But whether labor be a heavy burden or a light, it must be borne. The good of the lazy race, and the good of the society into which they have been thrown, both require them to bear this burden, which is, after all and at the worst, far lighter than that of a vagabond life. "Nature cries aloud," says the abolitionist, "for freedom." Nature, we reply, demands that man shall work, and her decree must be fulfilled. For ruin, as we have seen, is the bitter fruit of disobedience to her will.
It is now high time that we should notice some of the exalted eulogies bestowed by abolitionists upon freedom; and also the kind of freedom on which these high praises have been so eloquently lavished. This, accordingly, we shall proceed to do in the following section.
§ IV. The great benefit supposed by American abolitionists to result to the freed negroes from the British act of emancipation.
We have, in the preceding sections, abundantly seen that the freed colored subjects of the British crown are fast relapsing into the most irretrievable barbarism, while the once flourishing colonies themselves present the most appalling scenes of desolation and distress. Surely it is no wonder that the hurrahing of the English people has ceased. "At the present moment," says the London Times for December 1st, 1852, "if there is one thing in the world that the British public do not like to talk about, or even to think about, it is the condition of the race for whom this great effort was made." Not so with the abolitionists of this country. They still keep up the annual celebration of that great event, the act of emancipation, by which, in the language of one of their number, more than half a million of human beings were "turned from brutes into freemen!"
It is the freedom of the negro which they celebrate. Let us look, then, for a few moments, into the mysteries of this celebration, and see, if we may, the nature of the praises they pour forth in honor of freedom, and the kind of freedom on which they are so passionately bestowed.
We shall not quote from the more insane of the fraternity of abolitionists, for their wild, raving nonsense would, indeed, be unworthy of serious refutation. We shall simply notice the language of Dr. Channing, the scholar-like and the eloquent, though visionary, advocate of British emancipation. Even as early as 1842, in an address delivered on the anniversary of that event, he burst into the following strain of impassioned eulogy: "Emancipation works well, far better than could have been anticipated. To me it could hardly have worked otherwise than well. It banished slavery, that wrong and curse not to be borne. It gave freedom, the dear birthright of humanity; and had it done nothing more, I should have found in it cause for joy. Freedom, simple freedom, is 'in my estimation just, far prized above all price.' I do not stop to ask if the emancipated are better fed and clothed than formerly. They are free; and that one word contains a world of good,[194] unknown to the most pampered slave." And again, he says, "Nature cries aloud for freedom as our proper good, our birthright and our end, and resents nothing so much as its loss."
In these high-sounding praises, which hold up personal freedom as "our proper good," as "our end," it is assumed that man was made for liberty, and not liberty for man. It is, indeed, one of the fundamental errors of the abolitionist to regard freedom as a great substantive good, or as in itself a blessing, and not merely as a relative good. It may be, and indeed often is, an unspeakable benefit, but then it is so only as a means to an end. The end of our existence, the proper good, is the improvement of our intellectual and moral powers, the perfecting of our rational and immortal natures. When freedom subserves this end, it is a good; when it defeats this end, it is an evil. Hence there may be a world of evil as well as a world of good in "this one word."
The wise man adapts the means to the end. It were the very hight of folly to sacrifice the end to the means. No man gives personal freedom to his child because he deems it always and in all cases a good. His heart teaches him a better doctrine when the highest good of his child is concerned. Should we not be permitted, then, to have something of the same feeling in regard to those whom Providence has placed under our care, especially since, having the passions of men, with only the intellects of children, they stand in utmost need of guidance and direction?
As it is their duty to labor, so the law which compels them to do so is not oppressive. It deprives them of the enjoyment of no right, unless, indeed, they may be supposed to have a right to violate their duty. Hence, in compelling the colored population of the South to work, the law does not deprive them of liberty, in the true sense of the word; that is, it does not deprive them of the enjoyment of any natural right. It merely requires them to perform a natural duty.
