PETITION AND MEMORIAL
OF
DAVID QUINN,
ASKING FOR THE
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF NEGRO SLAVERY
IN THE
UNITED STATES.
To the Congress of the United States of America.
Gentlemen:
The undersigned, an American citizen, respectfully petitions your honorable body, and prays that measures may be immediately taken for the re-establishment of Negro slavery in the States from which it has just been ejected, and also for its establishment by law in all the other States and Territories, of our federal Union; and in support of his petition, he herewith submits the following
MEMORIAL.
He is by no means insensible of the opposition he is likely to encounter at the hands of the half-learned, the vain and the vicious; but as the roar of the battle no longer drowns the voice of reason, he expects to be heard, and when heard to be respected, and his policy sooner or later adopted. The tempest, he is also aware, still sweeps on in its old direction; but the bending forest is beginning to rise, light to break, and when it comes, in that serenity which follows the storm, he looks for the calm and candid judgment, not of the vicious, but of the patriotic people of his nation.
At the foundation of all polities there are principles—equality at the basis of democracy, and inequality at the basis of all other systems. But whatever may be the propriety or impropriety of either, all human laws to be wholesome must conform to the laws of nature. From these there can be no variance without harm, therefore is it incumbent on the statesman, who is of necessity a philosopher, to study nature, and to conform all his policy to her demands. Her star is the polar star of all wise legislation, but from it you have turned aside, and inclined your ears to the siren songs of countries beyond the seas until you are transformed into beasts, and become the destroyers of your own kindred and kind. You have joined your enemies in their false cry of liberty—a device invented for your ruin; and in your delusion have assumed, as self-evidently true, propositions which are as self-evidently false. You have assumed a general equality of all the human races, and the equal adaptability of all localities to their propagation and development. These are both false, and in their falsity is to be found the great volume of that disorder which has converted our States into antagonisms, drawn the sword of the father upon the son, sent a million of our young men to untimely graves, and burdened the living with a national debt which is, even now, grinding them into the ground.
The superiority of mankind, we readily concede, is not determined by shades and shadows; the standard is much higher. But as mind conforms to matter, or matter to mind, mentalities are as diversified as are the shades and colors of human skins. The exterior is but an index of the interior, or life within; consequently, as exteriors differ, so do interiors, and as gradation rises, so do equalities disappear, as the sage, and all intermediate ascendencies, rise above the fool. But nature rises by degrees, and, in the harmony of her adjustments, divides and subdivides her divisions, as by the walls of a prison, from which there can be no escape. She has classified her works into orders, genera and species, and to each fixed a boundary as immutable as are the stars and the hills. Education may improve, but it never can pass the specific or generic barriers which nature has erected through all her works.
The dog which is a genus, ranked in the world of letters as the genus canis, has his specific divisions, as hound, bull, cur, terrier, and the like—each marked by a peculiarity designating its kind. These may be cultivated, but never changed or overcome. The dog that runs by scent may be cultivated in his powers—may be taught to scent closer and to increase his speed; so, too, may he that runs by sight be improved in the same manner; but neither one can be transformed into the other, for the specific division must continue to the end of time.
These laws apply with no greater power to inferior than to superior natures—are no more forcible on the beast than on the man; but, on the contrary, as all nature is divided, the cat, the dog, the horse, the sheep, the goat, the ox and the swine, each into his specific kind, so, too, is divided the Genus Homo, or genus man.