The same paper contained the article of Macaulay entitled “The West Indies,” from the Edinburgh Review, January, 1825, Vol. XLI. pp. 464-488. The day after its appearance, the New York Herald, in a leader with the caption, “Macaulay, Sumner, and Slavery,” sought to disparage the testimony, saying, among other things:—
“What Mr. Sumner now introduces is a proof how badly off the party must be for weapons, when they rake them up from the dead magazines of another generation, and written by a youth a little over twenty years of age; or Mr. Sumner has not yet recovered his usual strength of mind, since the injury he received a few years ago at the Capitol. And what does his article amount to? That the British planters in the West Indies treated their slaves very badly, which may or may not be true. But from the abuse of the institution in one place he argues against the policy of its continued existence in any other part of the world. He might as well conclude, that, because many of the English are cruel to their horses, and that it was necessary to pass an Act of Parliament for their protection, therefore horses ought to be emancipated in the United States, and let loose through the country. An argument from the abuse to the disuse of anything is the poorest kind of logic.”
Such was the tone of discussion on the eve of the Presidential election destined to decide the fate of American Slavery.
To the Editor of the New York Tribune:—
SIR,—I ask attention to an eloquent and characteristic article on Slavery, by Macaulay, never yet printed in our country with his name. It is in an old number of the “Edinburgh Review,” while Jeffrey was its editor, and in point of time preceded the famous article on Milton. It is, indeed, the earliest contribution of the illustrious writer to that Review, of which he became a chief support and ornament. As such, it belongs to the curiosities of literature, even if it did not possess intrinsic interest from subject and style.
Here are seen, no longer in germ, but almost in perfect development, those same great elements of style which appear in the maturer essays and the History,—mastery of language, clearness of statement, force, splendor of illustration, an irrepressible sequence of thought and argument, and that same whip of scorpions which he afterward flourished over Barère: all these are conspicuous in this first effort, where he utters the honest, gushing indignation of his soul. Never has Slavery inspired speaker or writer to more complete and scornful condemnation.
The article was called forth by British Slavery in the West Indies; but it is just as applicable to American Slavery. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. Every line bears upon the slave-drivers of our country, with greater force even than upon the slave-drivers of the West Indies; for audacity here goes further than it was ever pushed in the British dominions. It is interesting to find how exact the parallel becomes. In the picture of illiberal men conspiring to support Slavery Macaulay seems to delineate us.
“The slave-drivers may boast, that, if our cause has received support from honest men of all religious and political parties, theirs has tended in as great a degree to combine and conciliate every form of violence and illiberality. Tories and Radicals, prebendaries and field-preachers, are to be found in their ranks. The only requisites for one who aspires to enlist are a front of brass and a tongue of venom.”[9]
Aiming to exhibit Slavery in its laws, without dwelling on the accumulated instances of cruelty, he puts the case on the strongest ground; and here his unimpeachable witness is the statute-book itself. But this same argument bears with equal force upon our Slavery; so that, in reading his indignant exposure of the West India jurisprudence, we see rising before us the kindred enormities of our own Slave States, and acknowledge the truth of his generous words.