Foremost of all in history who have vindicated human liberty, and associated their names with it forevermore, stands John Milton, Secretary of Oliver Cromwell, and author of “Paradise Lost.” Cradled under a lawless royalty, he helped to found and support the English Commonwealth, while in all that he wrote he pleaded for human rights,—now in defence of the English people, who had beheaded their king, and now in immortal poems which show how wisely and well he loved the cause he had made his own. Nowhere has the assumption of property in man been encountered more completely than in the conversation between the Archangel and Adam, after the former had pictured a hunter whose game was “men, not beasts”:—
“O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brethren, to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given!
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By His donation; but man over men
He made not lord, such title to Himself
Reserving, human left from human free.”[286]
Every assertor of this property puts himself in the very place of the hunter of “men, not beasts,” described as “execrable son, so to aspire.” The language is not too strong. “Execrable” is the assumption,—“execrable” wherever made: “execrable” on the plantation, “execrable” in this Chamber, “execrable” in every form it takes, “execrable” in all its consequences, especially “execrable” as an apology for hesitation against Slavery. The assumption, wherever it shows itself, must be beaten down under our feet, like Satan himself, in whom it has its origin.