FORFEITURE OF NATURAL RIGHT.
Some propose, that the advantages of the great and little, the served and the servant, the good and the bad, should be reciprocal; that that which is used is, or should be, as much advantaged in the using as is the user. I would ask them—what particular advantage it is to the oyster to be devoured? or what return can the earth make to the sun for his rays, constantly poured upon it? Some assert that every human being is unqualifiedly endowed by nature with the right of individual freedom. This we deny. We assert that barbarism is not humanity, and cannot claim to exercise the prerogative of civilization, which it has ignored, or which it never knew. We assert that the murderer has forfeited that right; and more than this, with the element of murder developed in him, originally, he never was entitled to freedom. Prisons, and even dungeons, are as necessary and proper as schools and colleges, but not more so than servitude to the barbarian. They are all appliances of right and justice and civilization, not to make the good subserve the bad, but to make the bad subserve the good.