“Among the Unitarians at least,” replied the master of the house; “but the assertion of some of his friends here, that he is the best English writer now living, is, I can assure you, wholly gratuitous. We are apt to overdo things on this side of the Atlantic, and are either too lavishing in our praise or too severe in our censure. We always deal in superlatives, even in common conversation; which is the surest sign of our imagination being void of images. Everything with us is ‘most beautiful,’ ‘most sublime,’ ‘most glorious,’ from a turnip up to our ministers, lawyers, and statesmen; so that, on occasions when we are really moved, we have no other terms to express our feelings than those whose signification is already worn out by common use.
“As regards Dr. Channing’s merits as an author, no one can deny, I believe, that he is a correct and tasteful writer, though by no means a powerful one. There is throughout his productions a visible want of originality and strength, which a skilful rhetoric and a nice selection of terms are incapable of concealing even from ordinary readers. His ideas are less striking than the garb in which they are dressed, and remind one constantly of some pretty little miniature painting, in which the artist is more successful in the drapery than in the face. In addition to this, he is, like all New-Englanders, prone to argument, and in the course of it but too frequently betrays the want of logic and sound scholarship.
“This is most apparent in his little pamphlet on Slavery, and the annexation of Texas. He there ventured on a subject in which the popular feeling was already in his favour, and yet did not set forth a single new idea capable of adding strength to his cause. He merely reiterated, and dressed in new garbs, the general argument against slavery, used by European writers nearly a hundred years ago; and, in so doing, but followed the example of hundreds of his countrymen, who did the same thing at a time when it was dangerous to advance such doctrines in America. I naturally expected to see the subject treated, not in the English manner, but applied to the condition of the Southern States. I thought he would allude to the forlorn condition of the free negroes at the North, and propose some means of elevating their character, in order gradually to prepare them for a rational state of freedom. I thought he would reproach his own fellow-citizens for refusing negro children to be educated at our public schools, for excluding them from our churches, our theatres, our public houses, our stage-coaches, and even our burying-grounds! And yet it is evident that, as long as the feelings of our Northern population do not change with regard to the negroes, emancipation can do them no good; for, while it gives them liberty, it prevents them from becoming respectable,—it takes away the master’s whip in order to transfer the slave to the pillory and the gallows.
“I expected Dr. Channing to propose a scheme for gradually emancipating the negroes, without absolutely ruining the planters; but, instead of all this, he contented himself with declaiming against slavery in the abstract, and in appealing to the political prejudices of the Northern people.”
“But,” objected one of the gentlemen, “Dr. Channing, in his pamphlet on Slavery, and in his ‘Letter to Henry Clay, on the annexation of Texas,’ says that he is aware that these publications will make him unpopular with a large portion of his readers; but that he is prepared to meet their disapprobation, rather than omit to do his duty.”
“Oh! that’s nothing,” rejoined the master of the house, “but a display of courage in times of peace. Let him preach the same doctrines to the Southerners, or, as I said before, allude to the forlorn condition of the free negroes amongst ourselves, and I will believe in his moral fortitude. Many a clergyman in the United States has exposed himself to being mobbed, and some were mobbed, for daring to preach what Dr. Channing published with the greatest possible security in Boston; and yet those men earned no reputation for their martyrdom.”
“Neither did these men employ the proper means for abolishing slavery; they preached revolt.”
“And Dr. Channing,” resumed the old gentleman, “the doctrine of political equality. He pressed the subject of slavery on his Northern brethren, not with the calm, impressive voice of an apostle of Christianity,[14] but with the malice of a political demagogue, jealous of the mental superiority of the South. Riches he neither condemns nor despises; but he is inexorable on the subject of leisure, which enables the Southern planters to be gentlemen and professional politicians. Here” (pointing to a little pamphlet lying on the table) “is the best proof of his sincerity and courage. See what he says of the South and North in his Letter to Henry Clay. If the company will allow me, I will read the passage. It is worth perusing, as it contains an illustration of the character of our leading people.
“‘I now proceed,’ says Dr. Channing, ‘to another important argument against the annexation of Texas to our country,—the argument drawn from the bearings of the measure on our national Union. Next to liberty, union is our great political interest; and this cannot but be loosened—it may be dissolved—by the proposed extension of our territory. I will not say that every extension must be pernicious; that our government cannot hold together even our present confederacy; that the central heart (?) cannot send its influences to the remote states which are to spring up within our present borders. Old theories must be cautiously applied to this country. If the federal government will abstain from minute legislation, and rigidly confine itself within constitutional bounds, it may be a bond of union to more extensive communities than were ever comprehended under one sway.’
“Capital logic, this!” exclaimed one of the visiters. “Do not pretend to rule, and you will sway over extensive communities. And what does he mean by minute legislation? What do the Southerners claim but non-interference with their internal regulations? and yet, while Dr. Channing preaches the same doctrine, he stirs up a question which, sooner or later, must interfere with the sovereignty of the States.”