It is not to be said that there is no difference between men; that one is not more powerful than another; that one is not richer in genius than another; that one is not more valuable to society than another; that education, refinement, skill, experience, give no precedence over their negatives. But God takes up the least of all human creatures, and, declares, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me." In a household, a babe is vastly less than the grown-up children. But who dare touch it, as if it were as worthless as it is weak?
So God pleads his own relationship to the meanest human creation, as his protection from wrong; as the evidence of his rights, as the reason of his dignity! There is something of God in the meanest creature. He is sacred from injury! In these truths we find the reason why Christianity always takes hold so low down in human life. Things that have got their root need little from the gardener; but the seeds, and tender sprouts, and difficult plants, require and get nurture.
A Christianity that takes care of the rich, the strong, the governing class, and neglects the poor, and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the antitype of Christ.
It is in this direction only, that the declaration of man's equality is true. No heathen nation could say that "all men are born free and equal"—for in more earthly respects it is false. But it is a truth that stands only and firmly in those grand relations which man sustains to God, to Eternity, and to future dignity—all are equally subjects of these. Man is ungrown. All his fruit is green. If he must stand by what he is, how surely must he be given over to weakness, to abuse, to oppressions. The weak are the natural prey to the strong, and superiority is a charter for tyranny.
But if he be an heir, waiting for an inheritance of God, eternal in the heavens, woe be to him that dare lay a finger on him because he is a minor!
I dwell the longer upon this view because it carries the world's heart in it. We must deepen our thinkings of man, and bore for the springs of liberty far below the drainings of surface strata, down deep, Artesian, till we strike something that shall be beyond winter or summer, frost or drouth.
I do not believe that there is a doctrine of individual rights nor of civil liberty that can stand outside of Christianity. They are to be seen revealed in nature, but there is none to interrupt them with authority. Christ is the World's Emancipator, for he hath declared that men belong to Him; and an oppressor thus becomes a felon, a robber, and a wronger of God, in the person of every poor and wretched victim!
A Christianity that tells man what his origin is—of God; his destiny, to God again; his errand on earth, to grow toward goodness, and make the most of himself—this Christianity is rank rebellion in despotisms, and insurrection on plantations. It cannot be preached there.
These two radical theories of man—man, a physical creature to be judged by effects produced in Time; or man, a spiritual creature, to be judged by the development to which he is destined, are at the root of all the antagonisms between the spirit of northern and southern institutions: northern policy and southern policy. In the North, it is the public sentiment of the people, that all men are born free and equal; that every man has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, forfeited only by crime. The North believe that personal and political liberty are not only rights of man, but their necessity, that man cannot thrive nor develop, with the true proportions of manhood, without liberty. It is the northern sentiment that a man must be prepared for liberty, and that the act of birth is that preparation; that no creature lives which is the better for oppression, and who will not be the better for freedom, which is the natural air appointed for the soul's breathing. The North disdains every pretense that men are injured by sudden liberty. A famished man may injure himself by over-feeding; but that is an argument not against food, but against famine. It is the northern sentiment, and justly deduced from the Christian theory of man, that society should redeem all its own children from ignorance, should secure their growth, equip them for citizenship, make all the influences of society enure to the benefit of the mass of men. The southern sentiment is the reverse of this. It holds that all men are not born free and equal; that men have not an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and that men are not in their very constitution fitted for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that liberty is an attribute of power; that it is a blossom which belongs to races, and not to mankind; that a part were born to rule, and a part were ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a blessing; that it accords with the creative intent of God, and with his revealed institutions; that a nation cannot be homogeneous, and should not aim at it; that there is a law and scale of gradation, on which the top is privilege and authority, the bottom labor and obedience. These are the radical theories of the respective sections of the land. Men often are profoundly ignorant of the principles which control their policy, as a ship is unconscious of the rudder that steers her. Many are found, both North and South, whose conduct over-rules their theory, and who are better or worse than their belief. There are southern men who are more generous than their theory, and there are northern men who are grossly untrue to the northern theory, which, with their lips, they profess. There are southern men with northern consciences, and there are northern men with southern consciences. But, in the main, these respective theories reign and regulate public procedure. There is not a man so poor in the North, or so ignorant, or souseless, as not to be regarded as a Man, by religion, by civil law, and by public opinion. Selfishness and pride, avarice and cunning, anger or lust, may prey upon the heedlessness or helplessness of many. Society may be full of evils. But all these things are not sequences of northern doctrines, but violations of them. If sharks in great cities consume the too credulous emigrant; if usurers, like moths, cut the fabric of life with invisible teeth; if landlords sack their tenements and pinch the tenant—all these results are against the spirit of our law, against public feeling, and they that do such things must slink and burrow. They are vermin that run in the walls, and peep from hiding-holes, and we set traps for them as we do for rats or weazels. But, in the South, the subordination of man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time and labor—in his person, his affections, his very children—is a part of the theory of society, drawn out into explicit statutory law, coincident with public opinion, and executed without secrecy. A net spread for those guilty of such wrongs against man, would catch States, and Legislatures, Citizens, Courts, and Constitutions.
In the North the most useless pauper that burdens the Alms-House—the most uncombed foreigner that delves in a ditch—the most abject creature that begs a morsel from door to door, is yet a man; and there is, not in theory only, but in the public sentiment, a sacredness of rights, which no man, except by stealth, can violate with impunity. There is no other law for the Governor of New-York or of Massachusetts, than for the beggar in your streets. That which protects the dwelling and the property of the rich man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the beggar. God sends but one sun, and it is the same light that kindles against the roof of a mansion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut. The same air comes to each, the same showers, the same seasons, summer and winter. And as is Nature, so in the North, is law, and the distributive benefits of society. They bathe society from top to bottom! The rich, the learned, the refined, the strong, may know how to make a better use of the air, but they have no more air of privilege to breathe, than the poorest wretch.