Two striking phenomena remain to be noticed and accounted for. Amid all the conflict of opinion and feeling upon this subject,—which was inseparable from doctrines so utterly at war with the practices of the country—a conflict which at an early period found its way into the halls of legislation, civil and ecclesiastical, and has not ceased to the present time to modify the federal politics of the country, the African population has yielded only to certain physical and moral laws as to the place of its location; whilst the institution of slavery, which embodies the great mass of that population in the country, has held on the even tenor of its way, unchecked in the slightest degree by the antagonistic doctrines and sentiments which have warred so fiercely against it, and which at so many periods have threatened the country with a legion of disastrous consequences. In the first place, the African population has gradually receded to those sections of the Union which, from their climate and soil, were better adapted to slave labor. Why did not the abstract opinions and sentiments set forth by Mr. Jefferson and the M. E. Church, and which are supposed to have given birth to the emancipation laws of the Northern States, operate to retain within those States the large portion of slave population then held, and secure their practical freedom? Why did they escape the supposed charity of these doctrines, and find their way, not as freemen, but as slaves, to a climate and soil more congenial to their nature and destiny? Are these doctrines real abstract truths, as their advocates profess to believe them to be? Then they are fundamental —they are vital—they are life-giving, and can never fail to impress their own essential character upon every system to which they are applied. The citizens of the Northern States adopted these doctrines. Then it was an affair of conscience. Emancipation laws were said to be the result. But that these laws, supposed to be founded in the belief of certain great abstract truths, which secured to the African his civil freedom, should operate only to transform him to a climate and soil better suited to his condition as a slave, is a phenomenon for which the hypothesis does not account. And again, the institution itself, of domestic slavery, by reason of causes which are evidently, though mysteriously, at work, is this day more firmly grounded in the confidence of the great mass of the Southern people, and more extensively ramified and interlocked with other civil institutions of the whole country, than at any former period of its history! How is this? The abstract opinions and sentiments in question, pervading our literature, our politics, and our theology, have been adopted by so many of our citizens as to entitle the doctrine to be regarded as a kind of national belief—the sentiment a kind of national feeling. We are told that all men believe slavery to be wrong in principle; that is, wrong in itself! and that all men feel that it is wrong! And certain it is, there is more truth than fiction in all this! It is strictly true, as to the citizens of the so-called free States. The same doctrine is not without advocates at the South; whilst many more, as we have before stated, who may not be said to believe it, are nevertheless often the subjects of painful misgivings. They fear it may be true. The causes to which we have traced this, fully account for it; and we need not fear to state the truth. But then again, the question recurs— How is this, that the institution itself, a great practical truth, should daily, for a long series of years, become more and more practical—a fixed fact in the country? Truly, this is a phenomenon for which the philosophy of the day will not account. If those who believed this doctrine were ruthless fanatics—ultra abolitionists in the strictest sense—if those who oppose it were really “pro-slavery” men, in the bad sense in which certain persons understand this phrase, that is, men who, on the subject of slavery, wickedly do what they know and feel to be wrong: on either hypothesis we could account for the phenomenon in question. But these are not the men with whom I deal in these lectures. I lay all such out of the account. They are men not to be reasoned with. No: the men of whom I speak, both North and South, are candid, honest men. I personally know many of them at the North. I have met them on great battle-fields, where more than blood was shed! I know them to be good men and true, and I believe the same of the large class they represent. With many of those at the South who affiliate with them in opinion as firm believers in Jefferson's doctrine, or whose embryo opinions excite painful misgivings of mind, I have often communed freely, and have equal confidence in their integrity and honesty. The whole taken together form a very numerous class, and may be safely regarded as embodying the national belief and feeling on the subject of slavery. And yet we find that slavery is a great practical truth, a fixed fact in the country. Now, can it be true that this opinion and feeling embodies a great abstract truth—a fundamental, vital, immutable principle, which never did and never can fail to hold practical error in check, because it takes hold of the conscience of an honest people—and whose tendency, therefore, is always to an ultimate practical triumph, with all those who honestly receive it? We dare not affirm this.

It is not mere belief, nor is it mere honesty, that produces results in practice; but it is the reception of the truth in an honest heart, which can never fail to result in practice. Now in this case the people are honest, and the people believe; and if it be essential truth which they thus believe, then, we say, the fact that in all those States of this republic in which climate and soil are adapted to African labor—that precisely there the institution of domestic slavery should be rooted in the practice of a large portion of this believing and honest people, and that it should strike its roots into the federal constitution, and penetrate deeper and deeper every year into the legislation of the whole country, and thus implicate more and more the whole mass of this believing people in the sin of it, is a phenomenon, for which the postulate, that it is the truth they believe, does not account—nor can it be made to account.

A false principle may be believed to be the truth. And a false principle believed, has its results, because it is believed; and they very much resemble the results of truth believed. But we dare not admit that error can take hold of the conscience as pure principle, essential truth will do it. But, again, there is another great psychological fact, which is often overlooked. A false principle may be honestly believed by minds which, at the same time, adopt antagonistic principles that are essential truths; but, owing to various causes calculated to confuse the ideas, the inconsistency is not perceived. Now, in such a case as this, the principle of essential truth is really brought into practical antagonism with essential error, and that in the same minds and upon the same subject. And as truth is more powerful than error in the minds of all honest people, the truth holds its way in practical results, in defiance of false principle, which is relatively powerless in the presence of truth. The antagonism between the first principle and the practical results of things may be perceived and acknowledged; whilst the antagonism of the false principle with the true principle, which underlies and produces these practical results by a law of its own operation, is not only not perceived, but actually denied to exist. Now so long as this false principle is honestly believed to be true, and clearly perceived to be in conflict with the practice, but not perceived to be in conflict with other and more latent principles, which are in themselves truths, and admitted to be truths, and which produce this practice, just so long will this false principle wage war, by the simple law of belief, against this practice. But as this war is not sufficiently potent to overturn this practice, because it is founded on the belief of principles true in themselves, the practice will remain; and so long as this false belief remains, the strife with the practice must remain. Hence, if this be the state of the public mind in this country on the subject of African slavery, and it find no efficient remedy, we can see nothing awaiting us interminable strife—men against themselves—the country against the country! We forbear to sketch the future.

But, young gentlemen, I submit if this psychology may not furnish a solution of the phenomena I have brought to your notice, and also a remedy against that otherwise interminable strife which has already done so much to impair the moral power and blight the fairest hopes of the country. May it not be that in admitting the great abstract doctrine of Mr. Jefferson, that the principle of African slavery is, per se, sinful, and that, as such, the attributes and providence of Deity are opposed to all who practice it, we have most unwisely admitted a false doctrine? And as this false doctrine, though honestly believed by a number sufficiently large to designate it as the national belief and the national feeling, has utterly failed to abolish or even to modify the institution of African slavery, does it not afford a strong and clear presumption, to say the least, that this system which has held unbroken dominion over the African race in this country for over two centuries, and which continues to strike its roots deeper and deeper into all the relations of society, North and South—that this system, so potent in practical results, and so heedless of the fierce war that is waged against it, is, after all, underlaid somewhere by a vast mine of principles— pure essential truths—which are firmly rooted in the belief of all civilized and honest men, and which, all along, have imparted a spontaneous being and activity to the system, and will continue to do so perhaps as long as any considerable portion of the race shall remain in the country?

If this hypothesis shall prove true, the sovereign remedy for the otherwise interminable strife, so potent for mischief, is at hand. Let us then free ourselves, let us free the country, of the dominion of Mr. Jefferson's philosophy, because it is false. In doing this, we shall terminate the conflict which now rages with so much violence. We shall be free to address ourselves to any modifications in the system of African slavery which may be demanded to adapt it to the progress of civilization.

Regarding the whole subject in this light, the duty of thoroughly investigating it seems to me to be laid upon the country as a moral necessity. It is useless to talk of “delicacy and humiliation,” in the presence of such fruits as a false philosophy has already borne plentifully throughout the land.

As your chosen instructor, I owe you a service. I dare not give up your minds to the dominion of Wayland's Philosophy, (your text,) nor to any other text on this subject, now known to the country. I propose to lead your way in exploring the mine truth which we may assume to underlie the system of African slavery. We may look with confidence to reach these results:

1. That the philosophy of Jefferson is false, and that the opposite is true, namely, that the great abstract principle of domestic slavery is, per se, RIGHT; and therefore it is not in the use but in the abuse of this principle that we are liable to sin, and thereby incur the Divine displeasure.

2. That we should have a Southern literature. Our schools must be supplied with correct text-books on this subject. The poison which our texts now contain must be distilled from them by the learned of the land. The Church should not only right herself as she has done in the South, but her voice should be heard in the pulpit enforcing right principles, as well as right duties, upon this subject. Truth is at all times intolerant of any abuse. Her voice should certainly be heard under circumstances so urgent as the present. It is due to many in Southern communities whose minds are, more or less, disturbed by the long-continued abuse of the pulpit, and the social influence of mistaken ministers of religion in private life. It is due to the interests of our common country. We have lost much already in suppressing the truth. We have much to gain by boldly asserting her claims—for “truth is great, and will prevail.”

I NOW propose to enter directly upon the inquiry, Is the institution of domestic slavery sinful? My plan will make it necessary, in this lecture, to limit the inquiry to the principle of the institution. If the institution be sinful, it must be so either in the abstract principle it involves, or in the specific form under which it embodies that principle, or in both. In either case, Mr. Jefferson's doctrine is verified; for if the abstract principle be wrong, then the institution which envelops the principle, and from which it derives its character, is of course wrong. It certainly is never right to act upon a wrong principle. Injustice, as a principle, is confessedly wrong in itself, according to the ideas of all mankind. No form which an action can take will make it right, if it proceed upon an unjust principle. Hence, no circumstances can justify any man in knowingly doing an act of injustice. If the institution of domestic slavery envelops the idea of injustice, or any similar element, as its generic or abstract principle, in such case it would certainly be wrong both in principle and in practice; that is, wrong in itself; and we should, without scruple, abandon the controversy. But a similar conclusion will not follow from a contrary proposition; that is, it will not follow, that if the abstract principle of the institution be right, the institution itself is right; because the truth of a conditional proposition does not turn on the hypothesis, but on the consequent, as both true in itself and dependent upon the antecedent condition. That this is not the case in this instance is developed by the fact that the affirmative proposition involved in this conditional is, in itself, an absurdity, viz., “An abstract principle of action being right, the action itself is right.” This is absurd. For instance, justice, in itself, is a right principle of action, according to the ideas of all mankind; but it does not follow that all actions which proceed upon the principle of justice are right actions. A. justly owes B. one hundred dollars: now, to enforce the payment of this money would be in itself a just act, because the money is honestly owed by A.; but if, in doing this, B. should take the last bed from under the wife and children of A., and deprive them of the last morsel of bread, the act itself would be a very wicked one, and he would be judged by mankind as but little less guilty than a highway robber, because this is a case in which the claims of benevolence march before the claims of mere justice. Not to respect the claims of benevolence in such a case is to act upon the principle of pure selfishness. This act, then, would envelop also a wrong principle—selfishness; and it is the nature of a wrong principle to spread the hue and poison of guilt over every act into which it enters. Truth, and its opposite, as principles, are striking examples. If we speak at all, we should speak the truth. Every utterance into which, in its proper, generic sense, the lie enters, even in the least degree, is a poisoned act; and he who does this, is to that extent a basely wicked man, however smooth his tongue or winning his manners. Guilt has poisoned his utterance; and if this vice be not speedily arrested in its progress, it will spread itself through the whole mass, and break down his entire moral constitution. But it does not certainly follow that all utterances which are in themselves truths, are right utterances. There are many facts, to which, if we were to give utterance, we should only speak the truth, but at the same time we all know that they should lie buried (perhaps for ever) in the depths of our own hearts. To injure our neighbor by speaking the truth when no claim of paramount justice demanded it, and the claims of charity or kindness forbade it, would be a wicked act. For a child in a similar way to injure a parent would be the conduct of a demon. All such acts, though they envelop a right principle—truth—do at the same time envelop a wrong principle—malevolence; and it is the nature of wrong principle to stamp every act into which it enters with the character of guilt—it is wrong.

The conclusion we reach is this: If the abstract or generic principle of an action be wrong, the action itself is therefore wrong; but that, if the abstract principle be right, it does not follow that the action is therefore right, but that the action itself is either right or wrong, as may be determined by the presence or absence of certain other coincident principles; or, as we usually say, as may be determined by the circumstances.

If, then, the abstract principle of the institution of domestic slavery be wrong, the institution itself is wrong, and ought to be abolished; but if the principle be correct, the institution itself is or is not right, just as the circumstances of the case may or may not require that it be maintained; as in the case of any other act involving correct principle. The points to be settled, then, are—

I. Is the abstract or generic principle of domestic slavery right or wrong? And if it be right, then,

II. Is the system (so far as it is a system, simply) of domestic slavery, enveloping this abstract principle, justified by the circumstances of the case? If so, the system itself is also right. Whether many slaveholders or few, or any at all, are themselves doing right in the exercise of the legal functions of that relation, are questions foreign from the present inquiries, even on the hypothesis that the system itself is right. Their conduct, be it right or wrong, (and in many cases it is right, and in many others it is no doubt wrong,) does not at all affect the truth or error of the questions now before us. It is not with the conduct of individual men that we now deal; but with the act of that great being, the State—the system of African slavery established law in the country—and with that profound principle of truth or error which not only makes it a system, but makes it a right system or a wrong system, as the case may be.

IT is now appropriate to consider some of the speculations in Moral Science which may be supposed to invalidate the position discussed in the preceding lecture. As far as they have come under my notice, they all belong to one class. The general objection may be thus stated: Slavery is an abridgment of rights to which the enslaved are entitled by nature; or, more logically, slavery is an abridgment of inalienable rights. This doctrine is expressed in different forms of language, but is essentially the same in meaning. It is with the popular view of this subject that I propose to deal in this lecture. Hence I shall restrict my remarks, in the first place, to the objection as it usually exists in thought, and notice several popular forms of expression:

1. “All men are born free and equal.”

Until within a few years past, this dogma was stereotyped in all the text-books of the country— from the horn-book to the most eminent treatise on Moral Science for colleges and universities. From the days of Jefferson until now, it has been the text for the noisy twaddle of the “stump-politician,” and the profound discussions of the grave senator in the Congress of the United States. If this dogma, as it generally exists in thought, be true, it will follow, that any and every abridgment of liberty is a violation of original and natural right—that is, inalienable right. Hence every system of slavery must be based upon a false principle. The popular sense in which this language is generally understood, from father to son, is evidently the literal sense. But taken in this sense, the doctrine is utterly false. For men are born in a state of infancy, and grow up to the state of manhood; and infants are entirely incapable of freedom, and do not enjoy a particle of it. They are not, therefore, born equally free, but in a state of entire subjection. They grow up, it is true—if they be not imbeciles—to a degree of mental liberty, that is, the liberty of arbitrary volition in the plain matters of right and wrong, and hence are accountable; but the degree of this liberty, or how far they are thus mentally free, depends upon the accident of birth, education, and numerous coincident circumstances, which destroys all equality of mental freedom; and as to equality in other respects, it is scarcely a decent regard to the feelings of mankind to affirm their equality. They are not physically equal. No two men will compare exactly in this respect. They are not politically equal. The history of all human governments, throughout all time, shows this. To be “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” in unequal and subordinate positions, to the few, has been the lot of the great mass of mankind from the days of Adam. But, says the “socialist,” (to whom the doctrine is far more creditable,) “this latter is precisely the state of things we deprecate, and affirm that such was never the intention of Deity, but that it is his will that there should be no such inequality among men; that his will is in itself the right; and what it is his will we should be, it is right for us to be, and it is our right to be; and that system which makes our condition other than this, deprives us of our rights.” This is the philosophy of socialism.

THERE are questions which lie back of this discussion —errors, as I think, which underlie the popular ideas of both government and rights. We should not consider that we had fully met the difficulties of the subject if we passed them by.

Domestic slavery, it is said, is an abridgment of inalienable rights; and legitimate government is a voluntary concession of certain alienable rights.

Natural rights are, of course, such as are inherent in the constitution of man: inalienable, because in point of fact he cannot be substantively deprived of them. The law which in any case provides to do this, treats him as though he were not a rational, but a mere sentient being—and therein alienates his rights. Domestic slavery is said to treat the slave as mere chattel, a thing, not an entity, and hence deprives him by provision of law of the right of being treated as a rational being as he is, and not a mere thing. This is said, because it places his time and labor at the disposal of another man. How far this reproach is just, turns upon a definite answer to the question—What are rights?

“Government is a voluntary concession of certain alienable rights.” If this concession be made by the majority of the citizens, the government is called republican; if otherwise, it is called despotic. In this theory of government, certain rights are assumed to be given up, in order to secure other and more important rights. I have shown government to embody, of necessity, two great abstract principles in harmonious operation—though, in their essential nature, the one antagonizes the other. Now the principle of slavery—control by the will of another—certainly operates an abridgment of the exercise of self control, which is the principle of liberty. And so far as the principle of slavery operates, in any given instance of government, is that, in such instance, a giving up, to that extent, of the right of self control, in order to secure a right to the self-control which remains ungiven up? Is this so? This question also turn upon the solution of that other question— What are rights?

And again, self-control, we say, is the principle of liberty. Practical freedom is the exercise of the right of self-control. How far does the right of self-control extend? I say that an instance in which a body of men emerged from a state of nature, (so called,) and formed a government by an original act, is unknown to history. It never occurred. Man was placed originally by Jehovah himself under political law. The very moment that he placed the first being in a relation to another by giving him a “helpmeet,” he gave him a law to govern that relation, as we have seen; and all the subsequent acts of men in the matter of government-making, have been such modifications of the existing form of government as they supposed would better suit their circumstances. But it is said that when society meets in convention to agree upon certain principles called a constitution, under which the laws shall be made, men do virtually, for the time being, resolve themselves into their original position or state without government; and that the constitution so formed is virtually an original formation. Well, for the sake of the argument, let it be so. When, therefore, society thus falls back upon its original position, men stand upon the basis of what are supposed their original rights! What is that? Why, the right that each man has to do as he may please. They form a government: that is, give up a part, more or less, of their original right. Of course a part remains ungiven up, and the giving up cannot be to secure the possession of that which is already in possession! What is it that invests these questions with difficulty? Is it not the ambiguity of the term rights? Let us then define rights, if we would not be for ever entoiled by these absurdities.

And still again: Is liberty the right of self-control? Is not man—accountable man—free in virtue of his very humanity? Does this freedom imply absolute liberty? If so, absolute liberty is inherent in his very constitution—it is inalienable. What right, then, can he have to give it up, or any part of it? If so, he has the right to do that which subjectively he cannot do. If, then, government be a concession of the right of self-control in this sense, it is the concession of an inalienable right, and should be abandoned as a piece of folly.

It is entirely obvious, therefore, that we cannot advance in these inquiries at all without first settling the question, What are rights?

The English language is allowed to be one of great power, compass, and accuracy, and therefore eminently adapted to reasoning. It derives this quality in a good degree from its flexibility, the different varieties of idea, and often the different shades of meaning in these varieties that may be expressed by one word. No language is supposed to compare with it in this respect. But whilst this adapts it to the purpose of correct reasoning, it opens also a wide field for errors in argument. Men usually differ widely in opinion, but they do not often differ in sentiment. All intelligent and good men feel right, and mean right. They often differ in opinion because they differ in the meaning they attach to the language, the same language, which is the medium through which each views the same subject. Different men use the same word in different senses. The same man often uses the same word by habit in different senses in the same connection. They come to different conclusions, of course, and the same man often entoils himself by his own argument. Now, there are few words with which men have more to do in discussions and opinions about liberty and government—the next most important matters to personal religion—than with the word rights; and there are few words which are capable of more varied application, and which are in truth oftener applied to express different shades of meaning, than this word rights. Webster gives correctly some forty different meanings of this term, together with several subordinate senses in which it occurs, all of which are in common use. Our language—and of what language is not the same true?—our literature, our theology, our politics —society on all sides—is bristling with rights! Now, is it not obvious that there must be some generic idea which classifies all the different meanings and applications of this term, and which has its foundation in the common sense, the common reason of all mankind?

If, then, we inquire what are our rights in any given case, this question directly involves that other and ultimate question, What is the right in itself? the solution of which solves at once the general question in regard to all cases. And although the case in which our rights may appear must be first in point of time before our minds, to call up our idea of the right, still our definite antecedent idea of the right is the logical condition on which we determine whether the right appears in that case.

Call then, to your mind, an instance of justice, and one of injustice: a case of virtue and a case of crime: an example of heroism and an example of weakness: does not each of these cases embody, the one class your idea of the right in itself, and the other your idea of the wrong in itself? But your conception of the cases in which your antecedent idea of the right and the wrong appears, and your antecedent idea of that right and of that wrong, are very different ideas: that is, the case itself and your idea of the principle are distinct: the one a thing, the other an idea of some thing real. What, then, is your idea of the right, which is so distinct in your mind from the case in which it appears? Interrogate your reason and consciousness. Interrogate the reason and consciousness of all mankind.

Take this example: “The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interest of that party, discovered to the officers who were in pursuit of his father the place where he concealed himself, and gave withal a description by which they might distinguish his person when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son were well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of the generals. ‘That son,’ replied one of the officers, ‘so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us: by his information thou art apprehended, and diest.’ The officer, with this, struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate as by the means to which he owed it.”* * Paley's Philosophy.—Moral Science. Here is an example of the greatest filial impiety, and of the highest parental affection. The one fulfils our idea of the right, the other our idea of the wrong. Now, what is this idea of the right and the wrong in which all are supposed to agree? We would not ask, with the disciple of Paley, of Condillac, or of Helvetius, what the “wild boy, caught years ago in the woods of Hanover,” would have thought of this case; nor what the savage, without experience and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, would think of it. No: “ the savage state offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, so to speak—the germ of humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind: true human nature is human nature arrived at its development.” t t M. Cousin. We utterly deny that, in order to arrive at the judgment of human nature, we need consult a savage in such circumstances, or indeed to consult a savage at all. And yet we say that even a savage of good mind, who has lived long enough in society to get the idea of the relation of parent and child—such as even savages have—would pronounce the conduct of the one to be right, and of the other to be wrong, and have a definite idea of that right and that wrong, each in itself. And we furthermore say, that human nature cultivated to the highest degree bears the same testimony to the difference in the conduct of this father and this son, and attaches essentially the same ideas to that difference. In calling the one right and the other wrong, men say, and they mean to say, that the one is good and the other is evil. This is the uniform judgment of human reason—the permanent belief of mankind. To this common sense bears ample testimony. Grammarians have not invented languages. Government itself dates back of legislators—they have only modified it. Philosophers have not invented beliefs: without concert, without conventions, the world has fallen upon certain beliefs, and certain signs to express these beliefs. In the secret chambers of the soul, not of any one individual man, but of all men individually, consciousness bears testimony that such and such is the belief of all men and this we call the judgment of common sense; and such is also her testimony in all languages as to the thing that is right, and that the right in any given case is the idea we have of the good in that case. The right, then, is the good.

“Right, rectus,” says Webster, “straightness, rectitude;” which he explains to be conformity to rule or law, and that the will of God is the ultimate rule or law which determines the right or the wrong in all cases. Hence conformity to this rule is the generic idea of the right in itself, according to Webster. In this view, Horne Tooke, in his Diversions of Purley, concurs. As his criticism is ingenious, instructive, and generally truthful, I quote the more material portion of his article on rights. After telling us in his dialogue that Johnson only informs us that right is not wrong, and wrong is not right, he adds:

“H. RIGHT is no other than RECTUM, (regetum,) the past participle of the Latin verb regere, etc.

“In the same manner, our English word JUST is the past participle of the verb jubere.

“DECREE, EDICT, STATUTE, INSTITUTE, MANDATE, PRECEPT, are all past participles.

“F. What then is law?

“H. It is merely the past tense and past participle of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb which means something or any thing laid down as a rule of conduct. Thus when a man demands his RIGHT, he asks only that which it is ordered he shall have. A RIGHT conduct is that which is ordered: a RIGHT reckoning is that which is ordered: a RIGHT line is that which is ordered or directed, (not a random extension, but) the shortest between two points: the RIGHT road is that ordered to be passed (for the object you have in view:) to do RIGHT is to do that which is ordered to be done: to be in the RIGHT is to be in such situation or circumstances as are ordered: to have RIGHT or law on one's side is to have in one's favor that which is ordered or laid down: a RIGHT and JUST action is such an one as is ordered and commanded: a JUST man is such as he is commanded to be—qui leges juraque servat—who observes and obeys the things laid down or commanded; and the RIGHT hand is that which custom and those who have brought us up have ordered or directed us to use in preference, when one hand only is employed; and the LEFT hand is that which is leaved, left, or which we are taught to leave out of use on such occasions. So that left, you see, is also a past participle.

“F. Every thing, then, that is ordered and commanded is RIGHT and JUST?

“H. Surely; for that is only affirming that what is ordered and commanded, is ordered and commanded.

F. Now what becomes of your vaunted RIGHTS of man? According to you, the chief merit of man is obedience; and whatever is ordered and commanded is RIGHT and JUST. This is pretty well for a democrat. And those have always been your sentiments?

PHILOSOPHERS, it seems to me, strangely overlook the tendency of man's fall to modify the operation of the laws of mind; and those who admit the fall still overlook this fact, that the depravity of man's nature was the result of deprivation, and not the infusion of an evil principle as an attribute of his nature. But it is not with the theology of this subject that we are now dealing. The fact that, as a fallen being, he was deprived of the immediate presiding influence of the Divine Spirit, is the matter that more immediately engages our attention. His lower physical nature, the great medium of the soul's communication with the outward world, and of consciousness in the embodied state, originally operated in perfect and harmonious subordination to his higher spiritual nature. In this condition, his appetites, propensities, and passions presented no bar to his happiness, or to that of his fellows. The government or control which his situation demanded, we may suppose, was simple, and concerned chiefly his relation to the Deity. But when, on the great occasion of his trial, he exercised his power of self-action, and exalted this nature as a rule of moral action, instead of the essential good of his higher nature, of which the will of God in the given case was the full and just exponent, there resulted a deprivation of the Divine Spirit, such as entirely changed the relation of those departments of his nature. Under the clouded condition of intellect consequent upon this deprivation, his lower nature, with its appetites, propensities, and passions, is brought into constant and fierce conflict with his spiritual nature. This change in the condition of his humanity presents his case in an aspect altogether new. The history of each individual man becomes the history of a warfare—a warfare with himself, and a warfare with his fellows. With a highly vigorous moral nature, he is also the subject of a carnal or depraved nature. In this state of things, government becomes an actual necessity of his condition. The Divine government, with all the aids and appliances afforded by the grand scheme of atonement, must appeal to his passions, both of hope and of fear. For it is only by reducing his lower nature to its originally subordinate and harmonious position that an equilibrium will be established, and his primordial happiness regained. But the Divine government, though operating in harmony with the claims of his moral nature, and founded upon the relation which he sustains to Jehovah, and indispensable to his happiness here and hereafter, of itself alone does not meet a great many of the immediate demands of his condition. Hence the statement of Solomon: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” The consequences of obedience, high and holy as they are, and the consequences of disobedience, great and terrible as they are, are too remote from man, in many states of intellect and feeling in which he often places himself, to meet the immediate demands of his nature. Hence, that modification of government called civil government, is no less demanded by the necessities of his condition than the Divine.

Civil government deals chiefly with the relations of man to his fellow-man. It coincides with the Divine government. They each aim at the control of the lower nature of man, and the development of his higher nature. The means they employ are the same in principle. They address the same passions. The rewards and punishments of the one are in this life, and of the other chiefly in the life to come. Withal, the civil has the sanction of the Divine, and the Divine should always have the sanction of the civil, government. But still they are entirely distinct, and should not be confounded either in theory or in practice. The one is secular, and the other is Divine.

Now, we say that civil government—for of that we are called more particularly to speak—is a necessity of man's condition. It dates back as early as the creation of man. God himself established it in the law he gave to govern the first relation that existed on earth—the relation between Adam and his “helpmeet.” After the fall, a necessity arose which gave it a new and more important bearing. We soon see it ramifying itself through all society, and dealing with all the relations of life.

Its necessity and authority, as a great means of controlling the lower nature of man, is among the permanent beliefs of mankind. Neither legislators nor philosophers originated these beliefs. They are among the intuitions of man. The common judgment of mankind is not more assured that man exists, than that fallen man must be controlled in his appetites, propensities, and passions —the sum of what is often considered his interest and his happiness—by the physical powers of government. Each individual man feels that he needs its powerful sanctions to arm him against himself, when violently tempted to do wrong; and that he needs its sanctions to protect him from outrage and wrong from his fellow-men, when moved by similar forces. The instincts of animal nature are not more certain in their movements than are the intuitive perceptions and spontaneous feelings of mankind, causing them to lean upon the strong arm of civil government, to control the propensities and passions, and to promote the free exercise of the higher moral nature of man.

Government is the whole society in action. No people was ever known to exist for any definite period without government. Sometimes, it is true, the form has been the result of implied understandings among the people—as when “there was no judge in Israel:” at others, a master-spirit has assumed the reins, and been deferred to by common consent; and at others, it has been modified by formal processes—such as conventions and constitutions. Be this, however, as it may, government has always existed. Legislators did not make it. They have had much to do in modifying, directing, and often in corrupting the form; but nothing to do in originating government, in any proper sense of the term. It sprang spontaneously from the common sense of mankind. An agent indispensable to self-preservation was certainly coeval with the race.

In its true generic sense, that is, in a sense equally applicable to all forms, government is control by the authority of God and the people. God, in his word, declares the authority of the magistrate to be his ordinance; and this accords with the intuitive belief and feeling of necessity of all mankind: not that either approves in all cases of the form which government assumes, but that the generic principle, in all cases, has the sanction of each.

The legitimate object of government is to secure to the people the highest amount of freedom which their moral condition and relative circumstances will admit. The means which it employs to effect this object, are, 1. Suitable penalties, addressed to their hopes and fears, to lay them under such restraints as to the indulgence of their appetites, propensities, and passions, as thereby to prevent them from operating as a bar to the free exercise of their intellectual and moral powers in pursuit of the essential good; and, 2. The security which it offers to every man, in the exercise of the higher powers of his nature, that he may do it without restraint from the passions of men; or, in other words, to guarantee to every man the free exercise of his essential power to do good.

That both the object of government, and the means which it employs, are correctly stated, will not be disputed. All men concur in these views. They underlie all our opinions and reasonings on the subject of civil government. But in assenting to this much, (and how can it be avoided?) may we not stand committed to much more than many theoretical politicians are aware?

Let us trace the logical inferences which arise from the principles discussed.

I. Man, we find, is endowed with a self-acting power of will, which is called mental liberty, and hence he is accountable. For although it is admitted that there cannot be a volition without a motive, yet it is an idea inseparable from our notions of mental liberty, that there cannot be any thing in these motives necessitating the volition; for in that case it would not be free. But he is free to adopt either the right or the wrong motive of volition, and therefore he is accountable for his actions. Nor does it follow that this liberty confers the right to do wrong. His liberty, as we have shown, is to be understood in a sense agreeing with the coincident ideas of right and duty. We are all conscious, that so soon as we perceive the good, in any case, we have a feeling of obligation to observe it as the rule of conduct, and to avoid the contrary as wrong; that is, each man has a conscience. Hence, although man has the power to do wrong, he has no right to do wrong; but only a right to do that which is good. Such, and such only, is the true subjective right of self-control. It is not a right to do as we may please, unless we shall please to do that which, in itself, is right; that is, the good.

II. His fall, we have seen, has had the effect to place him in such circumstances, that the attributes of his lower nature, his appetites, propensities, and passions, often have such ascendency as motives of action, that he is always liable to do wrong. Many reasons, à priori, could be given for this. The mind is first brought into contact with the outward world through the bodily senses. They come first into play; and hence the natural sensibilities are first developed. The will, in the form of spontaneous volition, is accustomed, from earliest life, to act from these as a motive, for the reason that there is no other from which it can act. The pure intelligence, the percipient of the good, and the corresponding feelings of obligation, unfold themselves slowly; and long before it may be said that the mind is matured, the will is accustomed to make the natural sensibilities the motive of spontaneous volition. Now the will is, like all other faculties of the mind, subject to the great law of habit; and if not checked, restrained according to the true idea of government, a habit of submission is formed, which, if not early dissolved, becomes a confirmed habit. The will, instead of being the governing power of the mind, becomes, in truth, the faculty governed. It has lost the power of self-control. It has become the slave of passion—confirmed in the habit of submission. It is precisely at this point of mental degradation that Paul declares of “vessels of wrath,” those who have brought themselves into this state by their own act, that “they are fitted to destruction.” Now, in view of these facts and the principles already established, what are the rights of man?

First. In the state of infancy. It has been proved that the subjective endowments of humanity, and whatever is necessary to their existence and operation, are the natural right of man. That the undeveloped good is the endowment of this form of humanity will not be disputed: hence whatever is necessary to its existence and operation, is the natural right of infants. But it is obvious that a governing power, existing some where, is indispensably necessary in the case of the child; that is, a power must exist sufficiently potent to control the spontaneous volitions of the will, or, in the circumstances of its position, it will probably extinguish its own liberty, by the law of habit. Government, then,—absolute government, —is necessary to the existence and operation of the endowment of humanity in the state of infancy; and therefore absolute government is the natural right of the infant. Hence all civil governments have exercised (so far as the will and physical condition are concerned) an absolute despotism over the child, and have recognized the parent, or some one appointed in the place of the parent, as the agent of its functions in this respect. Not to accord to the infant this extreme form of control, would be a practical denial of its natural rights. Therefore this extreme form of despotism, so far from being a curse, is the natural right of infants —the good to which they are entitled by nature. And again, the civil government accords to the child a progressive modification of this form of government under given circumstances. It requires its agent to relax the stringency of this control, and to extend a privilege of self-control, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence and feelings of obligation or duty are practically developed. For a child who had become, to a certain extent, a subject of duty, and was disposed to fulfil this duty, but was kept, per force, in the physical condition of infancy until he lost the use of his limbs, would be considered as deprived of the right of self-control to that extent, and thereby cruelly treated. The agent in such a case would be severely punished, and the child committed to other hands.

Hence, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence is unfolded, and feelings of obligation arise, or conscience is developed, and becomes the practical rule of action, the individual acquires the right of self-control, and only in that ratio. This right may ultimately reach to all things in themselves good—the civil government always holding the authority to punish departures from duty, and thereby always abridging men of the moral power to do wrong, (because it never could be their right to do wrong,) and always fortifying them in the right exercise of liberty of will, by furnishing motives, addressed to their intelligence and passions, to observe the right and to avoid the wrong in the exercise of the volitive power. Therefore, the natural right of man is the right to such absolute control by others, in the earlier periods of his life, as that his will may retain its self-acting power unimpaired, as his mind is naturally unfolded by time and circumstances; and to such modification of this absolute control in after life, as may afford him due restraint under temptation to do wrong, and proper encouragement, at all times, to do right.

Second. The right of man in a state of maturity.

1. The government should accord him all his natural rights, and protect him in the exercise of the same. That is, the political government should coöperate with the Divine to preserve his will in its normal condition as a self-acting power, and to guarantee to him the exercise of this power of self-action in all things good. The man who is protected in the enjoyment of this inherent liberty of will, is a free man in the strictest sense of the word. The government over him may be concentrated in the hands of one man, or it may be divided among an aristocracy, more or less numerous, or it may be what is called a democracy, but this does not of itself affect the fact of his freedom. If the government secure him in the enjoyment of these rights, and of all which necessarily attaches to them, he is essentially free. The kind of government, as a hereditary monarchy, or a democratic republic, does not, of itself, determine the actual freedom of its subjects. History furnishes many examples of government in which the power of control was concentrated in the hands of but one, or of a few individuals, which afforded its subjects the highest amount of essential liberty. To this day, “ the freedom of the British Constitution” —as much as we justly prefer our own—is by no means an idle boast. It is a great mistake to suppose that a government which deposits the sovereignty among the great mass of the people, is the only free government. We are constrained to acknowledge that it is better to be oppressed by one, or by a few tyrants, than by a multitude of tyrants. It is not this or that kind of government that makes the subject essentially free. But it is the fact that the controlling power, whether wielded by one or by many, secures each man in the enjoyment of his natural rights—affords him that system of appliances which develops and matures the self-acting power of his will—discourages all abuse of this power, and fully protects him in the proper exercise of it in the pursuit of the essential good. It is this that makes him free.

We prefer, for those to whom it is applicable, a democratic republic; because it is a more secure government, and less liable to an abuse of power; not because it is necessarily a more free government than any other. Another form of government may secure equal freedom in every essential particular; and this form may be as oppressive as any other; and whenever it is so, the condition of the down-trodden minority is far more hopeless than is that of the oppressed majority under some other form of government. Still, in certain conditions of the people, it is a much more secure form of government. The sovereigns of a state should always be socially equal, and, at the same time, honest as well as intelligent. Such rulers will not be oppressors. If the sovereigns of a democracy are intelligent, for the reason that but few participate directly and personally in the administration of government and the spoils of office, they have but few inducements to corruption, and are more likely to be honest. The mass of the people, though often wrong in opinion, are always right in sentiment—they mean to do right, and they desire to do right. If they do err in a given case, they may usually be set right, for they have no motive to stay wrong. Hence, we think that when the condition of intelligence is fulfilled in the case of those occupying a social footing, we may expect a wiser and purer government; whilst the extent to which they may participate in the affairs of government, giving it a firmer hold upon their affections, cannot fail to make it a more secure government. It is widely different in the case of a government concentrated in the hands of a few. The sovereigns are at the same time the administrators of law. They share not only the honors of sovereignty, but also the immediate profits of sovereignty—the spoils of office. Temptations to abuse power are always present and active. Hence we find that such governments are more frequently oppressive. Withal, even in cases in which they are not, (for they need not be,) for the reason that the mass of the people do not immediately participate in the affairs of government, they are not as devoted to its interests, and hence the government cannot be as secure. For these reasons, a democratic republic is called by way of eminence a free government; but, evidently, not because it is the only form which secures freedom to its subjects. Any of these forms are legitimate when they are so adapted to the condition of the people as to secure to them the highest amount of freedom of which that condition will admit.

2. The government should secure to him all his acquired rights, or the rights which he acquires by the proper use of his essential rights. Of these, we notice,

1. His rights of social equality with those with whom he holds common interests, pleasures, benefits, happiness, and duties. These rights usually vary with the condition of different individuals, or different classes of individuals. It will not be maintained that an infant or idiot, and a man of rude intellect and vulgar habits, have interests and duties common to each other, and common to persons in a different condition, in any such sense as would entitle them all to social equality. Both their mental and physical condition would be a bar to any such equality. So in the case of the sexes, difference in physical condition is a bar, except in the marriage state. So also certain races of men are by their physical condition barred from social equality, in many respects, with those of other races. Those duties required by one condition in order to attain the essential good are very different from those of another condition which are necessary to attain the same object. But the privilege of social equality with all in a similar condition, which results from the discharge of the duties of that condition, is the right of every one. Some will require positive law to secure them; as in the marriage relation, the social as well as other rights of the parties must be secured by law; whilst others will be better secured by leaving them to be regulated by the conventional usages of society—only another form of government. But there is an obvious difference in the social rights of men which government is bound to respect, unless it would arrest the progress of civilization; because it is an inequality founded in that difference of condition, against which no government can provide, nor was it intended that it should provide. We notice,

2. That government should secure to him all those political rights to which he is entitled by making a proper use of his essential rights.

We need not specify all the political rights which may be regarded acquired rights. It is sufficient to consider this topic in regard to the question of sovereignty. We say, that all the members of a given society, having a common interest in that society, are entitled to share the sovereignty of its government on certain conditions, and on no other conditions. We take the ground that mere humanity, in itself considered, does not entitle any one to the rights of political sovereignty. If this were so, we should be bound to place females, together with minors of both sexes, and the inmates of State prisons, among the sovereigns of society. They are all perfect specimens of humanity. Of the first it may be said, they are often equal in intellect with the other sex, and in other respects are generally superior specimens of humanity. These all have an interest in society common to all other members of it, and yet it is admitted that they should not be numbered among the sovereigns of the land. What is it, then, that entitles a man to the right of political sovereignty? First—He should have reached that point in mental development in which he will have a capacity, in common with others, to understand and appreciate the leading principles of government and their applications. Second—He should have reached that period in life in which there is usually a corresponding development of the moral sense—the feeling of obligation to do right—which affords a reasonable guaranty for the faithful application of his knowledge in discharging the duties of sovereignty. Third—He should be in that state of social equality which gives him a common interest, a common happiness, and common duties as a citizen, with other sovereigns, which will also afford a necessary guaranty for the faithful performance of his duties. And, Fourth—He should be in that physical condition, also, which is necessary to the duties of so responsible a position, under all ordinary circumstances. If one or more of these conditions exclude a whole sex, together with all minors, idiots, felons, and foreigners, they at the same time limit it to a definite class of males, and bar all others from any title to it. No sensible man would admit that the power of sovereign control inherent in government could, with safety to the only legitimate object of government, the happiness of the subjects, be deposited with any other class of men. But those who fulfil these conditions have a right to rule. They have acquired it by the performance of those duties which have elevated them to the condition of being qualified for sovereignty. It should not be withheld. If those in a society qualified for sovereignty be numerous, the government should take the popular form—a democratic republic. But if those qualified to rule are a limited portion of the whole society, some other form of government is more appropriate.

But our subject leads us to notice:

Third. The rights of man in the savage or uncivilized state.

No savage community was ever known to rise unaided to a state of civilization; and every example of savage society furnishes evidence that it is a state into which they have fallen by the tendencies of depraved nature. They are instances in which the government originally enjoyed—both human and Divine—has failed to preserve to the individual that liberty of will in the pursuit of the good which government is designed to secure. The pure intelligence is not sufficiently developed to constitute an enlightened conscience. Dwelling apart from civilized society, the absence of all the artificial wants of civilization is highly favorable to many of the natural virtues—such as hospitality to strangers, truth, fidelity, and generosity to their friends; but the undeveloped state of the pure reason leaves the moral sense in a state of so much immaturity, as to characterize them as unfaithful, cruel, and revengeful to their enemies. These are characteristics which, in their condition of physical maturity, make them terrible to their neighbors.

Now the question is, What are the rights of such a people? It is useless to discuss this question so far as it relates to mere savage government; for in this view it is a question of no interest. But the question, What rights can they claim of a civilized people? is the one with which we have to deal.

They certainly have a natural right to protection under given circumstances, and freedom from oppression under all circumstances. If a civilized people, holding a balance of power in virtue of superior intelligence, have an undisputed right to protect themselves from the cruelty and infidelity of neighboring slaves, still it will be admitted that oppression in any proper sense of the term would be an invasion of their natural rights. They have a right to be left in the enjoyment of the highest amount of freedom which their mental state will allow them to use legitimately. And more than this, their natural rights claim for them reasonable exertions to elevate their moral condition. Hence the noble efforts now being made by the Christian people of this country to evangelize the savages on our border, and the no less commendable efforts of the United States government to favor this design, by an annual appropriation from the national treasury. All this is only according them their rights. But do these rights entitle them to claim social equality with a civilized people? That which it is the right of another to claim of me, it is my duty to grant. Is it then my duty to grant social equality to any or to every wandering savage that may chance to pass my dwelling? Should I not only extend to him the rights of hospitality due to a wandering savage —give him food and shelter in given circumstances, and treat him kindly in all respects—but extend to him true social equality, such as it is my duty to do to other men in certain states of civilization! No man—himself not a savage—would dare affirm this! The savage has no right to claim it. The reason is obvious on the principles discussed. Certain social rights arise only on certain conditions of moral development, and the fulfilment of the duties which attach to that state. The savage has not reached this condition; hence has not fulfilled its duties, and is not entitled to the right of social equality which attaches to that state. For a sensible man to affirm that he has this right in virtue of his mere humanity, would be simply ridiculous. And this being so, it follows, a fortiori, that it is much less our duty to allow him an equal participation in the sovereignty of the State —allow him a control in the affairs of government —share the authority to regulate our relations, domestic and foreign; and even to participate in governing our families.

The man who should gravely propose in Congress to annex the savage tribes of our border, as sovereign States of this Union, would, by all right-minded men, be regarded as insane. No one of the managers of looms, spindles, and other machinery, among the agrarian portion of our northern community, with all their boasted knowledge of the natural rights of man, and their readiness to accord equal rights to all men, and to protect them in asserting those rights, have, as yet, made up their minds to go thus far—although we may be at a loss to account for it that they so far falsify their principles as not to do so.

Now, as it is not our duty to do this in behalf of a neighboring race of uncivilized people, for the reason that they have no right to it, how does the question stand in regard to a numerous class of such persons, spread through a definite section of our country? Does this change of position and contact with civilization confer on them higher rights than it has already been admitted belong to them in a separate state in virtue of their humanity? Is it our duty to accord to them equality of political rights? and for the reason that they are diffused through the mass of society? Can this position be maintained? On the contrary, the change of position, and the service which in that position they render to the cause of civilization, which is assumed to acquire for them a right that does not belong to their class of persons in a separate position, so far from affording a vindication of this doctrine, furnishes a still stronger reason against it. They are not only uncivilized, but are now in a position to exert an evil influence, which in a separate state they could not do, although they might dwell upon our border. In a separate state, the artificial wants of civilized life are unknown to them. The great sources of temptation to do wrong by invading the rights of neighbors, is not supplied to them by their position. But when in immediate contact with civilization, a great many of these artificial wants are learned by them, and felt to be objects of desire. These desires, by a fixed law of the human mind, must be a constant source of temptation —they clamor for gratification. If the indulgence should not be restrained, either by a system of laws which reached the case, or by the motives which a state of civilization supplies, they would inevitably result in a disregard of the rights of property, and a general depravation of morals. They are without the latter, for they are uncivilized. Hence the demands of their position must be met by laws appropriate to an uncivilized people. The laws appropriate to a state of civilization, coöperating as they do with the motives supplied by that state, are not more than equal to the task of restraining the passions of civilized men. To rely upon them in the case of uncivilized men would be the grossest folly. Hence if it were not our duty to share our political rights with such a people, dwelling upon our border, in a separate state, for a much stronger reason it is not our duty to do this for those dwelling in our midst. If it is not our duty to do it, it cannot be their right to claim it; for rights and duties are always reciprocal. But, on the contrary, for the same general reasons by which it becomes the duty of a civilized state to place all its minors under the despotism of parental control, as before defined, it is the duty of the state to place an uncivilized race which may chance to dwell within its borders, under a similar form of government. This despotism need not be oppressive in the one case any more than in the other. It is the proud boast of all our native citizens that they have always lived under a free government; and yet they were brought up to the age of twenty-one under a pure despotism. But this does not deprive them of their right to boast. True, the government conferred almost absolute control upon the parent, or guardian, or master of the apprentice! These might have oppressed them. But the government, which stood ready to vindicate their rights, did not do it. The government, in what it did, only accorded them their natural rights, as we have seen—provided to confer on them the highest amount of freedom of which their condition would admit. It was to them essentially a free government, though in one of the forms of despotism. So in that form of despotism appropriate to a race of uncivilized people dwelling in the midst of a civilized people, if adapted to their condition, or securing to them (as in the case of minors) their natural rights, it is, for them, and to them, a free government. So far from being a curse, as many of our philosophers teach, it is a blessing, which their essential rights entitle them to clarify. Any other form of government would be, in their case, as well as in that of minors, a practical denial of their rights; because it would result in the annihilation of their essential rights; that is, the enslavement of their wills to the basest passions of fallen nature.

THE inquiry, if the institution of domestic slavery existing amongst us agrees in its details with the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, is reserved for a future lecture. We now inquire how far it agrees with the Holy Scriptures in its great fundamental principles?—the abstract principles which, thus far, have been shown to be right.

We, Of course, acknowledge the full authority of the Scriptures. Although not a formal philosophical treatise, the Bible embodies no other than the profoundest principles both of mental and moral science; and all its teachings are in accordance with them. “To the law,” then, “and to the testimony.” Do they sanction the principles I have sought to establish? Do they accord to man any other subjective right of self-control than simply the right to do that which in itself is right —that is, good? True, they assume that he has the power to do wrong, but at the same time they deny to him all right to do wrong. All those scriptures which forbid his doing wrong, and enjoin it upon him to do right, under severe penalties for disobedience, are in proof. They are too numerous and familiar to require that I quote them. They all assume that he has power to do either right or wrong, but only a right to do that which is right. Whoever, then, sets up a right to do a thing, and can give no better reason for it than that he has power to do it in virtue of his humanity, and that therefore others should not interpose obstacles in the way of his doing it, on peril of abridging him of a natural right, assumes far more than the Scriptures allow him; nay, he assumes that which is forbidden him in Holy Scripture, no less than in reason and common sense; and if allowed to exercise such lawless power, under the plea of natural right, he could not fail to put an end to all law, and to precipitate society into a state of anarchy. Therefore, the government which places minors, aliens, and citizens, who at the same time allow themselves to be subjects of a foreign prince, together with uncivilized persons, in circumstances in which they cannot, or are not likely, to injure their neighbors, or to injure society, does not, for that reason, deprive them of a natural right, unless it could be shown that they have a natural right to do the very thing which the Scriptures declare they have no right to do, that is, to injure their neighbors! It further follows, that the right to do an act which involves accountability, is the right to do that which, in itself, is right; or, in other words, the only natural right of self-control is the right to do that which is good. Hence, those who claim for any class of society a right to political sovereignty, should be prepared to show that the essential good requires that such privilege be accorded them, or they fail to establish their right, for the reason that no right can ever be justly acquired which does not coincide with the natural right to do good.

Again, we have shown that the abstract principle of slavery is control by the will of another, with its correlatives: that this is an essential element of all government; for a government which did not exercise the right to control men, even against their wills, under given circumstances, would be no government at all. Do these views accord with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures? That control is an essential idea of government, is an intuitive perception, and needs no proof. The question then resolves itself into this: Do the Scriptures sanction government? That the Bible itself is only a system of government, will not be disputed. It forbids and commands, and requires all men to conform their volitions to its requirements, as to that which is in itself good. Moreover, it sanctions civil government in the most express terms: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power,” that is, the authority of government, “resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation,” etc. (Rom. xiii. 1-7. See A. Clarke's notes.) This was said to the Roman Christians, and was an injunction to obey Cæsar's government. In that government, it is well known, the slavery element greatly predominated: but little room was left for the exercise of self-control; political sovereignty being denied to the people. In declaring government, even in this extreme form of controlling the wills of men, to be his appointment, God establishes the principle, as in itself right. Dr. Wayland, however, (see article, Modes in which Personal Liberty may be violated,) affirms, “that the gospel is diametrically opposed to the principle of slavery.”

The moral precepts of the Bible, which he assumes to be diametrically opposed to the principle of slavery, are, (as quoted by himself,) “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; and all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” He says that, “were this precept obeyed, it is manifest that slavery could not in fact exist for a single instant. The principle of the precept is absolutely subversive of the principle of slavery.” That the gospel should, nevertheless, acknowledge slaveholders (for neither the Jewish nor the Roman law required any citizen to hold slaves) as “believers,” and “worthy of all honor,” and require of the Christian slaves held by them to acknowledge them as brethren, that is, good men, and accord them all honor, is evidently a troublesome question to the Doctor. There is no room for surprise. The second scripture quoted, it is allowed, interprets the first. In what sense then are we to understand the duty inculcated in the second? There are only two senses in which the form of the expression will allow us to evolve any significance whatever. The first is, Do unto another whatsoever you would have him to do unto you, if you were in his situation; and the second is Do unto another whatsoever you would have a right to require another to do unto you, if you were in his circumstances.

Now if we could suppose that the Saviour intended his language to be understood in the first sense, it will not perhaps be disputed that it is our duty to abolish domestic slavery, for we should, no doubt, desire to be released, if we were in a state of domestic slavery. But, unfortunately for the argument, this interpretation would not stop at the abolition of domestic slavery in the case of the African. It would reach to the domestic slavery of the child also. There is scarcely a wayward lad in Christendom who could not justly claim release from parental restraint on the same principle! Nay, more, the criminal at the bar of civil justice, the inmates of State prisons, and the poor man in his hovel, would all claim release! And as that which is duty in others, in such cases, is a right in them, not to grant them release would certainly be a denial of their just rights! Is this the sense in which Dr. Wayland would have us understand the Saviour of mankind? Certain it is, that this is the only sense in which his words can be understood so as to involve the necessary abolition of slavery! We cheerfully acquit Dr. W. from the purpose to teach any such agrarian folly. Still, we can see no good reason why one so eminent, as a Christian and a scholar, should permit even an early prejudice as to a practical question, about which he allows that he is uninformed, to betray him into such views of a plain principle as logically involve him in the grossest absurdities.

That the second sense given is the proper one in which to understand the Saviour's doctrine can admit of no dispute. What we should have a right to claim, if we were in the circumstances of a slave, is precisely that which we are to accord to such slave, according to the precept of the Saviour. If we should have a right to claim political sovereignty, in those circumstances, we are bound to allow them such sovereignty, that is, release them from slavery. This directly involves the question, Whether they are fitted for that self-government which is involved in such sovereignty? That they are not so in virtue of their humanity merely, we have proved; and whether they are so or not, by acquirement, is a practical question which Dr. Wayland allows that he is not competent to decide. This question will be met in another place. It is sufficient here to state, that the scripture so confidently relied on as repudiating the principle of slavery, is found not to reach the question of the principle at all, and, therefore, is wholly misapplied.

The patriarchal form of government, which existed before the theocracy of the Jews, constituted the patriarch (he being the head of the family) the owner of slaves. Abraham, Lot, and others, held them in large numbers. These men enjoyed the unqualified approbation of Jehovah, and in their character of slaveholders, no less than in many other respects. According to Dr. W., they enjoyed the Divine approbation in the practice of iniquity; for he says, the Bible condemns both the principle and the practice of slavery!

It is evident that the Jews brought slaves with them from Egypt; for the terms of the Decalogue not only imply that they were familiar with domestic slavery, but also that it was, at that time, an existing practice among them. But more than this, the Decalogue is strictly the constitution which Jehovah himself gave to the Jewish nation. Now to assume that he provided in this constitution to protect in all time to come (for it is allowed to embody immutable principles) a relation which was, in; itself, an iniquity, is more than a mere absurdity—it is profanity. And it is certain that the tenth article of this constitution provides to protect the right of property in slaves: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's MAN-SERVANT, nor his MAID-SERVANT, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.”

The Saviour has recognized this law, as it was originally designed to be, of universal obligation and force: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Matt. v. 17.

In accordance with this fundamental law of the nation, God proceeded to provide in their civil institutions for the operation of a regular system of domestic slavery. Under these institutions, a Hebrew might lose his liberty and become a domestic slave, in six different ways. (See A. Clarke, on Ex. xxi.)

1. In extreme poverty, he might sell his liberty. Lev. xxv. 39: “If thy brother be waxed poor and be sold unto thee.”

2. A father might sell his child. Ex. xxi. 7: “If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant.”

3. Insolvent debtors became the slaves of their creditors. 2 Kings iv. 1: “My husband is dead, and the creditor is come to take unto him my only two sons to be bondsmen.” Also, Matt. xviii. 25.

4. A thief, if he had not money to pay the fine laid on him by the law, was to be sold for his profit whom he had robbed. Ex. xxii. 3: “If he have nothing, then he shall be sold for the theft.”

5. A Hebrew was liable to be taken in war, and sold for a slave. 2 Chron. xii. 8.

6. A Hebrew slave who had been ransomed from a Gentile by a Hebrew, might be sold by him who ransomed him to one of his own nation.

All who became slaves under this system were emancipated in the seventh year, except those who should refuse to accept liberty. Ex. xxi. 2-6. They were emancipated in the year of jubilee.

But then, the law further provided for domestic slaves in perpetuity.

“Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession; and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession: they shall be your bondmen for ever; but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another with rigor.” Lev. xxv. 44-46.

The attempts which are sometimes made to prove that

HAVING proved that the abstract principle of the institution of domestic slavery is a legitimate principle, both in itself, and in this, that it coincides with the great fundamental principle of right, and does not necessarily conflict with the right, and is therefore in itself good, and not evil; the next inquiry that arises is this: “Is the institution of domestic slavery, existing among us, and involving this principle, justified by the circumstances of the case, and therefore right?—according to the doctrine evolved in the second lecture, namely, that the principle of an action, being itself right, the action is right, provided other and coincident principles justify the action, or, as we usually say, provided the circumstances require it.

Let it be observed, that the conduct of individual slaveholders, in the exercise of any discretion conferred on them by the nature of their relation as masters, is still a separate question, and not here to be taken into the discussion. We inquire as to the propriety of the institution: Is it demanded at all by the circumstances of the case? This is eminently a practical question, and is the only one which involves the morality of the institution itself, now that the abstract principle is shown to be legitimate.

Domestic slavery is one of the subordinate forms of civil government. It may be defined an imperium in imperio—a government within a government: one in which the subject of the inferior government is under the control of a master, up to a certain limit defined by the superior government, and beyond which both the master and the slave are alike subject to control by the superior government. The question now arises, Is this a suitable government for the negro race in America? Without doubt, this question is to be settled on the same general principles by which we should settle a similar question in regard to the suitableness of any other form of government for any other people. For example, the same principles which determine the fitness of a military despotism, a constitutional monarchy, or a democratic republic, to any particular community of white persons, will determine the suitableness of this form of government to the African race in this country. They are all different forms of control, belonging to the same genus—government; and pervaded by the same generic elements —the principles of slavery and liberty combined in different ratios, in order to secure the greatest amount of happiness to those communities to which they are fitly applied. The claims of the African might be separately examined in regard to each of these forms of government; but this course is not demanded by the interests of this discussion. Nor need we stop to inquire, how the Africans came into this country: whether lawfully or unlawfully—whether by their own act, or the act of another. These are in truth side issues, and do not necessarily attach to this discussion. They will be treated as incidental to the main question; for although it were allowed that they are here unlawfully, and that it is our duty to remove them, yet it is still true that they are here, and cannot be immediately removed, and must therefore be subjected, as human beings, to some one of the known forms of civil government. What form of government shall this be? According to principles well established, and admitted on all sides, it should be such a form of government as, from its adaptation to their intellectual, moral, relative, and physical condition, is best calculated to promote their happiness and the happiness of those with whom they are necessarily associated. But what form of government is it which will most probably accomplish this object?

The anti-slavery party, as well as the abolition faction, claim for the Africans a democratic republic: that is, that they should have equal political privileges with the whites, and only be subject with them to the same modified form of slavery! On the contrary, we of the South maintain that, from their present state of mental imbecility, moral degradation, and physical inferiority, they should be placed under that more decided form of control called domestic slavery. Who is right?

In discussing this question, we take the ground, first, that, in advance of all direct argument, we are entitled to the full benefit of the presumption in argument—the burden of proof lies upon those who dispute our position; and, secondly, that we are right in fact—that the circumstances of the case demand this form of government on behalf of the race, as their right, their blessing; because this form of government, duly and properly administered, as it may be, and ought to be, is calculated to afford them the highest, if not the only amount of political freedom and happiness to which their humanity is at present adapted, and especially in view of their existing relations to a higher form of civilization, in the case of those among whom they dwell.

1. We are presumptively right. The onus lies wholly upon those who oppose our position.

In taking this ground, we readily waive the presumption founded upon the mere fact that domestic slavery is an existing institution, and is entitled to stand as good, until the contrary is made to appear. We go back of this. We throw ourselves upon original ground. We say, that if this were now an original question in the country, the presumption would be, that this was the appropriate form of government for the African race in this country.

As an original case, it would be an undisputed fact that the race was in an uncivilized state. We have demonstrated, in a former lecture, that an uncivilized people is not adapted to a state of political freedom. To such a people dwelling in the midst of a civilized people, it could not be a right, because it would not be a good, but an evil, a curse. There is no reason to assume that to place them in this condition would elevate them at once to such fitness as would make it a blessing, but there is every reason to presume that the reverse would follow an elevation to political freedom. If any think otherwise, the burden of proof lies upon him.

This presumption is greatly strengthened by the fact that they who claim political freedom for the Africans now in the country, have signally failed to secure it for those upon whom they have professed to confer it. Essential freedom is inseparably interlaced with social equality. Without the latter, the former cannot possibly exist. The Northern States have long since conferred the forms of civil freedom upon the African portion of their population, but to the present hour they have denied them social equality. Herein, they extinguish all the lights and comforts of essential freedom. They settle upon them a suffocative anhelation, which is truly the most oppressive form of slavery. The social inequality of the races, it is well known, exists in a much more modified form at the South than at the North. That those who have made, as we allow, an honest effort to confer essential freedom upon them, have signally failed, greatly strengthens the presumption that we are right in believing that the end they proposed was impracticable, and that we need not be so unwise as to imitate their folly.

But this presumption is still further strengthened by the fact that the basis argument upon which the abolitionists usually rest the claims of the African, is entirely sophistical. It is this: Slave property was originally acquired by robbery and violence, and therefore can never become lawful property. Hence we should confer upon them political freedom, regardless of whatever consequences may follow; seeing that an act of robbery can never extinguish the original right of the person robbed, or confer original title upon the robber.

The doctrine assumed in this argument is, that possessions unjustly acquired originally, can never become legal possessions; or that a state of things originally resulting from wrong, can never, by lapse of time, or the force of any circumstances, become right. The fact assumed as the basis of this doctrine in its application to the African is, that they were stolen while in a state of freedom, and reduced to a state of slavery. But we deny both the doctrine and the hypothetical assumption on which it is based.

1. If the doctrine be true, it will follow that all wrong is without any remedy, except in the few cases in which things may be restored to their original state. This would be a deplorable state of things indeed. It would work special disaster to our Northern brethren. For, first, if this doctrine be true, they own scarcely one foot of honest land; nor is there any in the whole country, save the original purchase of William Penn, and a few other unappreciable portions of territory. The Indians were the original and rightful owners of this whole country, according to the theory of rights which forms the basis of this doctrine. From the most of their possessions they were forcibly ejected at the peril of life as well as liberty; and from the remainder they were driven by a policy which in civilized life would be held and treated as knavery. These lands, according to this doctrine, should in all honesty be restored to their rightful owners, or to those who inherit them under their title, or the present holders are robbers. Second. The Africans, it is said, were stolen! If so, those who received them in this country can only be regarded as the receivers of stolen property—no better, if worse, than the origin thieves. But on this hypothesis, Who stole them? and who received this stolen property, knowing it to be so stolen? These questions admit of but one answer: The forefathers of the present generation of New England population! From their ports, vessels were fitted out, and employed in this system of “man-stealing.” They became the receivers of this stolen property. Those who were not demanded by their own agricultural pursuits, were sold in Southern markets. As the climate and soil of the South were better suited to such labor, the larger portion of all this stolen property was accumulated in the South. The product of the lands of New England, and the product of these sales of stolen Africans, have been, from time to time, invested in commercial and manufacturing pursuits. These constitute the chief sources of the great wealth of the New England States, to the present day; and these, it is well known, are mainly supported by the products of slave labor at the South. This being so, the great wealth of the Northern States can be regarded only as so much dishonest gain! Really, it is time they were looking to the duty of restitution! But the disaster of this doctrine does not exhaust itself with our Northern brethren. The Norman Conquest of Great Britain is that by which all the land-titles of England are held to the present day. All these titles are held under the rights acquired by this conquest. Now it is well known that the Norman Conquest was the most lawless piece of injustice and butchery, the record of which ever disgraced the pages of human history! Upon the basis of the doctrine in question, it is equally certain that there is scarcely an honest shilling in all England! Nor is this all: the present titles of all Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa, are traceable, more or less remotely, to a source equally cruel and unjust! Thus there is an end pretty much to all honesty, as to the possessions of the civilized world! Surely, the absurdity of this conclusion is sufficient to invalidate the soundness of the doctrine from which it arises.

Now we are far from affirming that wrong— which is the negative of right—can ever become, by circumstances or any thing else, otherwise than it is, that is, wrong, namely, not right. But the state or thing which, under one set of circumstances, is wrong, may, under other circumstances, become right. It is not the wrong in itself which, in such a case, changes to right; but, by a change of circumstances, the wrong no longer inheres, but the right inheres in that which formerly involved the wrong; and therefore the state or thing which was before wrong, now becomes right. Hence, although it be admitted that the land-titles of the civilized world were originally founded in wrong, and therefore were unjust titles, it may not follow that those who now hold them, do so by an unjust title, because the original title was unjust. The facts may be thus stated in regard to the most of them. The titles were originally acquired by wrong; in many instance, cruel wrong! The authors of these wrongs were usually the heads of government, who, in their circumstances, were beyond control. They did the wrong. The ultimate results of their doings, by the lapse of time with its perpetual changes, upset all the existing relations of society, merged the descendants of the actors and sufferers in these wrongs into the mass of society, beyond the power of just discrimination, and introduced an altogether new state of things. Under these circumstances, the original wrong was ultimately placed beyond all remedy. The restoration of the lands to the original and lawful owners became an impossibility. To attempt such a work could only be followed by the grossest injustice to all the parties concerned. In this state of things, the question of title—Who shall own these lands? becomes an original question. And in this state of the case, the simple fact of present possession—there being no one to claim antecedent possession—according to the fundamental belief of all mankind, confers moral title, and should therefore be made legal. Hence the title is just, because the idea of the right in itself—that which is good—now inheres in the man who holds property under such circumstances. The argument authorizes this prescriptive principle in political science: That when the original wrong cannot be remedied, without inflicting greater injury, ON ALL THE PARTIES CONCERNED, than to permit the existing state of things to remain, in this state of the case, the existing state of things is in itself RIGHT, and should be permitted to remain.

Upon the basis of this principle—without which, we have no scruple to say, society could nowhere harmonize for a single hour—we have no difficulty in vindicating the honesty of the descendants of the Puritans, or the land-titles of the civilized world, or the thousand other titles which are equally involved by the absurd doctrine under consideration. Nor do we find any difficulty in allowing them a just title to all the proceeds of the African traffic, even though it should be considered that their forefathers were, as they characterize them, a set of mere men-stealers!

Having invalidated this doctrine as a piece of gross sophistry, we remark:

2. That we also deny the hypothesis upon the basis of which this false doctrine has been made to apply to the Africans of this country; that is, we deny that African slavery in this country had its origin or was founded in cruelty and robbery.

There is no reason to doubt the statements of history, that many slave-ships originally (as perhaps is still the case to some extent) acquired their cargoes, some by robbery and violence, and some by purchase. The sufferings of what is called the “middle passage” are, no doubt, correctly stated in history. We have no motive to controvert these statements, nor indeed to inquire into their authenticity. We are not even the apologists of any of the actors in these scenes, much less their defenders. There may have been cruel wrongs, and under circumstances of even greater aggravation than those recorded in history. Be it so! The actors have long since gone to their account, and we may safely leave them to Him who judgeth righteously. The conduct of these agents, whether cruel or kind, is not an element in this discussion. Our inquiry goes to the foundation of this matter—the true producing cause for the introduction of the African into this country, and his position as a slave. What was this? It will not be maintained that these agents, whether humane or not, can in any proper sense be said to be the cause or foundation of African slavery in this country. With much greater propriety it may be said that the artisans of Boston were the founders and builders of the city. They were necessary agents. They might have done their part well. They might have done it dishonestly, cruelly. Neither hypothesis will entitle them to rank as the true and proper founders and builders of the city. So neither are the men in question to be regarded as the founders and builders of African slavery in America. Whether they did their part as they should have done, or should not have done; or whether they did the work at all, or not, is the mere logical accident of a cause, which lay back of all they did, and of all they might have done, whether good or bad. This cause is evolved by the inquiry, Why did they bring them into the country at all? If some potent cause had not been at work, could they or any others have brought them into the country? Certainly not. This cause, then, whatever it was, is without doubt the true foundation, the immediate cause, of African slavery in America. What, then, was this cause? But one answer can be given to this inquiry. On it there can be no division of opinion. It was the state of public opinion in Great Britain, and the state of public opinion in her colonies in this country at the time. This state of public opinion demanded their introduction and employment as slaves, and hence they were introduced and so employed. Whatever demerit or merit, then, was in the origin and maturity of this state of things, is traceable directly to public opinion, and attaches directly as a virtue or a crime, as the case may be, to those who controlled public opinion, through the long period of its inception, formation, and maturity, and to them alone. This being the true origin and foundation of the system, if it had its foundation in robbery and violence, it was because public opinion, through that long period, was so eminently corrupt as to set itself, deliberately and of full purpose, to work to perpetrate robbery and violence, without any redeeming virtue; for such crimes admit of none. Was this so? Can we be prepared to believe it? In default of all history at this point to detail the origin and progress of public opinion on this subject, we are left to form our judgment from our knowledge of the men whom we know to have participated more largely than any others in directing public opinion in their day, and to the history of the times in which they lived.

In the seventeenth century, African slaves were first introduced into this country, and the practice was continued, under the sanction of law, until the years 1778 and 1808, inclusive. At an early period, public opinion was matured on this subject both in England and in the colonies, and we see that for a long period it sustained the practice of introducing slaves directly from Africa into this country. Now, we affirm that the position postulated in regard to this case is among the most palpable absurdities that can be conceived. The character of the men who controlled public opinion in that day, and the patriotic and Christian age in which they lived, utterly disprove the gross assumption that they yielded themselves up to falsify the truth and the conscience that was in them, and become a mere corporation of land-pirates and freebooters! If our ignorance of the history of those times should disqualify us to account for the existence of this state of public opinion on any strictly rational grounds, common sense would forbid that we assign for it so unreasonable a cause as this; whilst the least that charity could suggest would be, that we place it among those things for which we were unable to account.

From the time they were first introduced into the colonies, about 1620, to the time the system may be considered as permanently established, makes a period of some hundred and fifty years. Among the eminent personages who appeared in Great Britain during this period, and did not fail to impress their genius and moral character upon the age in which they lived, we may mention, James I., Cromwell, and William III., Burnet, Tillotson, Barrow, South, with Bunyan and Milton; and also Newton and Locke.

In the colonies, during this time, there lived Cotton Mather, Brainerd, Eliot, and Roger Williams; Winthrop, Sir H. Vane, and Samuel Adams, with Henry, Washington, and Franklin.

These great men, and some of them eminently good men, stood connected with a numerous class of highly influential men, though inferior in position, and all together may be regarded as embodying and controlling public opinion in their day. Some of them were preëminently distinguished for their patriotic devotion to the rights of humanity. Many others were men of wide views on all subjects, and of broad and expansive feelings of benevolence, and indeed of the soundest piety. Add to all this, many of them are to this day without a peer in intellectual distinctions, if indeed the same may not be said of their attainments in literature and science. The age of Barrow, and of Locke, and Newton, in philosophy, and of Washington and Franklin, in patriotism, public benevolence, common sense, and moral learning, still stands on the pages of history without a rival. But these men, and their numerous compeers and co-laborers, were no better than a hoard of mountain robbers! They coolly coincided with each other, without formal concert or convention, but by the common attraction of their natural affinity for power and plunder, to murder, rob, and enslave thousands of their innocent and defenceless fellow-creatures—the helpless victims of public cupidity! Such is the shameless position strangely postulated in regard to these men and their times! We scruple not to affirm that this is more than a stupid gratuity! It is a gross calumny upon humanity itself, of which the authors should be profoundly ashamed!

The advantages enjoyed in this day, by the great success which has attended the art of printing —an art for which we are indebted to the genius of a former age—would no doubt afford us a satisfactory history of the rise and progress of public opinion on such a subject, if it were to occur in this age. The state of the art at that period, the proscription of the press, and especially the new and unsettled condition of the colonies, furnishes good cause for the deficiency. We may not, therefore, account for public opinion as satisfactorily now, as might have been done at that time. Still we have abundant materials for a charitable construction of the conduct of our forefathers —both here and in England. The savage, and indeed the brutal condition of the larger portion of Africa, had long since been a matter of history. All well-informed men were familiar with the facts of African history. They were not only Pagans, but Pagans of the most stupid and enslaved kind—without the knowledge of God, or the rudest forms of civilization. The population was divided into tribes, each governed by an ignorant petty king, who ruled his equally Pagan subjects as absolute slaves. In the place of the knowledge and worship of the true God, which was found to exist among the savages of America, the African worships the devil—the evil spirit, and that by the most humiliating and debasing rites of superstition. His superstitions furnished frequent occasions for wars. These wars were highly sanguinary—often exterminating, as all wars amongst an ignorant and highly superstitious people have always been. To spare the life of an enemy in war, make him a prisoner, guard him as such, or make him labor as a slave for his support, is an advance of civilization. To continue to put the enemy to death to the end of the war, is the necessary condition of a state of war in uncivilized life. Such was the known condition of all the African population south of Egypt and the States of Barbary. Did not their condition appeal, as it still does, to the benevolence of the civilized world? But what could they do? Send Christian missionaries? No. We, in this country, have succeeded, to some extent at least, in civilizing the savage tribes upon our border! But the Indians were not, like the Africans, idolatrous Pagans. Be this as it may, the competency of missionary enterprise to civilize and christianize Pagans, was, as it still is to any very material extent, an untried experiment. The opinion then obtained, and to this hour it is not wholly invalidated, that to reduce Pagans to a state of labor was, among other agencies, a necessary condition of their civilization. What then could Christians do in that age for African civilization? They could not introduce them as laborers in England, or on the continent of Europe. Such a step would have denied bread to the multitudes who already filled the menial offices of society. It was impracticable to do this, and inhuman to attempt it. Thus for long ages had degraded and enslaved Africa “stretched forth” her imploring hands, appealing to the benevolence of the world for relief. But the wisest and best men of the times saw no means of relief, and attempted none. In this state of African history, colonial settlements were ultimately effected on the coast of North America. At an early period an experiment was made by a Dutch Manhattan, to introduce African labor into the colonies. Here a wide field was open for their labor. It was greatly demanded. To labor here denied bread to no other laboring poor, as would have been the case in England. The idea was caught at in both hemispheres, as a “God-send” for the African—for the colonies, and a common civilization. No one dreamed of robbery, injustice, or wrong to any one! All considered it a wide door which a kind Providence had opened, and which piety itself bade them enter! No man who was worthy of the age authorized any one to fit out a ship, from the port of Boston or elsewhere, go to the coast of Africa, steal a cargo of natives, murder all who stood in the way of his schemes, tumble them into the hold of their ship, without regard to health or comfort, and make their way with their piratical cargo to Boston and other markets, and turn them into money! Those who did this—as many no doubt did—acted on their own responsibility, and have long since given their dreadful account to God! But the men who were worthy of the age, and who would be worthy of any age, did authorize, by a common public opinion, the practice of going to Africa, and negotiating a purchase with those who had long held and treated them as slaves, and especially those who by the usages of barbarous war were condemned to death. They considered that thus to arrest the practice of putting prisoners to death was humane, and worthy of a Christian people; that to introduce them into civilized society, teach them the habits of civilized life, the principles and experience of Christianity, and ultimately perhaps to send them back to regenerate their fatherland, was an achievement worthy of the highest attainments of piety? Hence they had no scruple to purchase them when brought to the country. The most eminently patriotic and benevolent of the colonists purchased them. The most pious members of churches, and distinguished Christian ministers, did the same. The immortal Whitefield did not scruple to sustain his pious foundation in Georgia by a large income, for the times, from slave property. Were they correct in these views? We appeal to facts. Multitudes were brought to the country who had otherwise perished in barbarous warfare, or been murdered as captives, and the others would have remained in a state of Pagan ignorance, superstition, and slavery. By coming into the country, they have been greatly improved in their mental, moral, and physical condition. I do not stay to trouble you with statistical details. But my investigations warrant a statement, which you can test at your leisure; it is this: the number of Africans who have died in the communion of the Methodist and Baptist churches of America to the present time—and who, therefore, we my assume, were christianized by their residence in this country—exceeds the whole number of all the heathen who have been christianized by the labors of all the Protestant denominations of Christendom since the days of Luther. Hence, we conclude, that whatever were the cruelties of individuals engaged in the original slave trade, (for which they were responsible,) and whatever may have been the abuses of the system since, by individual slave owners, the system itself was originally founded in a profound view of the principles of political science, so far as regards this country, and of political economy, and the claims of Christian benevolence, so far as it regards the Africans themselves. The resources of this vast country have been rapidly developed. It is already the asylum of the oppressed, and the home of the poor, of all lands. Slave labor has had no small share in all this. The regeneration of the continent of Africa has already commenced, and the ultimate result is looked to with increasing confidence.

Thus we have invalidated the doctrine, and also the hypothesis, which form the basis on which the abolitionists rest their argument against the justice and policy of the South. That their position is not tenable is no direct proof that ours is right; but it does afford a presumption that we are right. This presumption we claim, for the several reasons given. The direct argument in vindication of the system of domestic slavery, upon its own merits, is reserved for the next lecture.

IT having been proved that both the doctrine and the assumption of fact by Northern fanatics, in regard to the claim of the African to a republican form of government, are false, and that the presumption is in favor of the position of the South, that domestic slavery is the appropriate form of government for them, we are now left free to pursue our inquiry, without offset from these vagaries, into the merits of this system, and its appropriateness to the African race in this country.

The African is now here. Whether right or wrong originally, is not the question before us. He is here. What form of government is best suited to him, and those with whom he is necessarily associated? And,

I. Let it be observed, that they are a distinct race of people, separated by strongly marked lines of moral and physical condition from those amongst whom they reside. This difference is so strongly marked that there can be no spontaneous amalgamation by intermarriage, and consequently no reciprocity of social rights and privileges between the races. Their history in the whole country shows this to be the case. They must therefore continue to exist as a separate race. To this state of things the government over them should be adapted, unless we would violate a material condition of the problem to be solved. For if the law should not provide for this state of the case, the conventional usages of the superior race amongst whom they dwell will certainly do so. This is in proof from the example of all those States which have failed to provide for the African as a separate and distinct race; for the usages of society always supply the deficiency. This omission on the part of the law is evidently to the injury of the African. The history of the race in the Northern States will show this. Essential liberty is founded in, and is inseparable from, certain social rights and privileges. But in these respects, the African is a far more proscribed and degraded race in the Northern than in the Southern States.

A government, then, should be provided for the African, as a distinct and separate race, existing in the bosom of another and superior race. Of course this will be an imperium in imperio. And as they are confessedly the inferior race, who can never enjoy essential liberty or reciprocity of social condition with the whites, the government adapted to them must be inferior and subordinated to that of the whites amongst whom they dwell. It must be subordinate; for, in the nature of things, it must be an independent or a subordinate one. But two independent civil governments cannot coëxist, and control distinct races dwelling together in the same community. It follows that it must be subordinate. As subordinate, it must either assume some form of military government, or it must conform to the patriarchal species of government—a kind of family government—that is, the domestic form for which we contend. And as between a subordinate military or patriarchal form of government, both as regards the expense and the comfort, there can be no controversy, we may consider the claims of the patriarchal form, or the system of domestic slavery, as established in this case.

But it may be supposed that the experiment in the Northern States invalidates the position, that this, being a distinct race of people, must be controlled by a separate and subordinate form of government. These States have a portion of this race, and it is said they find no difficulty to result from having placed them on a political footing with other citizens. But this is a mere assumption. It is not borne out by the facts of history.

As before stated, the conventional usages of society have denied them the social rights and privileges of free citizens! They have proscribed them as an inferior and degraded race.

The usage which forbids intermarriage is at once a bar to all social equality. The road to offices of trust, honor, and profit, is closed against them—nay, even the means of subsistence beyond a scanty supply of the necessaries of life. These facts are undeniable. Now, to talk of liberty when we effectually deny to a people all that essentially constitutes it, is idle in the extreme. It is a mere paper liberty!—liberty to submit to the crushing usages of society!—liberty to perish, in many instances, and that without sympathy from the State. In these respects the condition of the race is unquestionably better in the Southern States. If they must be a degraded race in the North as well as in the South, I hesitate not to affirm that our domestic system affords them a much better security for a competent and comfortable living. It makes better provision for them in old age and in youth, in sickness and in health, than is secured to them by their so-called liberty in the Northern States.

Of course, poor families (in the literal sense) in the South do not own slaves. They are usually held by those who at least enjoy the necessaries of life. Now, the progress of civilization has established the custom in all such families of sharing with their slaves the necessaries, and, not unfrequently, many of the comforts of life. The exceptions only make the rule general.

Again, the Southern system, by making the African a part of the family circle, brings him into more immediate contact with the habits of civilized life, and cultivates a high degree of sympathy between him and his owners. Hence, the well-known attachment of slaves to the families in which they were brought up; and their utter repugnance to being hired to a Northern family, whatever may be their reputation for piety. They are without practical sympathy for them. They often subject them to a degree of hard labor to which they are not accustomed. Many humane men in the South decline hiring their servants to such persons.

There are evils, it is true, inseparable from the presence of the race in this country, under any circumstances. By conferring on them a mere paper liberty, the Northern States have adroitly freed themselves of a portion of these evils; but then they have evidently accumulated them upon the African. The policy is marked by no sympathy for the blacks. There is much more of selfishness than of benevolence in the working of the system. We conclude that our position is true, that the Africans, being a separate and distinct race of people, who cannot spontaneously amalgamate with the whites, should be placed under a separate and subordinate form of government, if we consult either their welfare or our own. The examples referred to, as proof of the contrary, are strongly confirmatory of the position.

But to claim for the African political equality with the whites is subject to still stronger objections. We may further appeal to facts in support of our proposition.

II. They are not, in point of intellectual and moral development, in the condition for freedom: that is, they are not fitted for that measure of self-government which is necessary to political sovereignty. It cannot, therefore, be justly claimed for them. They have no right to it. It would not be to them an essential good, but an essential evil, a curse To confer it on them, either by an act of direct or gradual emancipation, would be eminently productive of injury to the whole country, and utterly ruinous to them.

This proposition is capable of division. We will discuss the points in the order in which they stand.

First. They are not, in point of intellectual and moral development, fitted for that measure of self-government which is necessary to political sovereignty.

We have said they are an inferior race. That they are so in the original structure of their minds I pretend not to affirm—nay, I do not believe it. I believe in the unity of the races—that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.” Acts xvii. 26. But that the race in this country are inferior, in the general development of their intellectual and moral faculties, I am free to affirm. This I attribute to the crushing influence of the ages of barbarous and pagan life to which their forefathers in Africa were subjected. For, as, in the progress of civilization, each succeeding generation of civilized persons occupied a higher intellectual and moral platform, so, in the descending scale of barbarism, each succeeding generation of barbarians occupies a lower platform of intellectual and moral development. Hence, We can account for the exceedingly barbarous condition of the race when first brought into this country. It also follows, that a race of men whose intellects have been long stultified by ages of barbarism, cannot, by any contact with the principles and usages of civilized life, be speedily thrown up to an elevated platform.

This also accounts, in a good degree, for the slow progress which the race has made in civilization, since their introduction into the country.

To recur now to the fact, which cannot be controverted, that they were brought into this country in a state of extreme barbarism and Pagan ignorance: in the first place, were they then in a condition which fitted them for political sovereignty, and equality of social rights and privileges with the whites? If they were not for the latter, it is very plain that they were not for the former. It is quite certain that they were not prepared for either. If they were, why did not the Puritans of New England allow them this sovereignty and equality? By their consent and active coöperation, they were brought into the country. Shall we revilingly say, with some of their ungrateful descendants, that the good sense and love of liberty which had so lately driven them from their fatherland, to find an asylum here from the galling yoke of British oppression, had been so entirely absorbed in the passion for gain, as to cause them to be deaf to the claims of justice and humanity in behalf of the African! Shame on their graceless accusers! No: their good sense forbade that a race of barbarous Pagans, who could not be absorbed by intermarriage, but who must continue to exist amongst them as a separate and inferior race, should be placed on a common platform with free citizens! Their humanity, no less than their good sense, induced them to adopt the plan of domestic government, or slavery, sanctioned by the usages of all civilized nations in similar circumstances. If, for any cause, a horde of barbarians should be introduced into New England in the present day, in numbers too great to be absorbed without injury, and in a physical condition making it improper to permit their absorption by intermarriage with themselves, as in the case of the Africans, does any man in his senses pretend to believe that those States would confer on them either social equality or political freedom? They would certainly consider it due to themselves, no less than to the barbarians, to place them under a subordinate government of some kind. Well, this is precisely what their forefathers did in the case of the Pagan Africans; and what the Southern colonies did when the New Englanders brought them South. Thus the origin of domestic slavery, as a political institution, in the country, shows that it was founded in the humanity of our forefathers, no less than in their good sense. Hence the second position stated: Political equality cannot be justly claimed for them. They have no right to it. To them it would not be an essential good, but an essential evil—a curse.

On the basis of the doctrine of rights discussed in a preceding lecture, this proposition follows as a conclusion from the fact here established in regard to the Africans of this country.

But it may be said that the barbarous character of the race has greatly improved since their first introduction into this country. This is true— eminently so. And standing, as this fact evidently does, connected with the civilization and redemption of a whole continent of barbarians, upon whom the crushing sceptre of Pagan ignorance has lain for unnumbered ages, it fully vindicates both the wisdom and benevolence of the providence of God, which permitted their introduction in such vast numbers into civilized life, as affording the only means of accomplishing his humane design.

“THAT the Africans are not, in point of intellectual and moral development, fitted for that measure of self-government which is necessary to political sovereignty: that political equality can not be justly claimed for them—they have no right to it: that to them it could not be an essential good, but an essential evil, a curse; and that to confer it on them, by an act of direct or gradual emancipation, would be eminently productive of injury to the whole country, and utterly ruinous to them.”

This is the general proposition still under consideration. We have already discussed to some extent the first two points. I reserve the subject of emancipation for future lectures. I now proceed to exemplify the truth of the positions discussed on this general proposition, and thereby show the actual necessity that we sustain, in the present circumstances of the race, the system of domestic slavery. And,

First. We adduce the fact of domestic colonization.

This has been frequently attempted in the Southern States, and has as often failed for the want of success. Eminently humane, though mistaken men, have tried this experiment with their slaves. Some have tried it on a small scale: standing only as their nominal owners, and giving them the control of their time and labor, and the use of necessary lands for cultivation. Others have tried the same plan on a more extended scale of operations. But if there is a single successful experiment now in operation in the Southern country, I am not aware of it. In every instance the owners have been compelled to resume the control of their slaves, to prevent them from becoming a tax on the community, and a nuisance in the neighborhood.

Second. The result of the experiment in the case of the free colored population, is equally in proof that the race, taken collectively, is not fitted for self-government.

Humane individuals have, from time to time, freed their slaves. In this way a large number has been accumulated. There is not a county in any one of the older States in which there are not many, and in some a large number. In this experiment we have a full test of what the African is in the enjoyment of civil liberty, or of his capacity for self-government, at least in the midst of a people with whom he cannot amalgamate. The result is daily before our eyes, and may be known and read of all men. After a few honorable exceptions, the multitude are by no means as well fed or clothed, and otherwise provided for, as the slaves in their vicinity. They make but little provision against the inclemency of winter, and in sickness are often the objects of public charity. A disposition to live by petty depredations upon society, instead of by honest industry, and a general depravation of morals, are characteristic of the caste. Their retrograde tendency is so obvious, that no doubt is entertained among men of reflection that, but for the props and checks thrown around them by the laws and usages of civilization, they would soon relapse into the savage state. These facts are so obvious as long since to have engaged the attention of our domestics. Among them, the term “free nigger” is one of deepest reproach. Those who respect themselves, it is well known, form no matrimonial alliance with them, from sheer contempt of their degradation. I have frequently met, in my travels, with old men, in independent circumstances, who by the doctrines of the pulpit, enforced by the personal influence of a favorite minister in private life, were induced, in early life, to free their slaves, who now confess, with the result of their mistaken piety before their eyes, that they conferred no boon upon them, but rather inflicted an injury both upon them and upon society. They console themselves with the reflection that they intended all for the best. This picture is not surcharged. You will do me the justice to remember that no dark picture can be drawn without dipping the pencil in dark colors.

I have an interest in a slave, who is no doubt in the moral condition of freedom, as before defined. I have assured this man that he ought to go to Liberia, in Africa, and have insisted on his consenting But still I am so deeply convinced of the truth and importance of the facts here stated in regard to our free colored population, that a sense of duty to him and to the community forbid that he be placed among the number.

But it may be supposed that a popular feeling of selfish hostility serves to crush a people who would otherwise rise at once in the scale of civilization. But this is not so. I repeat, with confidence, this is not so. The honorable exceptions, to which allusion has already been made, are universally respected. “John” (to use a general title) “is as honest a man, and has as much self-respect, as any man in the neighborhood,” is a meed of praise which is readily accorded to free blacks, by all intelligent citizens, and with peculiar satisfaction, whenever it can be done. Such men of course enjoy the confidence and respect of their white neighbors in a high degree. But, I repeat, that examples of this kind are rare among our free colored population. No! an original cause of this general degradation is found in the fact stated, that is, that they are not prepared for self-government and therefore can derive but little, if any, benefit from its political and social advantages. The crushing weight of ages of barbarism still presses heavily upon the intellect of the African, and in his present circumstances, to say the least, he is too feeble to rise. It is the accident of his position that he is free, and not the law of his intellectual and moral nature that makes him so. He is a slave in fact; and without the restraints of the domestic system, the tendencies of his barbarous nature are left, in a good degree, to take their downward way. In many counties within our knowledge containing a large population of free colored persons, I am satisfied that nothing but the humanity developed by a high state of civilization, prevents the adoption of a summary process, by which the nuisance would be abated.

But if the objection I am combating be modified and restricted to the influence of that usage which denies them social freedom, I will agree that it has weight. It certainly retards the process of those who are rising to the moral condition of freedom: hangs like an incubus upon those who have already risen to that state, and effectually shuts the door of enjoyment against them. This is no doubt true. But why are they denied social freedom? The answer is, Because they cannot amalgamate by a spontaneous intermarriage with the whites. But this is a disability under which God, by the nature of their physical constitution, has placed them, and which the progress of civilization itself forbids the whites to disregard. Therefore it is obvious that they never can be free in a community of whites. Because, as there is no essential freedom, but that which is inseparable from social as well as political freedom, and as there can be no social freedom, but that which coincides with the law of amalgamation by inter-marriage; and as Divine Providence has closed the door against this, it follows that the African never can be free in the midst of a community of whites.

But still, that this is not the primary and essential cause of the extreme degradation of those Africans upon whom the experiment of freedom has been tried in this country and found to be a failure, and that it is originally traceable to the fact that they are not, intellectually and morally, prepared for self-government, is still more clearly deducible from a

Third consideration—the colonization experiment on the coast of Africa.

The colony of Liberia has already taken its place among the nations of the earth as a free and independent government. No colony has ever prospered as that has done. As a rising nation, it shares the sympathy of the civilized world. It is destined to become the asylum of the Africans of America, and the centre of civilization to the long-benighted continent of Africa. Thither all eyes are turned as the oasis of hope in her desert history.

But let us briefly trace the progress of this hopeful colony. How has it arisen to its present position? It has been built up from the free colored population of this country—colonized by their own consent. Herein Divine Providence has wisely discriminated the proper subjects for this great enterprise. His own established order of things has effected a judicious discrimination of the proper persons for this work. The sacrifices to be made were great. The climate was inhospitable. Extreme hazard of life, in all cases, was to be encountered in the process of acclimation. A Pagan and savage population were to be encountered and subdued. Every thing gave undoubted indications, that if ever the tree of African liberty should be made to flourish upon that Pagan coast, its roots must be watered by the blood of many patriot martyrs. In these circumstances, it is obvious that there would be no volunteers in this work but men of the right stamp. Those only whose intellects furnished the flint and steel from which the spark of liberty could be struck, and upon the altar of whose hearts the fires of freedom could be kindled, to light their pathway to that far-off and inhospitable land, would embark in this great work. Those who were in the condition of freedom—whose hearts throbbed with the pulsations of liberty—were the first to embark in the cause of African civilization. For several years the work went on—slowly, but surely. Many fell in the conflict. Still the work went on! The spirit which animated the patriot colonists is eloquently expressed in the dying words of the immortal Cox: “Let a thousand missionaries fall, ere Africa be given up!”

Thus far the work went on in the order of Divine Providence. The voluntary principle was discriminating. Those who were in the moral condition of freedom gladly embraced the opportunity. Those who were below that condition were deaf to the call. But this divinely sanctioned process was quite too slow for the fiery zeal of emancipationists. The door of Providence did not open fast enough! Encouraged by past successes, they attempted to hasten the work. Forgetful of the original and avowed objects of the Society—the colonization of the free people of color, with their own consent—the friends of colonization began to preach manumission to the owners of slaves. Many hearkened to the call as a Macedonian appeal to their feelings of benevolence. The slaves upon large plantations were emancipated, and funds placed at the disposal of the Society, to remove and settle them as free citizens in the new colony. They were sent off in considerable numbers, for several years. The result was disastrous. It threatened speedily to reduce the whole colony to a savage state. They were not in the moral condition of freedom—they were not prepared for that degree or form of self-government. They could not be absorbed by the body politic, without imparting their character to the body. The full measure of their golden dreams was simply liberty to do nothing. We need only glance at the results. Mr. Ashman, at that time Governor of the colony, remonstrated, in official communications, with the Colonization Society in this country: the officers generally, and other eminent citizens, also remonstrated in private letters to their friends—all begging to be spared the calamities that awaited them from so great an influx of population, evidently unprepared for freedom, and praying that they might be strengthened, as heretofore, by a judicious selection of persons in some degree, at least, qualified for civil liberty!

If the colonization experiment has proved the capacity of the African, under suitable developments, for self-government, (which, in our view, it has very satisfactorily done,) it has proved, with equal clearness, that without those developments he is wholly unfit for it; and that the masses of the race are, as yet, undeveloped, and consequently unfit for political sovereignty.

These facts are open to the observation of all men. They strongly rebuke the restless agitators of the country. They clearly confirm our position that the Africans in America are not, as yet, in the moral condition for freedom. I have proved in a former lecture that political sovereignty is not a natural but an acquired right. The facts here adduced demonstratively prove that they have not yet acquired this right, and that therefore it cannot be justly claimed for them. But more than this—they afford the strongest presumption (and further than the presumption in its favor, I do not design to notice this topic at this time) that the emancipation of the slaves, in their present moral condition, confers no benefit upon them, but is calculated to inflict a deep injury both upon them and upon society.

It is a general, and indeed an almost universal opinion in the South, that any thing like a system of emancipation, whether direct or gradual, by which the number of free colored persons should be materially increased in the Southern States, would inevitably be followed by their indiscriminate massacre, as the only means of abating an insufferable nuisance, unless the citizens were to forsake the soil in favor of a barbarous horde. Such an opinion, (I may repeat,) so generally entertained by so large a community of enlightened and virtuous citizens, who are in immediate proximity with the race, and acquainted with their character from early life, taken in connection with the historical facts here enumerated, affording to any mind so clear a proof of the correctness of their opinion, should be admitted as an authoritative settlement of the position I have taken on this branch of the subject. Hence, we may conclude that the law of reciprocity and the law of benevolence require that the Africans be continued under an inferior and subordinate government.

The question again recurs, What form of government shall this be? Of course, it must be a modification of a military despotism, or a modification of the patriarchal form of government. I am free to say that I can conceive of none so appropriate as that adopted by civilization, for the purpose of controlling a barbarous or semi-barbarous race (and especially such as could not amalgamate) dwelling in the midst of a civilized community: that is, the system of domestic government now in operation in the Southern States. If any shall devise another, it will, at least, have the merit of novelty to commend it to public attention.

The correctness of the doctrine here assumed, that domestic slavery is the appropriate form of government for a people in the circumstances of the Africans in America, is very strikingly exemplified by the history of the remnant of Canaanites, who still dwelt in the land after its subjugation and settlement by the ancient Israelites. An inquiry into the Divine policy in regard to these heathen will fully vindicate this position. The civil code of a nation is admitted to be the best index of the habits and morals of the people. This remark, however, cannot always be taken without modification. We shall greatly underrate the civilization of the Israelites, who first settled the land of Canaan, if we judge them alone by their civil code. Smiting and cursing father and mother, brutal assaults upon pregnant married women, digging pits to destroy neighbors' cattle, (Ex. xxi.,) seduction, adultery, dealing with familiar spirits and witchcraft, and various wickedness which delicacy forbids to repeat, (see Lev. xviii.,) unnatural marriages, such as with mothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren, (Lev. xviii.,) are all practices which are mentioned in a manner that shows they were common in that day. If we judge the morals of the Israelites by the statutes here referred to, we shall certainly conclude that they had not the slightest claim to the character of a civilized people; but it is equally certain that such judgment would be wide of the truth. For although in many respects the national morals and standard of public opinion and feeling were in a feeble condition, as seen in their obvious proclivity to idolatry, still those laws are far from being characteristic of the morals of the nation. The Divine record does not leave us to conjecture the cause for these laws. It is written, Lev. xviii., “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you. For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defied;” and, “Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations which I cast out before you; for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.”

We can be at no loss to see that the remnant of heathen who survived the slaughter, and still dwelt in the land which the Israelites settled, were in such power, and accustomed to such opinions and habits of bestiality, as to render the progress of civilization, in unrestrained contact with them, at least a problem, if not an absolute impossibility.

Equality of political and social condition with the Jews would have made short work of civilization in that age. Hence we find that bold lines of demarcation were drawn between the Jews and those depraved “strangers.” Both political and social equal were forbidden. The Jews were authorized (Lev. xxv.) to make “bond-men and bond-maids” in perpetuity (unlike the slavery of their brethren, which was for a definite period) of the “heathen that were round about them, and of the children of the strangers that sojourned among them; of them they should buy and of their families that were with them, which they begat in the land”—“they should take them as an inheritance for their children, and they should be their bond-men for ever.” The theory of certain pseudo-philanthropists of the present day, would have led them to prate loudly in behalf of equality, and the duty and practicability of speedily elevating this people in the scale of civilization. But He who was too wise to err and too good to do wrong, knew better, and ordered differently. Barbarism —long-continued barbarism—cannot be speedily elevated by any contact with the forms of civilization. He who denied them political sovereignty, (except on certain conditions, which clearly indicated such an appreciation of the privilege as properly entitled them to the right,) at the same time provided that they be denied social equality, and reduced to a state of absolute slavery—they were made bond-slaves in perpetuity. Herein they were placed under the ban of social as well as political proscription—a position in which they could do the least possible mischief to the progress of civilization, but would contribute greatly to its advancement, and thereby promote their own improvement much beyond any thing they could have attained in their original heathen state.

IMMEDIATE emancipation is the scheme of the abolitionists proper, whilst gradual emancipation is the favorite plan of the anti-slavery party. The ground we should take is this, that no plan of emancipation, either immediate or gradual, is adapted to the present moral condition and relative circumstances of our African population. Nothing of the kind could at this time be attended with good, but only with evil.

I limit this discussion to the subject of gradual emancipation, because the reasons by which we invalidate this doctrine will, a fortiori, disprove the doctrine of immediate emancipation.

It is said that a system of gradual emancipation succeeded well in the Northern States, and that it would succeed equally well in the Southern. But I deny the assumption in each case.

There never was a large slave population in the Northern States, owing to the unsuitableness of the climate. The question arises, How did this system operate with the few they had? It is well known that the owners anticipated the time appointed for the law of emancipation to go into operation, and sold their slaves in the South! This law only operated to transfer the slaves, for the most part, to a climate and soil more congenial to their constitution and habits. The operation of the scheme, therefore, resulted only in the emancipation of a few of the whole number, (see Lecture I., page 22;) and these few, as has been proved, have, by the social, and, we may add, in many instances, by the municipal regulations of the States within which they reside, been essentially injured by the change instead of benefited. Hence the scheme did not succeed well in the Northern States. And can it be assumed that it would succeed better in the Southern States? On the contrary, the result would be much more fatal in the Southern, for the reason that we have a much larger African slave population than existed in the Northern States at the time their emancipation laws were adopted. Now, suppose (what, however, can scarcely, if at all, be allowed a supposable case) that all the Southern States should simultaneously pass laws, providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves, and hence, ultimately, effect their emancipation, as provided for by law, for the reason that there would be no market open for the sale of them, as was the case when the scheme was attempted at the North: even in such a state of things, you cannot fail to perceive that the propriety of such a measure turns entirely upon the truth or error of a position already discussed.

If my position be correct, (and it is evidently established by the facts adduced in the preceding lecture,) that their mental imbecility and moral degradation is such that, whilst it remains a fact that for physical and uncontrollable causes they cannot amalgamate, any material addition to our present number of free colored population would result in their extermination, humanity, leaving all other reasons out of the account, would forbid the measure! Nor can I persuade myself that there is an emancipationist, however fanatical, this side the strange delirium of a deliberately wicked purpose to do wrong, who would not “pause upon the brink of this Rubicon,” when assured that the Southern people generally believed that extermination would, in all probability, be the result of his priceless experiment.

But it is extremely idle to suppose that all the Southern States would simultaneously pass such a law; nor does the scheme assume that they would do so. No: the plan advocated is, that the District of Columbia, and the States of Delaware and Maryland, should first emancipate their slaves; then Virginia, then Kentucky, then Missouri, and so on, until the work should be consummated by a gradual process, requiring several years in each State. Let us now inquire what this plan promises.

If the owners of slaves in the States which first in order passed such a law, did not anticipate the time of its taking effect, (as in the case before referred to,) and sell them in the States where no such law had, as yet, been passed, the result would be, as already stated, an accumulation of free colored population, with its inevitable consequences. But this would certainly not be the general operation of such a law. For if cupidity should not prompt a different course, the owners, foreseeing the results of such an accumulation of free colored population, both to the whites and the blacks, would anticipate the law, in by far the greater number of instances, and sell their slaves in the States in which no such law had been passed. Still, many, no doubt, would not take this course: a want of forecast, and most generally a mistaken notion of humanity, would prevent its adoption. In this way, we cannot hesitate to believe that the accumulation of free colored population would be so great as to induce their extermination at no distant day. This calamity could be averted only by a sale of the slaves into some other State in anticipation of the law providing for their manumission.

Now, whatever of mere selfishness there may be in the proposed measure, nothing is more certain than that it is entirely destitute of all humanity for the slave, and of all just regard to his progress in civilization, and his more speedy elevation to moral fitness for freedom. For by the time this work had progressed through the District of Columbia, the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and, it might be, North Carolina and Tennessee, the far greater part of the numerous slave population of the whole country would be accumulated in the remaining States of the South and South-west. This would be the inevitable result. For the free-soilers, it seems, are determined, if the effect of agitation can accomplish it at the ballot-box, that there shall be a cordon of free States, formed by the newly acquired territory of New Mexico and California; and in this case there would be no further outlet for the retiring slave.

Let us now inquire what would be the effect of the accumulation of the race within the limits of a few States:

At present, that element of slavery is properly called domestic, confers incalculable advantages on the slave. By this feature of the system, as it now operates, the slaves are distributed in small numbers in different families. There they are brought, every one of them, into more or less of immediate contact with a high state of civilization. Many of them pass the early part of their lives in the dwelling houses, and around the tables and firesides of their owners, and in the midst of all the company visiting the house. Others are engaged in field and mechanical pursuits, requiring frequent intercourse with the whites. Their Sabbaths are often spent (and it is daily becoming more and more so) in the midst of our worshipping assemblies. In all these ways, to go no farther, they enjoy the means of improvement, and are making daily progress in civilization. This, without doubt, is the plan indicated by Providence, as affording the most natural means of accomplishing their ultimate fitness for a more desirable form of civil liberty.

That it cannot be said of any material portion of them that they have thrown off the incubus of preceding ages of barbarism, may be true; yet it is equally true that their progress in civilization, and that in an increasing ratio, is perfectly obvious to any man whose age and acquaintance with the race would entitle his opinion to credit. Any old man amongst us is prepared to speak of the great improvement of slaves within thirty or forty years past. The domestic element of the system has accomplished this improvement, and will certainly in process of time greatly elevate the race above what it now is; and they are now a very different people from their forefathers who first came into this country. I have no hesitation in believing that it is the grand design of Providence that they shall be thus fitted (the far greater portion of them) for position in Africa as the source of civilization to that in long-benighted continent.

Now, to take from the present system its domestic element, or, what is virtually the same thing, to place it under such disabilities as to prevent its benevolent results, would arrest the progress of African civilization, and put off his moral elevation for ages to come. And this is precisely the effect which the accumulation of all the slaves of the whole country within the limits of a few States must have. The domestic element of the system would be effectually crippled, if not entirely destroyed. A large number of slaves would be congregated on single plantations. The whole territory would be in the possession of but a few wealthy planters. They would chiefly reside in the cities and more healthy districts of the country. Their plantations would be under the control of stewards. The steward and his family (usually small) would constitute the whole white population on a plantation, numbering, as would often be the case, several hundred slaves; and the same state of things would exist, to a greater or less extent, through large districts of country. This would be a condition of the race essentially different from that in which they are placed by the present system; and we cannot fail to perceive that they would be well-nigh cut off from all contact with civilization. Instead of continuing to rise in the scale of civilization, as they will do under the present system, they would begin at once to relapse into the barbarism of their original pagan state. This result would be inevitable— only so far as their downward progress might be arrested by the occasional voice of the self-sacrificing missionary, calling to the altars of Christian worship! Would this be humane? Rather, would it not be brutal? Yet such would be the result of the scheme of “gradual emancipation!”

There is, however, another result of this pseudo-philanthropy that I need not omit to mention: the removal of the slaves from the States named, and their extermination of the remaining free color position should they be found to exist (as it is most likely they would) in numbers so great as to constitute a nuisance requiring summary abatement, would make a fine opening for the enterprising farmers of the Northern States to come in and possess these fertile hills and valleys, abounding in wealth and blessed with a most salubrious climate. It would also afford a fine outlet for their own menial population, which threatens so many and serious results to them— the papal vice and ignorance from Ireland and the continent of Europe, which is now flooding the free States. How far these lofty considerations may constitute items in the catalogue of motives which prompt the political agitators of the country to press the subject of African emancipation, I pretend not to say! One thing, however, I may say in behalf of the Southern people, and that is, that as they have no idea of perpetrating these cruel wrongs upon the unfortunate race which Providence has thrown amongst them, so they expect to have no use for those depraved and perishing menials. They prefer the slaves, in any view of the subject. We may conclude, then, that the position established is not weakened in any degree by considerations of either direct or gradual emancipation. No: the emancipation and removal to Africa of those, and those only, whose moral and social condition entitles them to a higher form of political freedom, as the voluntary act of the individual owner, is the only natural and safe method of emancipation. It affords the only hope of Africa, and of the African in America.

The proposition discussed, and, I think, clearly established, relates to the essential propriety and the fitness of the system of domestic slavery as an institution. Whether this institution is capable of improvement, and, if so, what improvements are demanded by the progress of civilization, are questions quite independent of any thing yet discussed. These topics may engage our attention at a future period in these lectures. I would only remark, in this place, that the system has undergone great modifications since its adoption. Laws and usages that were, no doubt, eminently adapted to the extremely barbarous character of the race, when first brought into the country, have long since become obsolete, and the same may be said of many subsequent regulations. Even the stringent measures adopted on the rise of abolition excitement in late years, have had but a brief authority. The progress of civilization is the same in its results in this case as in that of any other people. As a state of barbarism yields to the light of civilization, men are more and more disposed to do right, and the laws and usages which were before necessary to compel them to do right, are thereby superseded, and soon grow into disuse. Hence, many of our Northern citizens who form their opinions (as many do) of the practical character of this institution at the present day from the historical account of the laws and usages of a former period, regardless of the fact that they have become, for the most part, obsolete, entertain a very incorrect opinion. The institution at this day is a very different affair, practically, from what they suppose it to be, judging, as they do, from the laws and usages appropriate to a more barbarous condition of the race.

I have no hesitation in affirming that in by far the greater number of instances, the condition of Southern families, embracing domestic slaves, is much better (that is, both whites and blacks) than that of the larger number of Northern families, with hired domestics, on large farms. The labor is much less severe, and the discipline much less strict. The Northern family has more frequently to appeal to the authority of civil law, and to the right of dismissing unfaithful servants, than the Southern has to appeal to domestic discipline. And still further, the Southern domestic is practically, in all respects save one, quite as much upon a social footing with the white members of the family as the Northern domestic is with the family in which he is employed, whilst the sympathy existing between these different castes in the Southern family is much greater than that which exists in the Northern.

I acknowledge but one difference in regard to practical social equality between the domestics of these families. The white domestic, from the fact that he belongs to the same race, is capable, by industry and enterprise, of rising to an entire social footing with his employer, whilst the African domestic cannot do so. Although the civil law should confer on him the right to do so, the paramount usages of civilized life, founded upon his physical condition, would forbid it. This advantage, we admit, is above all price; but having its foundation in the wise and inscrutable providence of God, it is without remedy by any means which we can adopt; and, indeed, why should we wish even to alter a condition of things founded in physical nature by Him “who is too wise to err and too good to do wrong,” simply because to our limited view of the Divine economy it presents points of friction which, viewing them from another stand-point, we should desire to avoid! But aside from this advantage, I feel free to affirm, that in every neighborhood which is brought permanently under the influence of the apostolic precepts enjoining the relative duties of master and slave, the practical working of the system secures to the African a higher degree of essential happiness than is found to exist with the whites who fill the menial offices of society in the free States. No white man can be satisfied with the position of a menial in society. Perpetually chafed by the chains which fetter all his attempts to rise in the scale of social equality, he is the subject of a constant and painful irritation. Every failure in an enterprise which promised to elevate him to social equality with those around him, is a new cause of heart-burning and jealousy of all about him, and often an overwhelming source of temptation, not only to distrust the providence of God, but to employ the political franchise to unsettle the foundations of society, by levelling down the whole to a common platform. Hence the agrarian doctrines which find embodiment in various social organizations in the free States. Nothing but that religion which both teaches the duty and imparts the moral power to “be careful for nothing, but in every thing to give thanks,” and in every condition in which Divine Providence places us, “therewith to be content,” can reconcile a white menial to his condition in such a country as ours. The government itself can only be secure in a republic so long as a pure Christianity (for that only can do it) operates to elevate the social condition of those laboring classes who would otherwise be menials, or reconcile them to a station to which the accident of birth, miscarriage in business, or inferiority in intellect, inevitably consigns them in the competition of business life; or so long as pure religion shall so operate as to leave the balance of political power with those who are either so elevated or so reconciled to an inferior condition. But little, if any thing, of all this, so far as it relates to our colored menials, is to be found at the South. Always conscious of their intellectual inferiority (I speak of the masses) from constant contact with the superior moral power of the whites, and equally conscious that their physical condition is an impassable bar to all social equality by marriage, they not only do not aspire to it in their feelings, but, in all cases in which they are treated as the Scriptures require masters to treat their servants, they learn to be contented with their lot, and, looking to their owners as their lawful and safe protectors, become affectionately attached to the whole family, and, dismissing all care, are the most cheerful and, indeed, merry class of people we have amongst us. A slave who did not think more of himself, and feel himself to be better off, in all respects, than the state which agreed with his idea of what he calls “poor white folks” and “free niggers,” really would not be worth having as a house servant in any Christian family of my acquaintance. Indeed, in freedom from care, and all the elements of a mere temporal happiness, the slaves of an enlightened and well-ordered family are often in a much more desirable situation than the heads of the family, who are occupied with the duty of caring for all and of providing for all. For the master of such a family to plod his weary way to daily labor on his farm, with a care-worn countenance, which traces itself in his slow and measured step, whilst the loud laugh of his merry hearted slaves is echoing around him, is no uncommon thing in the South. As to the corroding cares which weigh down the spirits and often bring on premature old age, the condition of heads of families do not perhaps materially differ in any part of our country. But, I repeat, the difference is very great between the menials of families in the free and in the slave States, and this difference is greatly in favor of the slaves of the South. The one—especially in the cities—is often oppressed by a grinding poverty, and an active discontent which is as corroding to the heart as it is dangerous to the state; whilst the other is a stranger, for the most part, to real want —is free from painful cares, contented and cheerful in his condition—adding daily to the progress of civilization and the permanency of the government. The emancipation and removal to Africa of those whose progress in civilization has so far developed their minds as to constitute them exceptions to this remark, for the reason that they are by their moral condition fitted for a higher form of civil freedom, may be allowed as the voluntary act of the owner. But all other schemes of emancipation, whether immediate or gradual, are totally inadmissible. For if successful, for the reason that they cannot share social equality with the whites, they sink in the scale of civilization, and become a nuisance in the community requiring abatement; and if the scheme should prove a failure, the result of the effort can only be, as we have seen, to accumulate large bodies of slaves within small districts of country, cut them off from a more direct contact with civilization, and arrest their progress in improvement. No: emancipation in the popular sense offers no relief to any of the evils, real or imaginary, of African slavery in America; but rather aggravates all that now exist, and threatens to multiply them a thousand-fold. If any in the whole country be moved with sympathy for the race—as many think themselves to be—let them diffuse the charities of a pure gospel through the whole extent of our country. No field was ever more “white to the harvest,” and none perhaps in which laborers could be employed to greater advantage in the cause of humanity. They will promote a charity which shall save the country from discord and civil war. They will give efficiency to those precepts of the Scriptures which enjoin the duties of masters and slaves. By doing this they will lighten the task of masters, and, at the same time, interest them more deeply in all that concerns the welfare of the slave. They will greatly improve the physical comfort of the slaves, and, what is of far greater importance, they will develop their moral natures, and therein add to their present cheerful and contented state, the enjoyment of that religion which, as it fits them for the higher walks of life on earth, at the same time fits them for the rest of heaven. In a word, they will effect all that the most devoted friend of the slave can reasonably desire. For in this state of advanced progress , whatever modification of the system or change in either the condition or location of the race may be demanded by sound principles, will be readily adopted, and as peaceably effected. Thus the long-disputed problem of emancipation will be found to solve itself. But instead of this active and efficient service in the cause of humanity, to stand aloof and pronounce silly and sluggish invectives—for such they really are—against the South, for not following the example of certain Northern States in manumitting their slaves,—which, by the way, we have shown they never did to any material extent, —is calculated only to produce an irritation which must result in the most incurable prejudices. These invectives are often founded upon certain abstract principles of political philosophy which are usually misunderstood, and still more frequently misapplied to the South. Such men, together with the nature and results of their labors, are graphically described by the Apostle Paul, as “proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil-surmisings perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness.” The whole paragraph from which this quotation is made—1 Tim. vi. 1-5—is commended to particular attention. And I submit, that if the apostle understood the subject of domestic slavery, either as a philosophical or a practical question, the class of men now engaged in agitating our country on the subject do not!

ONE point remains to be considered to complete a full and candid view of the institution of domestic slavery.

It is erroneously said that “we keep the African in a state of barbarism, and then plead that barbarism in vindication of our policy.”

Every thing is liable to abuse. I know that there are instances in the South of great neglect of the slaves, both of their moral and physical condition. The same may be said of individuals at the North. Superiors often neglect their inferiors, and that, in many instances, to a very culpable degree. I know no efficient remedy for this, but that which the diffusion of a pure Christianity is calculated to afford. If any complain of these neglects in a captious spirit, we have nothing to hope from them. But from those who claim to be sincere, we have a right to expect an active and hearty coöperation in diffusing Christianity, as the only thing calculated to afford a remedy.

But it is said that a feature of the system, as established by law, necessarily produces this result: that is, the law which excludes the African from the benefits of school instruction.

The term necessarily is in this instance certainly misapplied. The barbarism in question is not the result of this law, necessarily, or otherwise. It existed originally. It still exists, and to a great extent, though greatly modified; and in the present circumstances of the race, an authorized system of school instruction would cause it to continue to exist, and perhaps in a much greater degree than it now does, and for a longer time than it promises to do under the present system. If this be so, it is the semi-barbarism that creates the necessity for the law, and not the law that makes the barbarism the necessary result.

An unwieldy mass of semi-barbarism dwelling in the midst of a civilized community, with whom they cannot amalgamate by intermarriage, will, at all times, require a peculiar system of appliances for their improvement, so as to make it consistent with the common welfare. The principle of slavery must, of course, be kept in vigorous operation, and the means of improvement be wisely adapted to the state of the pupil. Otherwise, there may not only be a very improvident expenditure of means, but the most disastrous results. The horn-book might be a valuable agent in the hands of a child, but the instruments and agents in a chemical laboratory might prove its ruin.

Should the time ever arrive (which in the opinion of some will be the case, at some distant day) when the progress of African civilization will justify it; and when an asylum in Africa is provided for them—together with the means of their removal in large numbers—I have no doubt that a system of popular education would not only be indicated as proper, but afford one of the most brilliant fields for the display of public and of individual benevolence, that has ever yet presented itself in behalf of that degraded race. But what I have to say of this hypothesis is, that if it ever should, the generations—both North and South— that may then live, I have no doubt, will have both sagacity enough to perceive it, and benevolence enough to improve it to the mutual advantage of themselves and the African race. But it is very evident that neither of these conditions has been fulfilled as yet. In this state of things, it cannot be supposed that the Southern people are prepared for any enterprise of the kind. I cannot imagine that any public movement, having for its object the instruction of the blacks in reading and writing, could be made without involving the most disastrous results.

Let us suppose that a majority in our legislative councils were in favor of such a measure, and were actually to tax the people to support a system of primary education for the blacks: any man would certainly be excessively stupid who would not allow that a minority would, at all times, (in the present state of public experience,) exist, who deemed the law sufficiently oppressive to justify repudiation and physical resistance. If this object were sought to be accomplished by individual enterprise, the results could scarcely be less embarrassing. This will readily appear; for it would have to be effected either in the common schools of the country, or by the establishment of separate schools for the Africans. But I am not aware that the former is allowed to any material extent even in the free States, where certainly, if the scheme were practicable, the free blacks might be educated in the same schools with the whites. The usage of civilization, which denies them a social footing in so many other respects, must, of course, so far deny them this privilege as to render the scheme mainly ineffectual in the accomplishment of good, or the usage is singularly inconsistent with itself.

And can it be supposed that such a scheme would operate better in the South, where the reasons against it are a thousand-fold stronger, growing out of the large number of the African population? Certainly nothing could be more utopian than an enterprise of this kind. Public opinion would scarcely be sufficiently divided to justify even the wildest schemer in making a serious attempt to effect it. The latter plan might perhaps be attempted, but, on account of the evils it would involve, it would still be subject to impassable objections.

Slaves, though not owned by the poor, are held for the most part by farmers and planters whose pecuniary circumstances are what is called moderate. There are exceptions. Occasionally, they are held by men of wealth; but in the older States particularly, (and of these I speak from personal knowledge,) the great mass of those who own them cannot be said, in any popular sense of the term, to be rich. Now, the habits of half-labor, as any Northern man would regard them, in which the slaves are usually indulged, would put it quite out of the power of most of slave-owners to afford the necessary support for such schools, however favorable they might be to the scheme. Withal, there is but little if any room to doubt that a great many, both among the rich as well as the poor, would oppose the measure, for what appeared to them reasons of sound policy. This would leave the scheme to be supported entirely by the few rich men, whose benevolence might lead them to overlook the strong popular objections against it. It requires no particular sagacity to foresee the practical mischiefs which would attend the efforts of a few rich men who might attempt to override the popular feeling on a subject of this kind. Public opinion would put it down! This would be the end of it in one direction, but not in another.

The whole movement would be attended, from first to last, with an irritation of the public mind in the highest degree unfavorable, and, indeed, dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the commonwealth. All irritations of the public mind in regard to the blacks, it is well known, result injuriously to them, generally abridging them of their civil privileges and social comforts. In this instance, viewing the subject as a practical question, I cannot see that it would be attended with a single redeeming virtue, so far as the blacks are concerned. But to place it in the most favorable light, let us suppose that, by some means, one or the other of these plans had actually gone into operation—which, by the way, can scarcely be conceived to be possible in the present state of society—and had already made a decided impression upon the public mind of the Africans. Even in this case it would still be liable to strong and impassable objections. It would be educating them in advance of their circumstances and prospects. In their circumstances, it would be even more objectionable than it could be to take the time and labor of a white youth, which (we will also suppose) were required for the immediate support of himself and of those depending upon his labor, and educate him for the learned pursuits of a Newton or a Macaulay, whilst at the same time, for causes beyond his control, he was doomed for the remainder of his days to work in the mines of Cornwall or Chesterfield, by the light of Sir Humphrey Davy's lamp! No one of the important objects of so high an education is accessible to him. The least part of the objection to such a course as this is, that it would be a useless expenditure of time and labor.

But the reason is much stronger in the case of the African. The civil offices are all closed against him. No one of the learned professions is open to him The law of caste which forbids his amalgamation bars him out from every thing of the kind. He is doomed to occupy, so long as he remains in the midst of a white community, the position of an inferior. God himself has so ordered it. The bold line of distinction he has drawn between the races, is fully declarative of his will. He only can reverse the decree, “The Ethiopian cannot change his skin,” any more than “the leopard can his spots.” In this state of facts, would not the public mind—whose decisions must be authoritative in the settlement of such a question—very naturally inquire for the good that it was thought might result from so material a change in the circumstances of the institution? And is it not obvious that no answer could be given that would insure satisfaction? No power of eloquence with which it is competent to enforce the claims of education, could possibly move the public mind from the sober conviction that the advantages and privileges of education, so necessary to a state of civil liberty, and so appropriate in other respects to that state, could not, with any degree of propriety, be demanded in behalf of necessary condition of slavery!

Thus far, the principles of political economy, alone considered, would, in the public estimation, fully settle this question. But this is not all. The question has much graver aspects than money can possibly give it. The effect of generally enlisting the African mind in literary pursuits and inquiries, is too obvious either to be overlooked or slightly regarded. A state of popular disquietude must inevitably result, and this, too, at a time when the door of Providence remains effectually closed against his release from slavery and his removal to Africa. This disquietude could not fail to lead to many fanatical and fruitless attempts to effect a change in the political condition of the race. Such a state of popular solicitude among the blacks would of course be followed by much greater solicitude and even irritation on the part of the whites. So potent a cause would certainly precipitate its appropriate results. The oppressive and, in some respects, the savage laws by which ancient Sparta, Greece, and Rome governed their slaves—some of whom were highly educated men —would of necessity be reënacted in this country. Our present mild form of slavery would be substituted by a form of oppression unknown to the history of this country, even in the most barbarous condition of the African race. And thus would end the chapter of abolition benevolence in behalf of the African race in the United States.

In view of these considerations, the policy of the South on this subject, allow me to affirm, is founded no less in benevolence to the African and the peace of the commonwealth, than in the soundest principles of political economy. It relies upon the domestic element of the system of slavery, as the natural, the only safe, and ultimately the effectual means of the intellectual and moral elevation of the African—so far as any means can be effectual in the accomplishment of that object.

1. It is the natural way—that is, the way adapted to their condition as an inferior and naturally distinct race, who, both on account of the physical facts which constitute them a distinct race, and the low state of civilization (if it may be called civilization at all) which they have yet been able to attain, should not be admitted to a social footing by intermarriage with the superior race.

In a former lecture, it was demonstrated that an uncivilized race, dwelling in the midst of a civilized community, had no right to social equality, and, for a still stronger reason, no right to political sovereignty in such a community. It was also shown that their natural rights entitled them to protection, and reasonable provision for their improvement, and, as in the case of minors, to such “authoritative control” as is best calculated to preserve their power of self-action—their power of volition—from that enslavement to the baser passions of depraved nature, which is destructive of all true liberty, and the most degraded and ruinous form of slavery—subjection to the devil; in comparison with which, a physical subjection to a fellow-man, in civilized life, with a power, defined by law, only to control his time and labor to a reasonable extent, is a paradise. These—we of the South say—are their natural rights—the good to which they are entitled in virtue of their humanity. Now as these rights are in their nature relative, they imply the duty on the part of the civilized race amongst whom, in the providence of God, they dwell, to afford them both the protection and control in question. Their DUTY, in these respects, is clearly reciprocal with the rights of the Africans. They can no more omit these duties to the blacks with impunity, than they can do so to the minors and imbeciles of their own race. Now what form of control will more naturally or appropriately fulfil the conditions of this problem? They are to exercise the sovereign control: all political freedom is denied the blacks by their condition. They have no right to it. It is not, to them, the essential good. Their rights lie, as in the case of imbeciles of any other race, in being governed, not in governing themselves, in those matters which constitute the objects of civil government. To exercise this sovereign control of the blacks, and at the same time afford them the protection and improvement which are appropriate to a necessary condition of slavery, or state of subjection to such sovereign control, is the solemn duty of the superior race. The position here advocated is, that the domestic element of the present system in operation amongst us, affords a more perfect guaranty that all the conditions of this problem will be fulfilled, than could be effected by any other system, or by the proposed modification of the present system. The element in question constitutes for them an invaluable school of instruction—a school in which both the mental and moral nature is developed. A school for the formal instruction of the blacks in letters, we have seen would operate only to defeat the end proposed by its establishment. To govern and protect them, and at the same time make them useful to themselves and to society, by a system of military police, could find but few if any advocates, even among the visionary. But what more natural than to accomplish all these objects, by a system which distributes them in small numbers through the different families of civilized life? Here they are brought into immediate connection with much that is calculated to develop the mind, cultivate the moral sense, and train the will to the habit of obedience to its high behests. The law confers upon the head of the family the same right to direct and appropriate the time and labor of the blacks, that he enjoys in the case of his children— and no more. The period of time to which this authority extends, differs in the one case from that of the other; but this is the only difference known to the law. Great abuses of this authority sometimes occur in the case of the blacks; but the same is occasionally true of parental authority in all parts of the civilized world. The former may furnish a fit theme for the perverted genius of Mrs. Harriet Stowe. The fruit of such a genius may have a poetry—of its kind; but it can lay claim to neither philosophy nor common sense. The same force of logic which is hurled against the authority of the master, rakes the authority of the parent in the line of its fire, with an effect no less destructive. Both are equally necessary; both are equally protected by law; and both are open to great abuses. The poetry which invests these abuses with the show of argument against the authority of the master may cater to the corrupt taste of both the “great vulgar” and the “little vulgar;” but it is the same cormorant appetite which is fed, that leads the mere “readers and cipherers” of the land to turn aside from those valuable productions so appropriate to their real wants, and delight themselves in tragic stories of murder, arson, and rape, from the perusal of which they rise with passions inflamed to crusade against the morals of society. Christianity sternly rebukes the abuses complained of; and equally condemns that perversion of genius which employs those abuses to corrupt the public taste and the public morals. As far as Christianity prevails, the civil law which requires humanity in the exercise of domestic authority, no less in the case of the slave than in the case of the child or the apprentice, is sanctioned, and, in cases demanding it, is duly enforced by public opinion and sentiment. In all communities in which Christianity is the presiding influence, African slavery must, therefore, be a mild form of domestic servitude. It even contributes in a measure to a knowledge of letters. Many servants are raised by their associations with civilized life to a desire to read the word of God. The domestic relation often supplies them with the means of gratifying this desire. Many pious slaves read the word of God as a part of their family worship; and instances are not wanting of those of whom it may be said, they “are mighty in the Scriptures.” Such are the tendencies and capabilities of domestic slavery as a system recognized by law; and apart from those abuses which all good men deplore—no less in the case of the slave than in the case of the child and the apprentice, who are no further protected from inhumanity by the provisions of law than is the slave. Hence this system is the natural way of protecting, improving, and governing the African for the mutual benefit of society. It is evidently indicated by Providence. No other can be appropriate to a mass of population who can never be politically free in our midst, for the reason that, in the order of Divine Providence, they never can amalgamate with us. But it is,

2. The only safe way.

It is slow, it is true, but it is for that reason only the more safe. Its effects are, for the most part, without observation. Hence, it produces no irritation of the public mind. It develops the law of sympathy on both sides in the ratio in which it unfolds the intellectual and moral nature of the subordinate race. It raises no visionary and fanatical hopes in the one, nor excites any morbid fears in the other. I say, its results march forward without observation. A revenue tariff, for example, affords a full support to the government by a virtual tax upon the pockets of the people; and it does this at a time when they would not for a moment consent to pay that tax, if it were made a direct tax, to be collected by the authority of an exciseman. So, without observation, the domestic element of slavery is accomplishing its results, with equal safety. Or, more in point, perhaps, it is like the “kingdom of heaven,” which “comes without observation.” The “kingdom of heaven,” in the form of principles, diffuses itself through the mass of society, and ultimately works, as a legitimate result, the boldest political revolutions. But by diffusing itself quietly, or “without observation,” it prepares the public mind for its changes in the exact ratio in which it effects them; and thus accomplishes that, by the popular will, the attempt to do which in another way would have razed the foundations of civil society, and closed the history of civilization for ages to come. So, this divine agent—for such I must consider it—is working constant changes. It is daily modifying the features of the system, and so developing the moral character of the African, as to throw him up, by successive steps, higher and still higher on the scale of civilization. But this it does so quietly, because naturally, that it actually works a specific result on the masters, and accomplishes its objects by the consent of their wills and their own active coöperation.

WE have seen that nowhere throughout the South have the masses of our African population given evidence of the first intelligent conception of political freedom. As to insurrections, we are freer from their disturbing influences than are the communities of many of the Northern States from the progress of a no less dangerous influence—the agrarian spirit which pervades a somewhat similar portion of society. We of the South fear them less; and we have less cause to fear them. On this score they make a useless expenditure of sympathy on our behalf. It may be demonstrated that, without a singular interposition of Divine Providence, the South (using the term, as I generally do, for all those States which maintain the system of domestic slavery) will, ere long, be called upon to protect the liberties of the North from the progress of agrarianism, whilst there is not the remotest probability that these will ever be called on to protect the South from the insurrectionary movements of their blacks. I repeat—no! no people in the whole country who fill the menial offices of society are more contented than our blacks, or as much so. There are none who less feel their condition to be oppressive, or who have as little cause to feel it so.

In discussing the proposition enunciated, it is proper to premise, that if I should be found to agree to any extent with the “American party,” whose “councils” are now attracting so much attention, as to the accumulation of a dangerous influence in the country, I find the chief remedy (whatever may or may not be true of those proposed by this party) in a providential arrangement which seems not so much to have engaged public attention.

I propose to submit a brief sketch of the present and prospective condition of our country. We live in a country of vast geographical extent. A large portion of it is uninhabited. It is, however, rapidly filling up. Immigrants from every section of the civilized world are rapidly arriving in our eastern cities, and spreading to remote sections of our republic: men of every conceivable variety of taste, disposition, and opinion, both in politics and in religion. The fertility and abundance of our soil, and the variety of our staple articles of produce, have attracted universal activity and enterprise. To compare the civilized world to one vast city, our republic seems destined to become the great market or business-street of it. Here, all is bustle and activity. Nowhere on the face of the globe is so much energy of character displayed. No attentive observer can fail to perceive the tendency of all this to call off the mind from those moral and intellectual pursuits that so eminently fit men for the sober duties of life and the felicities of heaven. The public mind is already kept in a state of most unnatural excitement, stimulated in the highest degree to the pursuits of wealth and political distinction, to the almost entire neglect of every other interest. This is daily becoming the supreme attraction, to which the popular impulse yields as readily as the unfortunate ship obeys the resistless circles of the maelstrom.

IT has been shown in previous lectures that the principle of slavery accords fully with the doctrine of abstract rights, civil and social; and that a system of domestic slavery in the United States is demanded by the circumstances of the African population in the country. But it by no means follows that the conduct of all masters, in the exercise of their functions as masters, is proper, any more than that the conduct of all parents, or the owners of apprentices, is such as it should be. The opinion is entertained that the domestic government of children does not more than approximate propriety as a general thing; and that the government of apprentices and of African slaves falls far short of what is proper. In this lecture it is proposed to deal with the relations of masters to slaves, that is, the duties they owe them. The doctrine that the system of domestic slavery assumes that the slave is a “mere machine—a chattel,” has been fully exploded. The Bible particularly regards the slave an accountable being. It requires him to yield a willing obedience to his master, and teaches him that such service is accepted of the Lord as service done unto himself, Ephesians vi. 5-8; and in the 9th verse, the master is required to “do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven.” And again, (Colossians iv. 1.) “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.” Hence, in the strictest sense, religion holds the scales of justice between masters and slaves. Each one is held to a strict accountability for the faithful performance of his duty, the one to the other—“for there is no respect of persons with God.”

It behooves us, then, who are masters, or who expect to become masters, to inquire into the duties of this relation. The master who does not inform himself on this subject, and endeavor conscientiously to do his duty, is strangely wanting in important elements of Christian character, and, indeed, even in some of those attributes which enter materially into the character of a good citizen.

A most fanatical spirit is abroad in the land on the subject of domestic slavery. The inhumanity of masters at the South is greatly exaggerated. (Instances in which the institution of slavery is abused no doubt contribute to this excitement.) Even those who are deficient in the duties they owe their domestics and apprentices—quite as much so as is common at the South with the masters of African slaves—lend a willing ear to political demagogues and fanatical party-leaders in their denunciations of the South. Want of sympathy for hired servants, and instances in which they are overreached and oppressed beyond the means of local redress, are as common in certain quarters as are the cases of inhumanity to the slaves at the South. But this does not help the matter. Evils of this kind are to be deplored whether they occur at the North or the South. The injunction of the apostle reaches every case of the kind—Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal: knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.”

But what may the apostle mean by this precept? The view before taken of the right will justify a departure from the usual line of thought on this subject. To give any one that which is just is to confer upon him that which is his right. To give that which is just and equal, is a form of expression that may limit the term “just” to its legal sense, that is, confer on him all the rights guaranteed to him by law. There is a special necessity for this command in any state of society. For whatever advantages the law might confer on the slave, his subordinate relation, and the superior position and authority of the master, will of necessity place it in his power to defeat the provisions of the law in favor of the slave. But the command goes farther than this: Give unto your servants that which is equal, equitable, that is, justice in a moral sense, or that which is right—good in itself. Whatever provision the law might make for the benefit of the slave, as a slave, might be secured to him by his master, and yet many of his natural and acquired rights might be overlooked, and the claims of Christian charity annulled. To fulfil the command, however, we must give the slave equity, as well as legal justice: we must do unto the slave what we would have the slave to do unto us, on a change of relations. It is needless to repeat the discussion of this topic in a former lecture. Suffice it to say, that the master is not required to give to his slave (any more than the parent is required to give to his child) whatever he might wish, but whatever justice and equity claim for him, that is, whatever is right or good in itself; or, if you please, accord to him all his natural and acquired rights, as a slave. For this is precisely that, and no more, to which the master would be entitled on a change of relations.

We now meet the question—What are the rights of the slave? The duties of the master are reciprocal of these. Those who believe, with Channing, that the relation they sustain as masters assumes that their slaves have no rights, we may consider are beyond the reach of reason. If the master owes any duties to his slave, it is because the realities of the slave entitle him to the benefit of the faithful performance of these duties on the part of his master. No point is more fully settled in Scripture than this: masters are held to a strict accountability to God for the faithful performance of certain duties to their slaves. The Bible puts it beyond all dispute that “the master stands to his bond-servant, one bought with his money or born in his house, in a relation widely different from that which he sustains to the hired servant, or the stranger within his gates, or the neighbor without them.” And as he may be a good neighbor, and yet at fault as a husband and father, so he may be a good husband, a good father, and yet a bad master.

The duties which the master owes the slave are as binding on the conscience as those which the slave owes the master. To neglect either involves the party so neglecting in sin. Indeed, the duties of the master are as binding as those of any relation in life. On many accounts, they are peculiarly solemn. The are duties owed to inferiors, and inferiors in a helpless condition. They appeal to the magnanimity of the master. He who disregards this appeal, not only violates duty, but betrays a want of magnanimity, bordering upon that meanness of spirit which delights to oppress an inferior, whilst it cowers before an equal. A brave man is always magnanimous, and a magnanimous man will rarely fail to respect the rights of the helpless. Guardianship, as well as authority, enters as an element into the idea of master. Masters are not only rulers, but protectors. If the servant is defrauded of his own, if his wants are not regarded and his grievances redressed, or he is otherwise oppressed, to whom can he complain? True, his miseries are not voiceless. His cries “enter into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” But his only earthly appeal lies to his master. He has permitted or done this thing, and it is laid upon the conscience of the slave to submit, “not answering again.” His master is his only earthly protector. His guaranty that his master will protect him, is that he too has a “Master in heaven,” who is no respecter of persons, and that to him belongeth vengeance.

According to principles established in the fourth and fifth lectures, the Africans of this country, in common with minors, imbeciles, and uncivilized persons, have a right to be governed and protected, and to such means of physical comfort and moral improvement as are necessary and compatible with their providential condition. That which it is their right to have as slaves, it is the duty of masters to secure to them. Superior positions devolve higher and more important duties. The master who ignores these claims, and affects to be offended with any who may assert them on behalf of the slave, will do well to consider that the “cries of those who have reaped down their fields,” that is, the claims of those who have labored for them, and have no earthly friend to vindicate their rights are heard by Him who has said, “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.” But Christian masters, or even men of religious sentiments, who always respect the claims of the poor, find pleasure in attending to the wants of the helpless, and to none more than those of their own slaves.

Humanity, the claims of religion, and the pecuniary interest of the master, all unite to enforce the claims of the slave. The physical and the moral man are so nicely blended, and the duties we owe the one run so naturally into those we owe the other, that it is difficult to make a well-defined classification, especially in the case of either slaves or children. The following will be found sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes:

I. The duties of masters to their slaves, considered as “their money:” such as relate to judicious labor, and reasonable time for rest, habitations, clothing, food, arrangements for sickness, their own time, and stewards or overseers.

II. The duties of masters to slaves, considered as social beings: such as relate to moral treatment, punishments, matrimonial alliances, family connections, and duties relating to women, children, and the aged.

III. The duties of masters to slaves, considered as religious beings: such as relate to the domestic and public instruction of their slaves in the principles and duties of religion.