved, such as are the uniforms in 
 some other public institutions. 
 
 The Wilmot Proviso was truly a Compromise. It 
 allowed the South to keep all that it had hitherto 
 
C 
 
 unjustly gained, but declared that it should steal no 
 more. Our statesmanship, which has brought itself 
 more and more into accordance with that of Europe, 
 was desirous of reproducing an American type of 
 that greatest of Old World humbugs, the Balance 
 of Power. Accordingly, we are now told that the 
 beam must be kept exactly even between the Free 
 and the Slave States, in other words, that when we 
 make a hole for our great cat to go through, we 
 must also make a still greater for the little cat not 
 yet littered. 
 
 All history is the record of a struggle, gradually 
 heightening in fierceness, between reason and un 
 reason, between right and wrong. Of what good is 
 it that we can put off the evil time a century, which 
 is but a day in the history of the human race ? Our 
 statutes are subject to revision in that higher Con 
 gress where the laws of Nature are enacted. " Trent 
 shall not wind him with so deep indent," exclaim 
 our Glendowers. " He must, he will, you see he 
 doth," answers the progress of events. This very 
 neutral ground of Compromise is that which is 
 trampled at last by the Contending Forces of the 
 good and evil principle. Our legislators might as 
 well try to stay Niagara with a dip-net, or pass acts 
 against the law of gravitation, as endeavor to stunt 
 the growth of avenging Conscience. Do they think 
 
C *76 3 
 
 that the Union can be stuck together with mouth- 
 glue, when the eternal forces are rending it asunder ? 
 There is something better than Expediency, and 
 that is Wisdom, something stronger than Compro 
 mise, and that is Justice. 
 
MR. WEBSTER S SPEECH 
 
 JLF there were a Pepys now living in Boston and 
 snapping up for his diary all those unconsidered 
 trifles of street and personal news which do not get 
 into print, but which nevertheless make History, he 
 would record a great many facts that would give 
 clews to the investigations of the future annalist. 
 He would note down that Mr. Webster received the 
 cue for his extraordinary speech from a private 
 meeting called together by certain gentlemen to 
 concoct reaction against the Anti-slavery movement 
 in particular, and to screw down the brakes upon 
 the too rapid progress of Destiny in general. He 
 would state, that, as the defection of Gorgey was 
 talked of in London before it took place in Hun 
 gary, so that of Mr. Webster was counted on in 
 State Street while the Honorable Senator himself 
 was innocently writing home to his friends to inquire 
 how strong a form of Anti-slavery the Massachusetts 
 stomach would bear. He would state as a certainty 
 that the passage in Mr. Webster s speech relating 
 to Mr. Hoar s mission was not delivered in the Sen- 
 
n 178 ] 
 
 ate, but was an after-thought sent on for insertion 
 in the Boston edition. 
 
 So much by way of previous history. Now in re 
 gard to the speech itself. It has been characterized, 
 like most of Mr. Webster s speeches, as " a masterly 
 effort." Some of them have been masterly suc 
 cesses, but this, we sincerely hope and believe, was 
 an effort. We think we notice in the course of it 
 one or two scarce-concealed gulps, as the Oregon 
 speech was swallowed. And it was, moreover, the 
 effort, not of a Senator representing Massachusetts, 
 but of an advocate holding the brief of State Street. 
 It is a matter of debate in the newspapers whether 
 or no Mr. Webster is sustained by the public senti 
 ment of Boston. It seems to be forgotten that the 
 distinguished Senator represents an undivided half 
 of the Bay State. He has remembered that he was 
 the delegate of Boston, but has apparently forgotten 
 that Bunker Hill and Concord have also their share 
 in him ; nay, it seems to have slipped from his mind 
 that he represented Daniel Webster the man no less 
 than Daniel Webster the aspirant for the Presidency. 
 
 We have touched upon the first great objection 
 to the speech, and it is a fatal one. It is the plea of 
 a lawyer and an advocate, but not of a statesman. 
 It is not even the plea of an advocate on the side 
 which he was retained to argue. We have heard 
 
C 179 ] 
 
 enough of Democratic defalcations ; here is a great 
 Whig defalcation which dwarfs them all, for it is 
 not money which has disappeared in this instance, 
 but professions, pledges, principles. Men do not de 
 fend themselves in advance against accusations of 
 inconsistency, unless they feel an uncomfortable 
 sense that there is some justice in the charge. This 
 feeling pervades a greater part of Mr. Webster s 
 speech like a blush. While Mr. Webster s private 
 correspondents in Boston were spreading the trem 
 ulous intelligence, not without due awe of the result, 
 that he was about to swoop 
 
 " Like an eagle, 
 And bolt his cloudless thunder on the heads " 
 
 of Southern cacklers, behold, he quietly descends 
 and takes his perch beside them on the roost like 
 any tame villatic fowl. 
 
 Mr. Webster begins by what may be considered 
 an apology for Slavery in the abstract, as it is called, 
 although we must confess that after diligent inquiry, 
 we have been unable to discover where that particu 
 lar kind of servitude exists now, or has ever existed. 
 We do not exactly see what Greek, Roman, or Jew 
 ish Slavery has to do with the Wilmot Proviso, but 
 as Mr. Webster has seen fit to bring them in, it may 
 be worth while to set him right in his facts. It was 
 not " the ingenious philosophy of the Greeks which 
 
C 
 
 found, or sought to find, a justification for it (Slav 
 ery) precisely upon the grounds which have been 
 assumed for such a justification in this country ; 
 that is, a natural and original difference among the 
 races of mankind, the inferiority of the black or 
 colored races to the white." It was simply an ingen 
 ious philosopher among the Greeks, Aristotle, who 
 did so ; and he, like the rest of his countrymen and 
 like the Chinese of the present day, considered all 
 foreigners as barbarians, drawing quite another line 
 between those fit and those unfit for Slavery than 
 that of color. Plato in his Republic makes a distinc 
 tion only in favor of the non-enslavement of Greeks. 
 There is proof enough of the fact that the Greeks 
 did not consider intellectual inferiority to be gradu 
 ated by the chromatic scale of complexion. Does 
 Herodotus paint the Egyptians as ourang-outangs 
 a race which the profoundest ethnologists consider 
 to have been of the Negro type ? And for what did 
 Pythagoras visit India, and Plato Egypt ? The 
 greater part of the slaves in Greece, who were not 
 subjugated natives like the helots in Sparta, came 
 from Asia Minor. While the Greek republics were 
 mere clans of squabbling savages, there were dark- 
 skinned empires upon the Nile, from the dregs of 
 whose philosophy and religion the Greeks drank and 
 were inspired. Mr. Webster says that he " sup- 
 
C l81 3 
 
 poses " (for in this speech every phrase seems to sit 
 upon the fence) that no injunction against the insti 
 tution of Slavery is to be found in the " teachings 
 of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or of any of his apos 
 tles." We will not stop to inquire what the Gospel 
 of Christ, in contradistinction to that of his apostles, 
 may be, but only ask if incest is anywhere forbidden 
 in the New Testament? Or, if not, whether that 
 want of express prohibition be in any sort an excuse 
 for the crime ? Punch, says the Newgate Ordinary, 
 is nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture. 
 
 In order to appreciate fully the fallacies of the 
 speech, it must be borne in mind constantly that it 
 is not a discourse upon the question of Slavery, but 
 an argument against the application of the Wilmot 
 Proviso to New Mexico and California. Now what 
 has all this stuff about Greek and Roman Slavery, 
 and nowhere forbidden in the Gospels, to do with 
 this question ? Nothing whatever, except to serve 
 as a lenitive to the public conscience, that it may re 
 lax a little in its anxiety concerning the smuggling 
 of human bondage with all its concomitant horrors 
 into the New Territory. There is no doubt, however, 
 in point of fact, that the early Christians discoun 
 tenanced Slavery, as they did also war. One of the 
 Fathers, indeed, expressly condemns it. But if the 
 practice of the Church were in its favor, what then ? 
 
C 182 ] 
 
 The Church countenanced many practices which 
 would not be tolerated now. The first Council of 
 Toledo (A. D. 400) permitted the keeping of concu 
 bines, and every one knows for what, in later times, 
 the clergy paid the tax of couillage. Perhaps it is 
 more to the purpose, as concerns Mr. Webster the 
 lawyer, to allude to the fact that the extinction of 
 serfage in England was due to the boldness and per 
 severance with which the lawyers insisted on having 
 the laws so construed as to favor liberty. But, if 
 Mr. Webster were really in search of a scriptural 
 prohibition of Slavery, we think he might find it in 
 that commandment which forbids us to covet any 
 thing that is our neighbor s. For, if we may not do 
 that, then a fortiori we may not covet our neigh 
 bor himself. 
 
 Mr. Webster, having endeavored to make Slav 
 ery a little less odious by showing that it existed 
 among two pagan nations, and among the Jews, a 
 race notoriously blind to the spiritual aspect of the 
 Law whereof they were depositaries, goes on to say 
 that honest differences of opinion exist at the North 
 and the South upon this subject. One might have 
 expected here some cursory glance at the moral side 
 of the question, which has, as we shall see presently, 
 a decided bearing even upon his own view of the 
 case. But it is precisely this ethical part of the 
 
C 18 3 3 
 
 argument which Mr. Webster is anxious to keep out 
 of sight, or, if it will suggest itself, to depreciate. 
 He merely alludes to the fact that there are such 
 diversities of sentiment, and then goes on to ridicule 
 Northern "fanaticism" without an allusion to its 
 antagonist principle at the South. He says of them 
 that " they deal with morals as with mathematics, 
 and they think what is right may be distinguished 
 from what is wrong with the precision of an alge 
 braic equation." We confess that with regard to 
 our treatment of those who practice what we con 
 sider sinful, it is a very hard thing for us to define 
 the precise point where charity ends and connivance 
 and complicity begin. But we should like to know 
 how many of the religious sects in this country be 
 lieve that ignorance of the moral excuses the trans 
 gressor any more than ignorance of the laws of the 
 land ? Mr. Webster says, " if their perspicacious vi 
 sion enables them to detect a spot on the face of the 
 sun, they think that a good reason why the sun should 
 be struck down from heaven." This is simply non 
 sense, besides being a very faulty comparison. For 
 no vision, however perspicacious, can detect spots 
 in the sun, and none but an insane man would wish 
 to destroy the sun, even if he could detect such spots, 
 because everybody who is not stark mad knows 
 that we have no control over the sun whatever. But 
 
C 
 
 surely if there were a gas-lamp in front of a man s 
 door, and the glass were so foul that it gave no 
 light, he might very reasonably desire to have it 
 washed. The Constitution is a thing subject, under 
 certain conditions, to the reforming will of the 
 people. He says that " they (the fanatics afore 
 said) forget how many vices and crimes, public and 
 private, still prevail and that many of them, public 
 crimes especially, which are offences against the 
 Christian religion, pass without exciting particular 
 regret or indignation." Nothing can be more ab 
 surdly untrue than this. Mr. Webster, before un 
 dertaking to make a speech, was bound to master 
 his subject. In debating this question, nothing could 
 be of more importance than an accurate understand 
 ing of the sentiment which lies at the bottom of 
 Northern Anti-slavery. Of all men in the com 
 munity the Abolitionists are the least oblivious of 
 these things which Mr. Webster says they forget. 
 Mr. Webster would probably be surprised to know 
 that, if his argument in regard to our Constitutional 
 obligations have any cogency at all, it will be espe 
 cially pleasing to the most ultra of these Northern 
 fanatics, the Disunionists, who have long insisted 
 upon the necessity of being limited to a precisely 
 similar view. 
 
 Mr. Webster next traces the growth of Slavery 
 
C 185 3 
 
 (in itself an entirely sufficient argument for the 
 enactment of the Proviso) and proceeds to give the 
 history of the annexation of Texas. We shall con 
 sider this, and what he says about Mr. Mason s bill, 
 together, because his argument on both cases hinges 
 upon the due performance of a contract. But first 
 a word in regard to Mr. Webster s personal attitude 
 toward annexation. If Abolitionists forget certain 
 things, as he affirms that they do, there are others 
 of which their memory is uncomfortably tenacious, 
 and in regard to which they might jog Mr. Web 
 ster s own recollection, which seems to be a little 
 drowsy. Who was it that asserted the annexation of 
 Texas under any circumstances to be unconstitu 
 tional? And how is that constitutional in 1850 
 which was not so in 1845 ? Mr. Webster says that 
 he "went home to Massachusetts and proclaimed 
 the existence of this purpose (annexation), but I 
 could get no audience, and but little attention." A 
 contribution to history as valuable and authentic as 
 any of Bishop Turpin ! There was a distinguished 
 gentleman of Massachusetts who promised to attend 
 a certain Convention in Faneuil Hall, whither the 
 announcement of his speaking on a particular sub 
 ject would have summoned the largest audience ever 
 assembled there, but who was summoned away sud 
 denly to New York. Can Mr. Webster remember 
 how he was ? 
 
C 
 
 When we come to the question of the perform 
 ance of a contract, it becomes plain why the speaker 
 has avoided all allusion to the ethics of the matter. 
 Or, it may be, that, as is often the case with law 
 yers, the nearer and lower duty occults the farther 
 and greater. If the Constitution be a contract be 
 tween the North and the South, and if the legisla 
 tive provision for making four new slave States out 
 of Texas be so also, then we suppose these con 
 tracts are to be governed by the same rules which 
 prescribe the duties of individuals in similar cases. 
 Now, if there were an express understanding to a 
 certain effect between the contracting parties, certi 
 fied by abundant witnesses, that understanding would 
 surely be held to modify the obligations of the con 
 tract. Now there was an understanding, as Mr. 
 Webster himself states correctly, at the time of the 
 adoption of the Constitution, that Slavery would be 
 extinguished by the suppression of the slave-trade. 
 This is all that gives any meaning whatever to Mr. 
 Madison s objection to the insertion of the word 
 " slave " in the Constitution. But, above and be 
 yond this, every contract to do an immoral act is 
 void db initio. The return of fugitives is clearly an 
 immoral act by the showing of that very Gospel 
 which Mr. Webster admits to be an authority when 
 he intimates that it nowhere condemns Slavery. But 
 
C 18 ? 3 
 
 Mr. Webster, while he would enforce the perform 
 ance, by the North, of the contracts as respects 
 Texas and the return of fugitives, says not a word 
 of Southern duties and obligations. Not one word, 
 for the passage in his speech which refers to the im 
 prisonment of free colored seamen was not spoken 
 in the Senate, but sent on to be inserted in the Bos 
 ton edition of his speech. Was it a Senator from 
 South Carolina, or from Massachusetts, who was 
 speaking? Surely a lower bid for the Presidency 
 has never been made than this. 
 
 But how is it about the Wilmot Proviso? Mr. 
 Webster has two reasons to assign against its pass 
 age. One is that it is useless, and the other that it 
 is irritating to the South. If it be useless, why was 
 our advocate in favor of it in the case of Oregon ? 
 Why did he claim such a mere ~brutum fulmen as 
 " his thunder " ? An inaccuracy in fact, by the 
 way, like his " proclaiming " in 1843 the design to 
 annex Texas. Why, the Abolitionists had already 
 bored the community to death with it. Dr. Chan- 
 ning had " proclaimed" it years before, and John 
 Quincy Adams. But who knows that the Proviso is 
 useless ? Mr. Webster says that it is, and that Slav 
 ery is excluded from New Mexico by the law of 
 nature and of physical geography. Excellent good 
 words, but where is the proof? Why, it is Mr. 
 
C 1883 
 
 Webster s opinion. But Mr. Webster has held opin 
 ions against the Tariff and in favor of the Tariff, in 
 favor of the Wilmot Proviso and against it. If Slav 
 ery should get into New Mexico (and let us remem 
 ber that it has been asserted all along by the South 
 ern men in Congress that it would have got into 
 California but for the fear of the Proviso), it would 
 be no particular satisfaction to be told that Mr. 
 Webster thought it never could. Mr. Webster would 
 not, he says, reenact the laws of God. Why, all 
 human laws are an attempt at that very thing. It is 
 just in proportion as the laws of society or of the 
 State diverge from that intention that confusion and 
 anarchy are produced. 
 
 The use of the Proviso is to set a definite limit to 
 the Extension of Slavery, to put upon record the 
 will of the People that they must have no more of 
 it. Mr. Webster s argument, or rather assertion, 
 that the laws of nature and God will keep Slavery 
 out of New Mexico is puerile. Slavery everywhere 
 exists in spite of those laws, not in accordance with 
 them. Mr. Calhoun s plea in defence of Slavery 
 rests not upon any assumption that cotton could 
 not be cultivated as well by black freemen as by 
 black slaves. Quite otherwise; he would maintain 
 the institution because it fosters pride, the habit of 
 command, a state of aristocracy, and other such 
 
C 189 ]] 
 
 Christian virtues. Mr. Webster is scrupulous about 
 reenacting the laws of God, and we wish he had 
 felt as much delicacy about those of Satan. 
 
 Mr. Webster, we have said, avoids carefully all the 
 moral points of the argument. He falls in with the 
 common assumption that this is a question of politi 
 cal preponderance between the North and the South. 
 Nay, he goes even farther and would reduce it to 
 a mere matter of sectional prejudice, the result 
 of habit and education. Had it been a question of 
 political supremacy, it would have been no disgrace 
 to Mr. Webster to have remembered that he came 
 from the North. Had it been a matter of prejudice, 
 it would not have lessened his repute for wisdom if 
 he had retained some prepossession in favor of free 
 dom. Had the North been as faithfully and ener 
 getically represented at Washington as the South 
 has been, the limit would have been set, and quietly 
 set, to the extension of Slavery long ago. But it is 
 not a question between the North and the South. It 
 is a struggle between the South (we had almost said 
 Calhoun) and the spirit of the Nineteenth Century 
 after Christ. But Mr. Webster would not press the 
 Wilmot Proviso lest it irritate the South. Was he 
 equally considerate when South Carolina nullified 
 on account of the Tariff ? Is Slavery the only thing 
 whose sensitiveness is to be respected ? Freedom has 
 
C 
 
 been thought by some to have her finer feelings also. 
 Did Mr. Calhoun stop to inquire whether Freedom 
 had a system of nerves when he introduced resolu 
 tions prohibiting the employment of free colored 
 men in the national vessels? Mr. Webster might 
 have remembered that a Senator represents fidelity, 
 justice, probity, honor, no less than the mercantile 
 and manufacturing interests. He should have con 
 sidered that the duty of a Statesman lies in pre 
 paring his age and his country for the inevitable 
 progress of events, not in contriving expedients for 
 putting it off from day to day, renewing, as it were, 
 with a constant accumulation of interest the pledges 
 we have given to Fate, and crowding back into a 
 deluge by an exaggeration of petty obstacles that 
 current of events which might otherwise have flowed 
 full, indeed, but still between the banks of recog 
 nized order. 
 
 It is of the first importance that the mind of the 
 country should be cleared of this confusion of the 
 two terms South and Slavery. If we may believe 
 Mr. Calhoun, it is the South which has all along 
 been a sufferer by the legislation of the country. 
 The system of aggression, he says, began under the 
 Confederation, and has continued to the present day. 
 There has never been a time when Slavery has not 
 been the governing interest (we should rather say 
 
c 
 
 disaster) of the Union. The exclusion of Slavery 
 from the North Western territory, or from any 
 other territory, is no wrong done to the South, but 
 only a preservation of equality between her and the 
 North. The admission of Slavery would have been 
 an entire exclusion of the North. But, admitting 
 for the purpose of the argument, Mr. Clay s doctrine 
 that what the law makes property is property, the 
 Wilmot Proviso merely leaves matters even between 
 the two sections. The slaveholder may turn his 
 " property " into money before emigrating to Cali 
 fornia or New Mexico, just as the Northern freeman 
 is obliged to do with his. But Slavery prohibits the 
 entrance of that kind of capital which makes the 
 true riches of a State, freemen, the masters only of 
 strong arms and skilful hands. 
 
 We may as well correct another of Mr. Webster s 
 mistakes or perversions of fact before we close our 
 article. As if to make his speech a perfect cabinet 
 of cant, he has a specimen of that sort which attrib 
 utes to the Abolitionists the cessation of all freedom 
 of speech at the South in regard to the evils of Slav 
 ery. He refers in confirmation of this absurdity to 
 the Virginia Convention of 1832 and the denuncia 
 tions of Slavery by several distinguished delegates to 
 it. Then he tells us that the Anti-slavery agitation 
 commenced in 1835, and wishes to know whether 
 
C !9 2 !3 
 
 any one can speak as freely in the Old Dominion 
 now. If Mr. Webster should ever chance to see a 
 file of " The Liberator," he would find the imprint of 
 the first number bearing the date of January 1, 1831, 
 and the " Genius of Universal Emancipation " had 
 been previously published for several years in Wash 
 ington and Baltimore. The truth is that Slavebreed- 
 ing is more profitable, and therefore more orthodox, 
 in Virginia now than then. Mr. Webster might 
 have obtained this information from that very paper 
 of Mr. Upshur s which he refers to. To every think 
 ing man it must be apparent that an increase of 
 severity and watchfulness from year to year is an 
 essential incident of the slave-system. As numbers 
 increase, as hope, desire, and intelligence are inde 
 finably diffused as by the atmosphere of the time, 
 tyranny must grow ever more suspicious and more 
 alert. If Slavery were as unprofitable to slaveholders 
 individually as it is to the States in which it exists, 
 not all the fanaticism of all the Abolitionists would 
 suffice to keep down discussion. There is a Yankee 
 proverb about people who bite off their noses to 
 spite their faces, but this kind of amusement is too 
 expensive for a continuance. Slavery is profitable 
 to slaveholders in many ways, but especially as it 
 has enabled them to maintain that political suprem 
 acy which Mr. Webster is willing to extend and 
 
C 193 3 
 
 strengthen. It would have been as well for him to 
 have awakened earlier to the evils of the exaspera 
 tion springing from those insults to which one sec 
 tion of the country is subjected by another. He 
 tells us that there are complaints of the North against 
 the South, but that he " need not go over them par 
 ticularly." Why not? What else was he sent there 
 for? Does he sit in the Senate of the United 
 States to defend Massachusetts from insult and her 
 citizens from outrage, or to look out for the Pre 
 sidential chances of Daniel Webster? If it be an 
 insult to the South to have Slavery excluded from 
 New Mexico, why was it not an insult to the North 
 to have Freedom forever forbidden to enter Texas ? 
 It is said that Mr. Webster s speech is sustained 
 by the public sentiment of Boston, and we believe 
 it. It is sustained by numbers who have always 
 wished to say the same thing, but have never dared 
 to. When a struggle like the one now going on 
 rends and rifts the foundations of political parties, 
 dormant old fogies are wakened and brought to light, 
 with ideas and principles as naturally antediluvian 
 as those of toads split out of granite. But Mr. Web 
 ster is not sustained by Massachusetts. There are 
 some who really believed the professions of the 
 Whig leaders and that the Wilmot Proviso would 
 be safe in the keeping of their party. Safe as free- 
 VOL. n. 
 
C 
 
 dom in the keeping of Austria, as a younger brother 
 in the guardianship of the Grand Turk ! 
 
 If Mr. Webster s speech should not find any one 
 to confute it in the Senate a hard task, for as 
 sumptions and tergiversations are not easily replied 
 to it will not be without answerers abundant and 
 conclusive. It will be answered by every generous 
 instinct of the human heart, by every principle 
 which a New Englander has imbibed in the Church, 
 the Schoolhouse, or the Home, but especially by 
 those inextinguishable sentiments which move men s 
 hatred of treachery and contempt for the traitor. 
 
ANOTHER WORD ON MR. WEB- 
 STER S SPEECH 
 
 _1_N the comments which we made a fortnight ago 
 upon Mr. Webster s speech, we dwelt not upon his 
 inconsistencies with himself, but upon his inconsist 
 encies with truth. We should have felt no regret at 
 his contradicting himself, if he would have done it in 
 the manner which he seems to think so ludicrous in 
 Senators Dix and Niles. There is a kind of incon 
 sistency over which, we are told, there is joy in Heaven. 
 We doubted the accuracy of Mr. Webster s state 
 ment with regard to the ground on which the Greek 
 Philosophers defended Slavery, we should rather say 
 accounted for it. We have since read what Aris 
 totle says upon the subject, and find that we were 
 right. Aristotle shows that there were those who 
 condemned Slavery altogether as being contrary to 
 natural right, and then put the rights of the master 
 upon the same foundation with Carlyle, namely, 
 Might. This he does rather as if he were summing 
 up what might be said on that side, than as if he 
 were stating or defending opinions of his own. 
 
C 1963 
 
 The theory, after the elimination of everything 
 unessential, reduces itself to this that it is the nat 
 ural law for the wiser to be master of the less wise. 
 It will appear at once that it is a non seguitur to say 
 that this involves an ownership, or that one of the 
 terms of the relation is the " beneficent whip." The 
 government, we may admit; the mode of it is a totally 
 different question. The Sun governs the planets of 
 its system without the aid of the lash, and we cannot 
 help thinking that unwisdom is properly subjected 
 to wisdom in a manner more akin to an eternal law 
 of gravitation, than to the sudden and violent appli 
 cation of physical force. 
 
PSEUDO-CONSERVATISM 
 
 J_ 
 
 F this country may claim any advantage over Eu 
 rope, it is surely not in externals, but in its political 
 ideas and in the greater freedom for their develop 
 ment. It is the world of Experiment. The Elements 
 of our social condition have not so hardened as that 
 new combinations are impossible without disruption. 
 The great currents of routine and tradition set not 
 so strongly through settled channels that the ship of 
 state cannot be kept off the lee shore without coming 
 to an anchor, to remain stationary while the cables 
 hold, or until some stronger gale drives it among the 
 breakers. Our growth is not merely that of the poly 
 pus, but every new organization which springs out of 
 us and gradually detaches itself from us, contains 
 in itself original elements, based either upon expe 
 rience, or upon theory, to be tried and rejected, or 
 added to the definite formula of political science. 
 Freedom of autochthonic development is our peculiar 
 privilege and safeguard, and the touch of Europe 
 brings only disease and vice to us as to the islanders 
 of the South Sea. 
 
C 98 ] 
 
 But there is among us a class who seem always to 
 forget that the important word America must form 
 one term of all our political equations. They read 
 European histories, reviews, and newspapers, and 
 apply to our affairs whatever principles they succeed 
 in extracting from them. It is not seldom the case 
 that Greece and Rome, even, furnish their wisest 
 saws and most modern instances. The courses and 
 periods of Commonwealths are not to be predicted 
 with that mathematical certainty which will give us 
 within a hair s breadth the place of a planet at any 
 given time. Human nature, it is true, must always 
 be the basis of our calculations, but we must first 
 carefully examine under what novel conditions it 
 may act or suffer, and make full allowance for dis 
 turbing and accelerating forces. Nevertheless, these 
 well meaning persons would introduce by force into 
 our Body Politic a certain antiseptic ingredient 
 which they call Conservatism, much in the same way 
 that timber is injected with chemical substances to 
 keep it from rotting. They forget that it is only 
 dead wood which is treated in this way and that 
 Nature has provided in the sap and its unhindered 
 circulation the surest preservative for the living tree. 
 
 Nothing that is alive and healthy needs any as 
 sistance toward its own conservation. All such pre 
 cautionary measures are at best but mummy-making, 
 
C 
 
 and prolong decay without preventing it. The Chi 
 nese offer the readiest example of a nation embalmed 
 alive, and the result does not encourage imitation. 
 Commonwealths need a decent apparel of constitu 
 tions and laws, but do not need to be clothed in 
 strait-jackets. Our surest safeguard in America is 
 that we are the busiest people in the world, and 
 that every drop of our blood is in rapid circulation. 
 
 We said every drop, but there is one spot of stag 
 nation, and it is to the maintenance of this just as 
 it is that the efforts of our self-styled conservatives 
 are directed. If our timid friends would only con 
 fine themselves to raising money for the erection of 
 pillars to keep the sky from falling, or to calling 
 public meetings to preserve the precession of the 
 Equinoxes, we should never meddle with them. But 
 they not only claim for themselves this holy name of 
 Preservers, they also stigmatize as Destructives all 
 who will not join them. We wish to have the titles 
 applied so that they will no longer be nicknames but 
 designations. 
 
 The true Conservative is he who strives to form 
 some just augury of the Inevitable and to make 
 ready for its coming, who does all in his power to 
 give affairs such a direction that the Future may en 
 ter as a Fulfiller and not as an Avenger. In history 
 he seeks a lesson and not the old clothes to dress a 
 
C 20 3 
 
 scarecrow in. But we are a people of yesterday, 
 without a past, without traditions, who feel no re 
 verence for laws which are the work of our own 
 hands, and must be taught it ? Often said, but none 
 the truer though a wilderness of parrots repeat it. 
 People respect laws passed by themselves because 
 they are commonly the result of a need previously 
 felt. The statute-books are gauges marking the pop 
 ular level of intelligence at successive periods. Laws 
 become a dead letter precisely in proportion as they 
 become unrepresentative and fail to embody the lat 
 est wisdom of the people. It is as impossible to re- 
 enact a foregone state of opinion as to bring General 
 Taylor back to life by a resolve of Congress. More 
 over, Truth is not of yesterday, is not without a 
 past, nor without traditions, and laws made in ac 
 cordance with living principles have a way of mak 
 ing themselves respected. The fact that stones are 
 hard and that fire will burn is not yet made a part 
 of the regular course of teaching in our Common 
 Schools. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Bill is at present the favorite 
 text of our political Talmudists. Here is an oppor 
 tunity for us to sacrifice ourselves to our convictions 
 of the sacredness of Law. An odd kind of vicarious 
 martyrdom this, where William and Ellen Craft go 
 to the stake, and we rise phoenix-like from their 
 
c 201 n 
 
 ashes as Secretaries of State, Ambassadors or Col 
 lectors with ten thousand a year. Such flames under 
 gone by proxy are not so scorching, we fancy, as 
 those of Smithfield. This way of employing a vice- 
 martyr is an invention worthy of the age which 
 gave birth to the electric telegraph. Suppose the 
 position and the salary should also be enjoyed by 
 substitute ? 
 
 That is strangely enough called Law which com 
 pels anarchy and renders illegality permanent. But 
 it is the Law, we are told, and therefore we must 
 obey it. Besides, it is no worse than the law of 93. 
 Small consolation, when we consider that an interval 
 of fifty-seven years divides them. Excellent friends, 
 you forget that the Time When materially affects 
 the aspect of all human actions. You must intro 
 duce a bill at the next session of Congress repealing 
 and abolishing the Nineteenth Century. It is that 
 which really stands in your way, and gives you so 
 much trouble. It is that which has got into the legs 
 of the slaves and the heads of the constituencies. 
 We can understand a man who affirms his belief 
 that Slavery is the natural condition of any part of 
 mankind, but when one tells us that he believes Slav 
 ery to be wrong and unnatural and at the same time 
 would support a law intended to preserve it, we are 
 at a loss. His notion must be that God and Destiny 
 
202 ] 
 
 can be bound by a string of Caucus resolutions. It 
 comes to mind now, also, for the first time, that we 
 have traditions and a past. Men are yet alive who 
 felt the first thrill of that fateful Declaration, who 
 can remember that famous war carried through 
 " upon a preamble." There are descendants among 
 us of those who sheltered Goffe, Whalley, and Dix- 
 well ominous names, recalling the history of that 
 King who resisted the progress of Events, who 
 maintained privilege and prescription till the axe cut 
 through life and prerogative together. 
 
 Mr. Webster has been filling the newspapers lately 
 with certificates of the efficacy of his famous Union 
 Pill and Gunpowder Cement. He warrants his pat 
 ent medicine as a conservative, but of what ? Why, 
 the pill will enable a man to enjoy for years his ex 
 cellent bad constitution ; it will maintain every 
 one in the quiet profession of his time-honored 
 boil ; it will secure the prolonged activity of our he 
 reditary scrofula. And the Gunpowder Cement ? 
 That needs no testimonials, for everybody knows 
 what gunpowder will do. 
 
 " Resolved," say the London Aldermen, " that 
 we will have, and of right ought to have, our an 
 cient stenches and foul gases." Providence calls 
 no public meetings and passes no resolutions that 
 the Aldermen hear of, but by and by quietly comes 
 
C 
 
 in the Cholera. So it will be here. Preserve the 
 Union by throwing coals into whatever is explo 
 sive in it, inculcate reverence for the Constitution 
 by mumbo-jumboing forever before that part of it 
 which is wholly unrevered, and in good time enter 
 Insurrection and Disruption. Mr. Webster repeats 
 everywhere ^Esop s fable of the bundle of rods, and 
 he might select a very handsome fagot as an illus 
 tration from those which Time has in pickle for 
 him. But if he has ever been into a shop he must 
 have seen the pack-thread snap by being too tightly 
 drawn around the parcel, and perhaps it might 
 profit him to turn over in his mind this little fact in 
 connection with the fable. We did not get rid of 
 George III. to enthrone a Constitution as pigheaded 
 as he. If we are to live we must grow. The oak- 
 tree planted in the flower-pot, as Goethe says of 
 Hamlet, must burst it or die. 
 
 END OF VOLUME II 
 
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