CHAPTER XIX.
PROTECTION, AND CHARITY, TO THE WEAK.
A mere verbal formula often distinguishes a truism from a paradox. "It is the duty of society to protect the weak;" but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, "It is the duty of society to enslave the weak." And it is a duty which no organized and civilized society ever failed to perform. Parents, husbands, guardians, teachers, committees, &c., are but masters under another name, whose duty it is to protect the weak, and whose right it is to control them. The blacks in America are both positively and relatively weak. Positively so, because they are too improvident to lay up for the exigencies of sickness, of the seasons, or of old age. Relatively so, because they are wholly unequal to the whites among whom they live, in the war of the wits and free competition, which universal liberty begets, and political economy encourages.
In old countries the white laborers are relatively weak, because all property is closely appropriated, and the capitalist class possess the means of unlimited oppression. Everybody admits that in such countries the poor need protection. But there can be no efficient protection without enslavement of some sort. In England, it has often been remarked, that all the legislation for the poor is borrowed from the system of domestic slavery.
Public and private charity is a fund created by the labor of the industrious poor, and too often bestowed on the idle or improvident. It is apt to aggravate the evils which it intends to cure.
Those who give should have the power to control, to some extent, the conduct and expenditure of the objects of their charity. Not till then can they be sure that their gifts will be promotive of good. But such power of control would be slavery.
Can abolitionists solve these social problems?
Ambition has ever been considered the most noble of human failings. It is, however, no failing, or crime, at all. Ambition desires power, and without power there can be no safe, prudent and active benevolence. The selfish, the indolent, and the timid, are without ambition, and eschew power, because of the trouble, the expenses, and the responsibilities which it imposes. The actively good are always ambitious, and desire to possess power, in order that they may control, in some measure, the conduct of those whom they desire to benefit.
The best thing a philanthropist can do, is to buy slaves, because then his power of control is greatest—his ability to do practical good, most perfect.