If then the necessities of order justify the subjection of a whole nation, with their labour, property, and lives, to one man, will not the same reasons justify the far milder and more benevolent authority of masters over their servants? If it appear that the Africans in these States were by recent descent pagans and barbarians, men in bodily strength and appetite, with the reason and morals of children, constitutionally prone to improvidence, so that their possession of all the franchises of a free white citizen would make them a nuisance to society and early victims to their own degradation; and if sound experience teaches that this ruin cannot be prevented without a degree of restraint approaching that proper for children; that is, by giving to a guardian the controul of their involuntary labour, and the expenditure of the fruits for the joint benefit of the parties; how can we be condemned for it? And that social welfare and order, and the happiness of the African himself, do call imperiously for this degree of controul, is confessed by all who have a practical knowledge of his character, as it is proved by the disasters resulting from his emancipation.
Every government in the world acknowledges this necessity, and applies, in some form, this remedy. The abolition government of the United States, for instance, imposed compulsory restraints and labour upon multitudes of fugitive slaves, during the war. The only difference was, that whereas our system of domestic slavery placed this power in hands most powerfully interested to employ it humanely and wisely, the anti-slavery authorities placed it in hands which had every selfish inducement to abuse it to the misery of the slave, and the detriment of the publick interest. And the same government is to-day avouching every word of the above argument, by justifying itself, from a pretended political necessity, for placing the white race of the South under a much stricter bondage than that formerly borne by the negroes; a bondage which places not only labour and property, but life, at the irresponsible will of the masters. If slavery is wrong, then the abolitionists are the greatest sinners; for they have turned their own brethren into a nation of slaves.
Domestic servitude, as we define and defend it, is but civil government in one of its forms. All government is restraint; and this is but one form of restraint. As long as man is a sinner, and his will perverted, restraint is righteous. We are sick of that arrogant and profane cant, which asserts man's 'capacity for self-government' as a universal proposition; which represents human nature as so good, and democratic government as so potent, that it is a sort of miraculous panacea, sufficient to repair all the disorders of man's condition. All this ignores the great truths, that man is fallen; that his will is disordered, and therefore ought not to be his rule; that God, his owner and master, has ordained that he shall live under authority. What fruit has radical democracy ever borne, except factious oppression, anarchy, and the stern necessity for despotism?
It has been stated that each man's civil liberty, which, under a just government, is the same with his natural liberty, consists in the privilege of doing and having those things to which he is morally entitled. It has been shown, that as different persons in the same society differ widely in character, powers, and relations, their specific natural rights differ also. But under all forms of government, all still have some liberty. And under a perfectly equitable form, the different classes of persons would properly have different grades of liberty. So that, even in the relation of involuntary servitude for life, if it be not abused, there is an appropriate liberty. Such a servant has privilege to do those things which he is morally entitled to do. If there are certain things which he is restrained by authority from doing, which the superior grades may do, these things are not rights to him. His inferior character, ignorance, and moral irresponsibility, have extinguished his right to do them. And this properly, because his privilege of doing them would injure others and himself, and thus violate the law of equity. If his slavery restrains him from doing more things than these, then the laws do him injustice, and mar his rightful liberty.
This degree of domestic servitude supposes that the end of the restraints it imposes is, to secure, on the whole, the best well-being of both parties to the relation, servant as well as master. Here we may notice a forensic trick practised by Dr. Wayland and the abolitionists. It is that of giving to the proposition which they wish to overthrow, such an exposition as makes it absurd in itself. Says this professed moralist, in his chapter on slavery: "Domestic slavery proceeds upon the principle that the master has a right to controul the actions, physical and intellectual, of the slave, for his own, that is, the master's individual benefit; and of course, that the happiness of the master, when it comes in competition with the happiness of the slave, extinguishes in the latter the right to pursue it." If this were true, it would need no argument to show that slavery is a natural injustice. But slavery proceeds on no such principles. All men ought to know that our slave laws proved the contrary, in that they protected the slave, in many particulars, against the master's will, when it became unrighteous. All know that the publick sentiment of our people proved the contrary; in that the vast majority laboured and gave heartily for the welfare of their servants. And all men who have informed themselves know, that the grand result stamps the definition as a misrepresentation; in that domestic slavery here has conferred on the unfortunate black race more true well-being than any other form of society has ever given them. But it may be asked: Do not many masters selfishly use their slaves according to that definition? We reply: Do not many parents selfishly use their children according to that definition, neglecting their culture and true well-being, temporal and eternal, for the sake of gain? And is it not in the "thrifty" North that most of these instances of greedy, grinding parents are found? Yet who dreams of accusing the parental relation as therefore unrighteous and mischievous? This selfish tyranny is not the parental relation, but the abuse of it. So, every intelligent master defends his slaveholding, because it was, in the main, as preferable for the slave's interest as for his own.
§ 4. Abolitionism is Jacobinism.
The promise was made above, to unmask some of the hideous affinities of the anti-slavery theory. This is now easy. If men are by nature sovereign and independent, and mechanically equal in rights, and if allegiance is founded solely on expressed or implied consent, then not only slavery, but every involuntary restraint imposed on a person or a class not convicted of crime, and every difference of franchise among the members of civil society, is a glaring wrong. Such are the premises of abolition. Obviously, then, the only just or free government is one where all franchises are absolutely equal to all sexes and conditions, where every office is directly elective, and where no magistrate has any power not expressly assented to by the popular will. For if inequalities of franchise may be justified by differences of character and condition, of course a still wider difference of these might justify so wide an inequality of rights as that between the master and servant. Your true abolitionist is then, of course, a Red-Republican, a Jacobin. Is not this strikingly illustrated by the fact, that the first wholesale abolition in the World was that enacted for the French colonies by the frantic democrats of the 'Reign of Terror?' And this hint may serve to explain to the aristocracy of Great Britain the popularity of the authoress of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and of her slanderous book, among the masses there. It was not because Britain was so exempt from cases of social hardship and oppression at home, that its people had all its virtuous sympathies at leisure and unoccupied, to pour forth upon the imaginary wrongs of Uncle Tom: but it was because the Jacobinism of the abolitionist theory awakened an echo in the hearts of the lower classes, still seething with the recent upheaval of 1848. The community of agrarian sympathies made itself felt. The noble Lords and Ladies, who patronized the authoress and her book, were industriously fanning the very fires which are destined to consume their vested privileges.
Again, it follows of course from the premises of abolitionism, that hereditary monarchy, no matter how limited, is a standing injustice. A hereditary branch of the legislature is, if possible, still worse. Any such thing as a privileged class in the State is a fraud upon the others; for "all men are equal." The limitation of the right of suffrage, by property or sex, is a crime against human right; for the non-voting classes are ruled without their own consent; but consent is, according to them, the source of rightful authority. Thus are condemned at once the three branches of the hoary and honoured British constitution, kings, lords, and commons; under which men have enjoyed regulated liberty longer, and to a greater degree, than under any government on earth. And here it may be remarked that abolitionist ideas, so current in Great Britain, should have been as alien to the prevalent turns of thought of that people, as they certainly are to their welfare and the genius of their institutions. That a fantastic sciolist, intoxicated with vanity and dazzled by some glittering sophisms, should be an abolitionist, is natural. But Englishmen have ever been esteemed a solid and practical race. Their political conclusions have usually been, to the credit of their good sense, historical rather than theoretical. Their temper has been rather to guard the franchises inherited from their fathers, and approved by the national experience, than to gape after visionary and abstract rights of man. But despite all this, Great Britain has also been leavened with this fell spirit. Her political managers imagined that they found in abolitionism the convenient 'apple of discord' to destroy the peace of a great rival, and they therefore fostered it. To this great injustice they have added the condemnation of the South unheard, upon the testimony of our interested accusers. And the majority of Englishmen, with a dogmatism as unjust as senseless, have refused to permit either explanation or defence, proudly wrapped in impenetrable prejudice, while an innocent and noble people were condemned and overwhelmed by baseless obloquy. But it requires no spirit of prophecy to see that Divine Providence is speedily preparing a retribution by means of their own sin, which will be tremendous enough to satisfy the resentment of any injured Southerner. Abolitionized America is manifestly to be the Nemesis of Britain, through her Jacobin ideas, or arms, or both. The principles of abolition are, as we have proved, destructive of the foundations of the British constitution. Her own statesmen have insanely taught them to her people. The masses do not, indeed, reason very continuously or consistently; yet principles once fixed in their minds always work themselves out, in time, to their logical results. The so-called "Liberal Party" of Great Britain, which draws its inspirations from the abolition democracy of America, is unveiling itself more and more, as a party of true Jacobinism; and other parties have now paltered and dallied so long, that it will speedily show itself irresistible. And when the policy of England is swayed by moneyless votes, instead of capital and land, the caution and forbearance, bred by financial interests, which has thus far scarcely kept the peace between her and the United States, will speedily be changed. The two Jacobinisms, now so sweetly fraternizing over the ruin of the South, will disclose their innate and uniform aggressiveness, and will rush at each other's throats. This the immemorial rivalries and opposition of dearest interests will insure. Then will England feel, in the disintegration of her whole social fabrick by radical American ideas, and the Yankee invasions of Canada and Ireland, the folly of her own policy.
But other consequences follow from the abolitionist dogmas. "All involuntary restraint is a sin against natural rights," therefore laws which give to husbands more power over the persons and property of wives than to wives over husbands, are iniquitous, and should be abolished. The same decision must be made upon the exclusion of women, whether married or single, from suffrage, office, and the full franchises of men. There must be an end of the wife's obedience to her husband. Is it said that these subordinations are consistent, because women assent to them voluntarily, in consenting to become wives? This plea is insufficient, because the female sex is impelled to marriage by irresistible laws of their nature and condition. How tyrannous is this legislation which shuts woman up to the alternative of foregoing the satisfaction of the prime instincts of her existence; or else of submitting to a code of natural injustice! As to the disabilities of single women, this plea has no pretended application. Thus the abolitionists will reason, yea, are reasoning. What was the strange prediction of prophetic wisdom, a few years ago, is now already familiar fact. Female suffrage is already introduced in one State, and will doubtless prevail as widely as abolitionism. But when God's ordinance of the family is thus uprooted, and all the appointed influences of education thus inverted; when America has had a generation of women who were politicians, instead of mothers, how fundamental must be the destruction of society, and how distant and difficult must be the remedy!
Once more: The same principles have consistently led some abolitionists to assail the parental relation itself. For although none can deny that, in helpless infancy, subjection should be the correlative of protection and maintenance, when once the young citizen has passed from the age of childhood, by what reason can the abolitionist justify his compulsory government by the father? Are not all men by nature equal?