It may be otherwise at the North. There, children and poor neighbors, too, may all be trained and taught to the full extent of the moral law. This godlike work may be fully done by our Christian brethren of the North. They certainly have a large surplus of benevolence to bestow on us. But if this glorious work has not been fully done by them, then let him who is without sin cast the first stone. This simple thought, perhaps, might call in doubt their right to rail at us, at least with such malignant bitterness and gall. This simple thought, perhaps, might save us many a pitiless pelting of philanthropy.
But here lies the difference—here lies our peculiar sin and shame. This great, primordial right is, with us, denied by law. The slave shall not be taught to read. Oh! that he might be taught! What floods of sympathy, what thunderings and lightnings of philanthropy, would then be spared the world! But why, we ask, should the slave be taught to read? That he might read the Bible, and feed on the food of eternal life, is the reply; and the reply is good.
Ah! if the slave would only read his Bible, and drink its very spirit in, we should rejoice at the change; for he would then be a better and a happier man. He would then know his duty, and the high ground on which his duty rests. He would then see, in the words of Dr. Wayland, "That the duty of slaves is explicitly made known in the Bible. They are bound to obedience, fidelity, submission, and respect to their masters—not only to the good and kind, but also to the unkind and froward; not, however, on the ground of duty to man, but on the ground of duty to God." But, with all, we have some little glimpse of our dangers, as well as some little sense of our duties.
The tempter is not asleep. His eye is still, as ever of old, fixed on the forbidden tree; and thither he will point his hapless victims. Like certain senators, and demagogues, and doctors of divinity, he will preach from the Declaration of Independence rather than from the Bible. He will teach, not that submission, but that resistance, is a duty. To every evil passion his inflammatory and murder-instigating appeals will be made. Stung by these appeals and maddened, the poor African, it is to be feared, would have no better notions of equality and freedom, and no better views of duty to God or man, than his teachers themselves have. Such, then, being the state of things, ask us not to prepare the slave for his own utter undoing. Ask us not—O most kind and benevolent Christian teacher!—ask us not to lay the train beneath our feet, that you may no longer hold the blazing torch in vain!
Let that torch be extinguished. Let all incendiary publications be destroyed. Let no conspiracies, no insurrections, and no murders be instigated. Let the pure precepts of the gospel and its sublime lessons of peace be everywhere set forth and inculcated. In one word, let it be seen that in reality the eternal good of the slave is aimed at, and, by the co-operation of all, may be secured, and then may we be asked to teach him to read. But until then we shall refuse to head a conspiracy against the good order, the security, the morals, and against the very lives, of both the white and the black men of the South.
We might point out other respects in which men are essentially equal, or have equal rights. But our object is not to write a treatise on the philosophy of politics. It is merely to expose the errors of those who push the idea of equality to an extreme, and thereby unwisely deny the great differences that exist among men. For if the scheme or the political principles of the abolitionists be correct, then there is no difference among men, not even among the different races of men, that is worthy the attention of the statesman.
There is one difference, we admit, which the abolitionists have discovered between the master and the slave at the South. Whether this discovery be entirely original with them, or whether they received hints of it from others, it is clear that they are now fully in possession of it. The dazzling idea of equality itself has not been able to exclude it from their visions. For, in spite of this idea, they have discovered that between the Southern master and slave there is a difference of color! Hence, as if this were the only difference, in their political harangues, whether from the stump or from the pulpit, they seldom fail to rebuke the Southern statesman in the words of the poet: "He finds his fellow guilty of a skin not colored like his own;" and "for such worthy cause dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey." Shame and confusion seize the man, we say, who thus dooms and devotes his fellow-man, because he finds him "guilty of a skin!" If his sensibilities were only as soft as his philosophy is shallow, he would certainly cry, "Down with the institution of slavery!" For how could he tolerate an institution which has no other foundation than a difference of color? Indeed, if such were the only difference between the two races among us, we should ourselves unite with Mr. Seward of New York, and most "affectionately advise all men to be born white." For thus, the only difference having been abolished, all men would be equal in fact, and consequently entitled to become equal in political rights, and power, and position. But if such be not the only difference between the white and the black man of the South, then neither philosophy nor paint can establish an equality between them.
Every man, we admit, is a man. But this profound aphorism is not the only one to which the political architect should give heed. An equality of conditions, of political powers and privileges, which has no solid basis in an equality of capacity or fitness, is one of the wildest and most impracticable of all Utopian dreams. If in the divine government such an equality should prevail, it is evident that all order would be overthrown, all justice extinguished, and utter confusion would reign. In like manner, if in human government such equality should exist, it would be only for a moment Indeed, to aim at an equality of conditions, or of rights and powers except by first aming at an equality of intelligence and virtue, is not to reform—it is to demolish—the governments of society. It is, indeed, to war against the eternal order of divine Providence itself in which an immutable justice ever regins. "It is this aiming after an equality," says Aristotle, "which is the cause of seditions." But though seditions it may have stirred up, and fierce passions kindled, yet has it never led its poor deluded victims to the boon after which they have so fondly panted.
Equality is not liberty. "The French," said Napoleon, "love equality: they care little for liberty." Equality is plain, simple, easily understood. Liberty is complex, and exceedingly difficult of comprehension. The most illiterate peasant may, at a glance, grasp the idea of equality; the most profound statesman may not, without much care and thought, comprehend the nature of liberty. Hence it is that equality, and not liberty, so readily seizes the mind of the multitude, and so mightily inflames its passions. The French are not the only people who care but little for liberty, while they are crazy for equality. The same blind passion, it is to be feared, is possible even in this enlightened portion of the globe. Even here, perhaps, a man may rant and rave about equality, while, really, he may know but little more, and consequently care but little more, about that complicated and beautiful structure called civil liberty, than a horse does about the mechanism of the heavens.
Thus, for example, a Senator[160] of the United States declares that the democratic principle is "Equality of natural rights, guaranteed and secured to all by the laws of a just, popular government. For one, I desire to see that principle applied to every subject of legislation, no matter what that subject may be—to the great question involved in the resolution now before the Senate, and to every other question." Again, this principle is "the element and guarantee of liberty."