THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
I assert the right and justice of slavery, and found my arguments on the subject in right alone. If it can be shown to be right, then it is expedient; if wrong, then it cannot be shown to be expedient, and, if possible, it ought to be abolished. It is the idea of the wrong of slavery which has misled, and is continuing to mislead, the American mind.
By what process of reasoning, then, can slavery be shown to be just? I answer, because right holds a just and hereditary control over wrong. I answer, that it is right that barbarism should subserve civilization. I assert that barbarism is wrong, and civilization is right; that the former conduces to the misery and the latter to the happiness of mankind. Barbarism—with its pagan idolatries, its monstrous superstitions, its devil-worship, its false religious rites, its heathen orgies, its cruelties, its cannibalism—is wrong. Who will deny this? Who are its apologists and advocates? Let them stand forth and show the right of barbarism! Let us have a homily on its beauties! let them picture to us the meliorations of cannibalism! Will any one do it? No; it is a self-evident wrong. To attempt, even, to prove it wrong, would seem to be a work of supererogation. Barbarism it repugnant to the common sense of the Anglo-Saxon race; a violation of the conscience of civilization. Cannibalism is an almost inconceivable outrage against all right, in moral, social, or even superior animal existence. Few animals or even reptiles devour their kind. It is, therefore, an act repugnant to human nature, and in violation of the amenities even of a nobler animal existence. In a word, it is unmitigated wrong, showing its subjects and votaries to be incarnate devils.