The plain truth was, the Spaniards were in a hurry for gold; they overworked the native Indians, who were inconsiderate enough to die in very inconvenient numbers; but the gold must be had, and that quickly; and so the Africans were forced to come and die in company with the Indians. And in the nineteenth century, we are told it is our duty not to forget that this was a "simulated form of mercy!" A dissimulated form would have been the better expression.
If we may believe slave-owners, the whole system, from beginning to end, is a matter of mercy. They have described the Middle Passage, with its gags, fetters, and thumb-screws, as "the happiest period of a negro's life;" they say they do the slaves a great charity in bringing them from barbarous Africa to a civilized and Christian country; and on the plantation, under the whip of the driver, the negroes are so happy, that a West India planter publicly declared he could not look upon them, without wishing to be himself a slave.
In the speech above referred to, we are told, that as to any political interference, "the slave States are foreign States. We can alienate their feelings until they become foreign enemies; or, on the other hand, we can conciliate them until they become allies and auxiliaries in the sacred cause of emancipation."
But so long as the South insist that slavery is unavoidable, and say they will not tolerate any schemes tending to its abolition—and so long as the North take the necessity of slavery for an unalterable truth, and put down any discussions, however mild and candid, which tend to show that it may be done away with safety—so long as we thus strengthen each other's hands in evil, what remote hope is there of emancipation? If by political interference is meant hostile interference, or even a desire to promote insurrection, I should at once pronounce it to be most wicked; but if by political interference is meant the liberty to investigate this subject, as other subjects are investigated—to inquire into what has been done, and what may be done—I say it is our sacred duty to do it. To enlighten public opinion is the best way that has yet been discovered for the removal of national evils; and slavery is certainly a national evil.
The Southern States, according to their own evidence, are impoverished by it; a great amount of wretchedness and crime inevitably follows in its train; the prosperity of the North is continually checked by it; it promotes feelings of rivalry between the States; it separates our interests; makes our councils discordant; threatens the destruction of our government; and disgraces us in the eyes of the world. I have often heard Americans who have been abroad, declare that nothing embarrassed them so much as being questioned about our slaves; and that nothing was so mortifying as to have the pictures of runaway negroes pointed at in the newspapers of this republic. La Fayette, with all his admiration for our institutions, can never speak of the subject without regret and shame.
Now a common evil certainly implies a common right to remedy; and where is the remedy to be found, if the South in all their speeches and writings repeat that slavery must exist—if the Colonization Society re-echo, in all their Addresses and Reports, that there is no help for the evil, and it is very wicked to hint that there is—and if public opinion here brands every body as a fanatic and madman, who wishes
to inquire what can be done? The supineness of New-England on this subject, reminds me of the man who being asked to work at the pump, because the vessel was going down, answered, "I am only a passenger."
An error often and urgently repeated is apt to receive the sanction of truth; and so it is in this case. The public take it for granted that slavery is a "lamentable necessity." Nevertheless there is a way to effect its cure, if we all join sincerely, earnestly, and kindly in the work; but if we expend our energies in palliating the evil, or mourning over its hopelessness, or quarrelling about who is the most to blame for it, the vessel,—crew, passengers, and all,—will go down together.
I object to the Colonization Society, because it tends to put public opinion asleep, on a subject where it needs to be wide awake.
The address above alluded to, does indeed inform us of one thing which we are at liberty to do: "We must go to the master and adjure him, by all the sacred rights of humanity, by all the laws of natural justice, by his dread responsibilities,—which, in the economy of Providence, are always co-extensive and commensurate with power,—to raise the slave out of his abyss of degradation, to give him a participation in the benefits of mortal existence, and to make him a member of the intellectual and moral world, from which he, and his fathers, for so many generations, have been exiled." The practical utility of such a plan needs no comment. Slave-owners will smile when they read it.