"Hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane caveto."
Such exhibitions as he has made, may draw the applause of a British House of Commons, but among the sound and high-minded thinkers of the world they can only excite contempt and disgust.
But you are not content with depriving us of all religious feelings. You assert that our slavery has also "demoralized the Northern States," and charge upon it not only every common violation of good order there, but the "Mormon murders," the "Philadelphia riots," and all "the exterminating wars against the Indians." I wonder that you did not increase the list by adding that it had caused the recent inundation of the Mississippi, and the hurricane in the West Indies—perhaps the insurrection of Rebecca, and the war in Scinde. You refer to the law prohibiting the transmission of abolition publications through the mail, as proof of general corruption! You could not do so, however, without noticing the late detected espionage over the British post office by a minister of state. It is true, as you say, it "occasioned a general outburst of national feeling"—from the opposition; and a "Parliamentary inquiry was instituted"—that is, moved, but treated quite cavalierly. At all events, though the fact was admitted, Sir James Graham yet retains the Home Department. For one, I do not undertake to condemn him. Such things are not against the laws and usages of your country. I do not know fully what reasons of state may have influenced him and justified his conduct. But I do know that there is a vast difference in point of "national morality" between the discretionary power residing in your government to open any letter in the public post office, and a well-defined and limited law to prevent the circulation of certain specified incendiary writings by means of the United States mail.
Having now referred to every thing like argument on the subject of slavery, that is worthy of notice in your letter, permit me to remark on its tone and style, and very extraordinary bearing upon other institutions of this country. You commence by addressing certain classes of our people, as belonging to "a nation whose character is now so low in the estimation of the civilized world;" and throughout you maintain this tone. Did the Americans who were "under your roof last summer" inform you that such language would be gratifying to their fellow-citizens "having no practical concern with slaveholding?" Or do the infamous libels on America, which you read in our abolition papers, induce you to believe that all that class of people are, like the abolitionists themselves, totally destitute of patriotism or pride of country? Let me tell you that you are grossly deceived. And although your stock-brokers and other speculators, who have been bitten in American ventures, may have raised a stunning "cry" against us in England, there is a vast body of people here besides slaveholders, who justly
"Deem their own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside,"
and who know that at this moment we rank among the first powers of the world—a position which we not only claim, but are always ready and able to maintain.
The style you assume in addressing your Northern friends, is in perfect keeping with your apparent estimation of them. Though I should be the last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, I could not but be struck with the extremely simple manner of your letter. You seem to have thought you were writing a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never before suggested to their imagination, and so far above their untutored comprehension as to require to be related in the primitive language of "the child's own book." This is sufficiently amusing; and would be more so, but for the coarse and bitter epithets you continually apply to the poor slaveholders—epithets which appear to be stereotyped for the use of abolitionists, and which form a large and material part of all their arguments.
But, perhaps, the most extraordinary part of your letter is your bold denunciation of "the shameful compromises" of our Constitution, and your earnest recommendation to those you address to overthrow or revolutionize it. In so many words you say to them, "you must either separate yourselves from all political connection with the South, and make your own laws; or if you do not choose such a separation, you must break up the political ascendency which the Southern have had for so long a time over the Northern States. The italics in this, as in all other quotations, are your own. It is well for those who circulate your letter here, that the Constitution you denounce requires an overt act to constitute treason. It may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use on his own soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed him, and abuse our Constitution, our Union, and our people. But that a foreigner should use such seditious language, in a circular letter addressed to a portion of the American people, is a presumption well calculated to excite the indignation of all. The party known in this country as the abolition party has long since avowed the sentiments you express, and adopted the policy you enjoin. At the recent presidential election, they gave over 62,000 votes for their own candidate, and held the balance of power in two of the largest States—wanting but little of doing it in several others. In the last four years their vote has quadrupled. Should the infatuation continue, and their vote increase in the same ratio for the next four years, it will be as large as the vote of the actual slaveholders of the Union. Such a prospect is, doubtless, extremely gratifying to you. It gives hope of a contest on such terms as may insure the downfall of slavery or our Constitution. The South venerates the Constitution, and is prepared to stand by it forever, such as it came from the hands of our fathers; to risk every thing to defend and maintain it in its integrity. But the South is under no such delusion as to believe that it derives any peculiar protection from the Union. On the contrary, it is well known we incur peculiar danger, and that we bear far more than our porportion of the burdens. The apprehension is also fast fading away that any of the dreadful consequences commonly predicted will necessarily result from a separation of the States. And come what may, we are firmly resolved that our system of Domestic Slavery shall stand. The fate of the Union, then—but, thank God, not of republican government—rests mainly in the hands of the people to whom your letter is addressed—the "professing Christians of the Northern States having no concern with slaveholding," and whom with incendiary zeal you are endeavoring to stir up to strife—without which fanaticism can neither live, move, nor have any being.
We have often been taunted for our sensitiveness in regard to the discussion of slavery. Do not suppose it is because we have any doubts of our rights, or scruples about asserting them. There was a time when such doubts and scruples were entertained. Our ancestors opposed the introduction of slaves into this country, and a feeling adverse to it was handed down from them. The enthusiastic love of liberty fostered by our Revolution strengthened this feeling. And before the commencement of the abolition agitation here, it was the common sentiment that it was desirable to get rid of slavery. Many thought it our duty to do so. When that agitation arose, we were driven to a close examination of the subject in all its bearings, and the result has been an universal conviction that in holding slaves we violate no law of God,—inflict no injustice on any of his creatures—while the terrible consequences of emancipation to all parties and the world at large, clearly revealed to us, make us shudder at the bare thought of it. The slaveholders are, therefore, indebted to the abolitionists for perfect ease of conscience, and the satisfaction of a settled and unanimous determination in reference to this matter. And could their agitation cease now, I believe, after all, the good would preponderate over the evil of it in this country. On the contrary, however, it is urged on with frantic violence, and the abolitionists, reasoning in the abstract, as if it were a mere moral or metaphysical speculation, or a minor question in politics, profess to be surprised at our exasperation. In their ignorance and recklessness, they seem to be unable to comprehend our feelings or position. The subversion of our rights, the destruction of our property, the disturbance of our peace and the peace of the world, are matters which do not appear to arrest their consideration. When revolutionary France proclaimed "hatred to kings and unity to the republic," and inscribed on her banners "France risen against tyrants," she professed to be only worshiping "abstract rights." And if there can be such things, perhaps she was. Yet all Europe rose to put her sublime theories down. They declared her an enemy to the common peace; that her doctrines alone violated the "law of neighborhood," and, as Mr. Burke said, justly entitled them to anticipate the "damnum nondum factum" of the civil law. Danton, Barrere, and the rest were apparently astonished that umbrage should be taken. The parallel between them and the abolitionists holds good in all respects.
The rise and progress of this fanaticism is one of the phenomena of the age in which we live. I do not intend to repeat what I have already said, or to trace its career more minutely at present. But the legislation of Great Britain will make it historical, and doubtless you must feel some curiosity to know how it will figure on the page of the annalist. I think I can tell you. Though I have accorded and do accord to you and your party, great influence in bringing about the parliamentary action of your country, you must not expect to go down to posterity as the only cause of it. Though you trace the progenitors of abolition from 1516, through a long stream with divers branches, down to the period of its triumph in your country, it has not escaped contemporaries, and will not escape posterity, that England, without much effort, sustained the storm of its scoffs and threats, until the moment arrived when she thought her colonies fully supplied with Africans; and declared against the slave trade, only when she deemed it unnecessary to her, and when her colonies, full of slaves, would have great advantages over others not so well provided. Nor did she agree to West India emancipation, until, discovering the error of her previous calculation, it became an object to have slaves free throughout the Western world, and, on the ruins of the sugar and cotton-growers of America and the Islands, to build up her great slave empire in the East; while her indefatigable exertions, still continued, to engraft the right of search upon the law of nations, on the plea of putting an end to the forever increasing slave trade, are well understood to have chiefly in view the complete establishment of her supremacy at sea.[256] Nor must you flatter yourself that your party will derive historic dignity from the names of the illustrious British statesmen who have acted with it. Their country's ends were theirs. They have stooped to use you, as the most illustrious men will sometimes use the vilest instruments, to accomplish their own purposes. A few philanthropic common places and rhetorical flourishes, "in the abstract," have secured them your "sweet voices," and your influence over the tribe of mawkish sentimentalists. Wilberforce may have been yours, but what was he besides, but a wealthy county member? You must, therefore, expect to stand on your own merits alone before posterity, or rather that portion of it that may be curious to trace the history of the delusions which, from time to time, pass over the surface of human affairs, and who may trouble themselves to look through the ramifications of transcendentalism, in this era of extravagances. And how do you expect to appear in their eyes? As Christians, piously endeavoring to enforce the will of God, and carry out the principles of Christianity? Certainly not, since you deny or pervert the Scriptures in the doctrines you advance; and in your conduct, furnish a glaring contrast to the examples of Christ and the apostles. As philanthropists, devoting yourselves to the cause of humanity, relieving the needy, comforting the afflicted, creating peace and gladness and plenty round about you? Certainly not, since you turn from the needy, the afflicted; from strife, sorrow and starvation which surround you; close your eyes and hands upon them; shut out from your thoughts and feelings the human misery which is real, tangible, and within your reach, to indulge your morbid imagination in conjuring up woes and wants among a strange people in distant lands, and offering them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their best friends, or by scattering among them "firebrands, arrows and death." Such folly and madness, such wild mockery and base imposture, can never win for you, in the sober judgment of future times, the name of philanthropists. Will you even be regarded as worthy citizens? Scarcely, when the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by revolutionizing governments and overturning social systems, and when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be assured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellowship. The leaders themselves will be regarded as mere ambitious men; not taking rank with those whose ambition is "eagle-winged and sky-aspiring," but belonging to that mean and selfish class, who are instigated by "rival-hating envy," and whose base thirst is for notoriety; who cloak their designs under vile and impious hypocrisies, and, unable to shine in higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism, as a trade. And it will be perceived that, even in that, they shunned the highest walk. Religious fanaticism was an old established vocation, in which something brilliant was required to attract attention. They could not be George Foxes, nor Joanna Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest pretender could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and driveling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged folly and youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten wealth, to the reckless of all classes, who love excitement and change, offer each the cheapest and the safest glory in the market. Hence, their numbers; and, from number and clamor, what impression they have made on the world.
