If this state of things ever occur, God will bring it about without the help of abolitionists.
We do not deem it necessary to quote from the infidel agrarians and abolitionists, because their splendid promises and bloody and disastrous failures, have been matters of every day's history and of every day's occurrence, from the times of Marat and the guillotine to those of Lamartine and Cavaignac.
The Proletariat of France, the nomadic pauper banditti of England, the starving tenantry of Ireland, the Lazzaroni of Italy, and the half-savages of Hayti, are the admitted results of practical abolition. But, say the Liberty party, abolition has stopped half-way; abolish churches, law, government, marriage, and separate property in lands, and then the scheme will work charmingly.
Well, possibly it will; but as we are very happy, comfortable and contented in slave society, suppose you try the "experimentum in vile corpus." Begin at home, and if the experiment works well, we of the South will follow your example. You have a little Eden now near Lake Oneida. Some hundreds of Oneida perfectionists, living in primitive simplicity, among whom there is no "marrying or giving in marriage," no separate property, all things enjoyed in common; and we suppose, neither priest nor officer to disturb or mar the harmony of millenial society. "We but tell the tale as 'twas told to us." Does it work well? If so, why not form all your institutions on that model?
You of the Liberty party seem to think that "passional attraction" and "attractive labor" will keep all men up to their duties, and dispense with the necessity of Church and State, Law and Religion, Priest and Officer. You think you follow nature, but in truth you are superficial observers of nature. Man, it is true, is a social and gregarious animal, but like all animals of that kind, he is, by nature, law-making and law-abiding. The ants and bees are ruled by despotic and exacting governments, and by laws and regulations, wise and less changeable than those of the Medes and Persians. But man is not only a law-making animal, but a religious one also. In remitting him to a state of anarchy and infidelity, you would not remit him to a state of nature, but one of continuous, exterminating warfare, such as France witnessed during the reign of terror.
I find, Messrs. Editors, that I am somewhat wandering from the subject with which I commenced, and will conclude—for the present, at least.
Very respectfully, your ob't serv't.
G. F."