Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery / As Exhibited in the Institution of Domestic Slavery in the United States, with the Duties of Masters to Slaves

by William A. Smith

The English language is allowed to be one of great power, compass, and accuracy, and therefore eminently adapted to reasoning. It derives this quality in a good degree from its flexibility, the different varieties of idea, and often the different shades of meaning in these varieties that may be expressed by one word. No language is supposed to compare with it in this respect. But whilst this adapts it to the purpose of correct reasoning, it opens also a wide field for errors in argument. Men usually differ widely in opinion, but they do not often differ in sentiment. All intelligent and good men feel right, and mean right. They often differ in opinion because they differ in the meaning they attach to the language, the same language, which is the medium through which each views the same subject. Different men use the same word in different senses. The same man often uses the same word by habit in different senses in the same connection. They come to different conclusions, of course, and the same man often entoils himself by his own argument. Now, there are few words with which men have more to do in discussions and opinions about liberty and government—the next most important matters to personal religion—than with the word rights; and there are few words which are capable of more varied application, and which are in truth oftener applied to express different shades of meaning, than this word rights. Webster gives correctly some forty different meanings of this term, together with several subordinate senses in which it occurs, all of which are in common use. Our language—and of what language is not the same true?—our literature, our theology, our politics—society on all sides—is bristling with rights! Now, is it not obvious that there must be some generic idea which classifies all the different meanings and applications of this term, and which has its foundation in the common sense, the common reason of all mankind?

If, then, we inquire what are our rights in any given case, this question directly involves that other and ultimate question, What is the right in itself? the solution of which solves at once the general question in regard to all cases. And although the case in which our rights may appear must be first in point of time before our minds, to call up our idea of the right, still our definite antecedent idea of the right is the logical condition on which we determine whether the right appears in that case.

Call then, to your mind, an instance of justice, and one of injustice: a case of virtue and a case of crime: an example of heroism and an example of weakness: does not each of these cases embody, the one class your idea of the right in itself, and the other your idea of the wrong in itself? But your conception of the cases in which your antecedent idea of the right and the wrong appears, and your antecedent idea of that right and of that wrong, are very different ideas: that is, the case itself and your idea of the principle are distinct: the one a thing, the other an idea of something real. What, then, is your idea of the right, which is so distinct in your mind from the case in which it appears? Interrogate your reason and consciousness. Interrogate the reason and consciousness of all mankind.

Take this example: “The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interest of that party, discovered to the officers who were in pursuit of his father the place where he concealed himself, and gave withal a description by which they might distinguish his person when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son were well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of the generals. ‘That son,’ replied one of the officers, ‘so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us: by his information thou art apprehended, and diest.’ The officer, with this, struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate as by the means to which he owed it.”[3] Here is an example of the greatest filial impiety, and of the highest parental affection. The one fulfils our idea of the right, the other our idea of the wrong. Now, what is this idea of the right and the wrong in which all are supposed to agree? We would not ask, with the disciple of Paley, of Condillac, or of Helvetius, what the “wild boy, caught years ago in the woods of Hanover,” would have thought of this case; nor what the savage, without experience and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, would think of it. No: “the savage state offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, so to speak—the germ of humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind: true human nature is human nature arrived at its development.”[4] We utterly deny that, in order to arrive at the judgment of human nature, we need consult a savage in such circumstances, or indeed to consult a savage at all. And yet we say that even a savage of good mind, who has lived long enough in society to get the idea of the relation of parent and child—such as even savages have—would pronounce the conduct of the one to be right, and of the other to be wrong, and have a definite idea of that right and that wrong, each in itself. And we furthermore say, that human nature cultivated to the highest degree bears the same testimony to the difference in the conduct of this father and this son, and attaches essentially the same ideas to that difference. In calling the one right and the other wrong, men say, and they mean to say, that the one is good and the other is evil. This is the uniform judgment of human reason—the permanent belief of mankind. To this common sense bears ample testimony. Grammarians have not invented languages. Government itself dates back of legislators—they have only modified it. Philosophers have not invented beliefs: without concert, without conventions, the world has fallen upon certain beliefs, and certain signs to express these beliefs. In the secret chambers of the soul, not of any one individual man, but of all men individually, consciousness bears testimony that such and such is the belief of all men, and this we call the judgment of common sense; and such is also her testimony in all languages as to the thing that is right, and that the right in any given case is the idea we have of the good in that case. The right, then, is the good.

[3] Paley’s Philosophy.—Moral Science.

[4] M. Cousin.

“Right, rectus,” says Webster, “straightness, rectitude;” which he explains to be conformity to rule or law, and that the will of God is the ultimate rule or law which determines the right or the wrong in all cases. Hence conformity to this rule is the generic idea of the right in itself, according to Webster. In this view, Horne Tooke, in his Diversions of Purley, concurs. As his criticism is ingenious, instructive, and generally truthful, I quote the more material portion of his article on rights. After telling us in his dialogue that Johnson only informs us that right is not wrong, and wrong is not right, he adds:

“H. Right is no other than Rectum, (regetum,) the past participle of the Latin verb regere, etc.

“In the same manner, our English word just is the past participle of the verb jubere.

“Decree, Edict, Statute, Institute, Mandate, Precept, are all past participles.