LESSON XII.
It will be recollected, that Dr. Paley has presented a number of facts, displaying acts of oppression and cruelty, as arguments against the African slave-trade. These facts are arranged and used in place as arguments against the institution of slavery itself; and the verbose opponents of this institution have always so understood it, and so used this class of facts. It is this circumstance that calls for our present view of these facts, rather than any necessity the facts themselves impose of proving their exaggeration or imaginary existence; and doubtless, in many cases, most heartless enormities were committed. But what do they all prove? Truly, that some men engaged in the traffic were exceedingly wicked men.
Such men would fashion the traffic to suit themselves, and would, doubtless, make their business an exceedingly wicked one. But none of the enormities named, or that could be named, constituted a necessary part of the institution of slavery, or necessarily emanated from it. What enormities have wicked men sometimes committed in the transportation of emigrants from Germany and Ireland? Wicked men, intrusted with power, have, at least sometimes, been found to abuse it. Is it any argument against the institution of marriage, because some women have made their husbands support and educate children not their own? Or, because some men murder, treat with cruelty, or make their wives totally miserable and wretched? None of these things were any part of the institution of marriage, but the reverse of it. Apply this view also to the institution of Christianity, for nothing has been more abused. Already, under its very banners, as it were, have been committed more enormities than would probably attend that of slavery through all time. Yet the institution of Christianity has not been even soiled thereby; but its character and usefulness have become brighter and more visible. In proportion to the importance of a thing is its liability to abuse. A worthless thing is not worth a counterfeit.
We have before us the testimony of travellers in regard to the indifference felt by the Africans on being sold as slaves; of their palpable want of love and affection for their country, their relatives,and even for their wives and children. Nor should we forget that a large portion of this race are born slaves to the chieftains, whose wars with each other are mere excursions of robbery and theft.
Lander, vol. i. p. 107, speaking of Jenna, says—
“It must not be imagined that because the people of this country are almost perpetually engaged in conflicts with their neighbours, the slaughter of human beings is therefore very great. They pursue war, as it is called, partly as an amusement, or tokeep their hands in it; and partly to benefit themselves by the capture of slaves.”
One decrepit old woman was the victim of a hundred engagements, at Cape La Hoo, during a three years’ war. Lander describes those who claim to be free, asthe war men of the path, who are robbers. He says, p. 145, “they subsist solely by pillage and rapine.”
Such is the condition of the poor free negro in Africa. The chieftain often, it is true, has goats, sheep, fields of corn and rice; but we mistake when we suppose that the slaves, the surplus of whom were formerly sent to market, were the proprietors of such property. At Katunqua, p. 179, Lander describes the food to be “such as lizards, rats, locusts, and caterpillars, which the natives roast, grill, bake, and boil.” No people feed on such vermin who possess fields and flocks.
We can form some notion of their companionship, from p. 110: “It is the custom here, when the governor dies, for two of his favourite wives to quit the world on the same day;” but in this case they ran and hid themselves. Also, p. 182: “This morning a young man visited us, with a countenance so rueful, and spoke in a tone so low and melancholy, that we were desirous to learn what evil had befallen him. The cause of it was soon explained by his informing us that he would be doomed to die, with two companions, as soon as the governor’s dissolution should take place.”
There is little or no discrepancy among travellers in their descriptions of the Africans. Their state of society must have been well known to Paley; yet Paley gives us a picture of their state of society from imagination, founded upon that state of society with which his pupils were conversant: “Because the slaves were torn away from their parents, wives, children, and friends, homes, companions, country, fields, and flocks.”
If the picture drawn by Paley were the lone consideration addressedto our commiseration in the argument against slavery as a Divine institution of mercy, we should, perhaps, be at some loss to determine what amount was due from us to the African slave, who had thus beentorn from the danger of being put to death!—thus torn from his fields of lizards and locusts, and flocks of caterpillars!
But what shall we think of an argument, founded on relations in England, but applied to Africa, where no such relations exist?
It is a rule to hesitate as to the truthfulness of all that is stated, when the witness is discovered to be under the influence of a prejudice so deeply seated as to mislead the mind, and especially when we discover a portion of the stated facts to be either not true or misapplied.
The reasons assigned by Dr. Paley why the Christian Scriptures did not prohibit and condemn slavery, we deem also quite erroneous:—“For Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstained, as behooved it, from intermeddling with the civil institutions of any;” and then asks, with an air of triumph, “But does it follow from the silence of Scripture concerning them, that all the civil institutions that prevailed were right? or that the bad should not be exchanged for better?”
We wish to call particular attention to this passage, for, even after having examined the books of the Greek philosophers, we are constrained to say we have never seen a more beautiful sophism.
Is it a fact, then, that Jesus Christ and his apostles did compromise and compound with sin, as Dr. Paley thinks it behooved them, and with the design to avoid opposition to the introduction of Christianity?
Say, thou humble follower of the lowly Jesus, art thou ready to lay down thy life for Him who could truckle to sin—to a gross, an abominable sin, which alone would destroy the purity of his character and the divinity of his doctrine? In all love, we pray Him who holds your very breath in his hand, to cause you to tremble, before you shall say that Jesus Christ was a liar, and his apostles perjured!
“I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman * * * as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you; continue ye in my love. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you notservants, for theservantknoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I have calledyou friends; forALL THINGSthat I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.”Johnxv. 1, 9, 13, 15.
“And when they were come to him, he said unto them; ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you, at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews. And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you; but have showed you, and have taught you publicly and from house to house. Wherefore, I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto youall the counsel of God.”Actsxx.
Had St. Paul foreseen the attack upon his character, made by Dr. Paley, seventeen hundred and eighty-five years after, and that upon his Master and their religion, he need not have altered his language to have repelled the slander.
“Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us, through the righteousness of God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ: grace and peace be multiplied unto you, through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto usALL THINGS THAT PERTAIN UNTO LIFE AND GODLINESS, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” 2Pet.i. 1, 2, 3.
And what says this holy man,—what says this same Peter, touching the subject of Dr. Paley’s remarks?
“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward, * * * for hereunto were ye called.” 1Pet.ii. 18–21.
Permit us to inquire whether the language of Jesus Christ himself, of St. Paul and St. Peter, does not, in a strong degree, contradict the supposition of Dr. Paley? And let us inquire whether it is probable that a class of men, devoted to the promulgation of a doctrine which ran so counter to many of the civil institutions, customs, habits, and religions then in the world, as to have subjected them to death, would have secretly kept back a part of their creed, when, to have made it known, could not have increased their danger; and, especially, as by the creed itself, such keeping back would have insured to them the eternal punishment hereafter?
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God: that we might know the things that arefreely given to us of God; which things we also speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” 1Cor.ii. 12, 13. “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observeALL THINGSwhatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”Matt.xxviii. 18–20. “And now, O Father, glorify thou me, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Now they have knownALL THINGSwhatsoever thou hast given me of thee: for I have given unto them the WORDS which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee.”Johnxvii. 5–8.
It is not possible that we could have had greater evidence that the whole counsel of God, illustrating the Christian duty, was delivered to the apostles, and through them, to the world. Besides, the very presumption of the incompleteness of the instruction undermines the divinity of the doctrine.
There is, perhaps, no one who does not feel pain, sometimes almost unspeakable, when we see a great man leaning upon the staff of error, especially when such error is palpable, gross, and calamitous in its tendency and effects.
But, cheering as the early ray of hope, and welcome as the rest-giving witness of a covenant, will be the proof that human weakness still had power to wade from out the miry labyrinth of error—to stand upon the rock from whence even human eyes might behold some few glimpses of the rising effulgence of truth.
We have some evidence that Dr. Paley did, at a later period of his life, adopt a more consistent view of the Christian Scriptures, touching the subject of this inquiry. In his “Horæ Paulinæ,” a work of exceeding great merit, on the subject of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he enumerates and classifies the subjects of Paul’s instruction, among which slavery is conspicuously mentioned, and then says—“That though they” (the subjects) “be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of the circumstances” (subjects) “could have suggested them to the writer’s thought.”
In all Christian love and charity, we are constrained to believe that he had discovered his error; and that, had his life been spared longer, he, with diligence and anxiety, would have expunged from his works charges so reflecting on himself, and contrary to the character of the God of our hope.
Slavery existed in Britain when history commenced the records of that island. It was there found in a state and condition predicated upon the same causes by which its existence is now continued and perpetuated in Africa. But as early as the year 692–3A.D., the Witna-Gemot, convoked by Ina, began to manifest a more elevated condition of the Britons. Without abolishing slavery, they regulated its government, ameliorated the old practice of death or slavery being the universal award of conquest; by submission and baptism the captive was acknowledged to merit some consideration; life, and, in some cases, property were protected against the rapacity of the conqueror; the child was secured against the mere avarice of the savage parent, and heavy punishment was announced against him who should sell his countryman, whether malefactor, slave, or not, to any foreign master.
He who has the curiosity to notice the steps by which the Britons emerged from savage life, in connection with their condition of slavery, may do well to examine the works of William of Malmsbury, Simeon of Durham, Bede, Alcuin, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Hoveden, Lingard, and Wilton. But he will not find the statutes of the monarchies succeeding Ina free from these enactments until he shall come down near the fourteenth century. Thus, generations passed away before these statutes came to be regarded with general respect. National regeneration has ever been thus slow. Thus, savage life has ever put to death the captive; while we find that slavery, among such tribes, has ever been introduced as a merciful provision in its stead, and is surely a proof of one step towards a more elevated state of moral improvement. But in the case of Britain and the whole of Europe, the slave was of the same original stock with the master; he, therefore, presented no physical impediment to amalgamation, by which has been brought about whatever of equality now exists among their descendants.
But in the close of this study, we propose to take some notice of the arguments of another most distinguished writer in favour of the abolition of slavery, as it now affects the African race.
In 1777, the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote his argument in favour of the freedom of the negro slave who accompanied his master from Jamaica to Scotland, and who there brought suit in the Court of Sessions for his freedom. This argument has been deemed by so many to be unanswerable, and ever since that time so generally used as aseed argumentin the propagation of abolition doctrines, that we feel it worthy of notice and examination.
Johnson was a bitter opponent of negro slavery; yet, strange, he ever advocated the justice of reducing the American colonies and the West India Islands to the most abject condition of political slavery to the British crown. This system is fully advocated, and garnished by his sarcasm and ridicule, in his famous work, entitled “Taxation no Tyranny.” “How is it,” says he, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes.”
Not long after he wrotethisargument, on the occasion of a dinner-party at Dilly’s, he said, “I am willing to love all mankind,except an American;” whereupon, adds his biographer, “he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers, pirates, and exclaiming, he’d burn and destroy them.”
Some knowledge of a man’s peculiar notions relevant to a subject will often aid the mind in a proper estimate of the value of his opinion and judgment concerning correlative matters. His biographer says—
“I record Dr. Johnson’s argument fairly upon this particular case;” * * * “but I beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against his general doctrine with respect to the slave-trade; for I will most resolutely say that his unfavourable notion of it was owing to prejudice, and imperfect or false information. The wild and dangerous attempt, which has for some time been persisted in, to obtain an act of the legislature to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it, made the vast body of the planters, merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in the trade, reasonably enough suppose that there would be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has received excites my wonder and indignation; and though some men of superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary popularitywhen prosperous, or a love of general mischief when desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To abolish astatus, which in all ages God has sanctioned and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life.”Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. ii. pp. 132, 133.
On the same page, the biographer adds—
“His violent prejudices against our West-Indian and American settlers, appeared whenever there was an opportunity.” * * * “Upon an occasion, when in company with several very grave men at Oxford, his toast was: ‘Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies!’ I, with all due deference, thought that he discovered a zeal without knowledge.”
This was surely bold in Boswell!
Since the culmination of the great British lexicographer, it has been unusual to hear a whisper in question of his high moral accuracy, of his singularly nice mental training, or the perspicuous and lofty display of these qualities in all his works. Even at this day, such a whisper may be proof of temerity. But truth is of higher import than the fear of individual rebuke, or of our literary faith that any one hero in the walks of erudition heretofore went down to the tomb without one mental or classical imperfection.
Argument in favour of a negro claiming his liberty, referred to inBoswell’s Life of Johnson, p. 132.
“It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children. What is true of a criminal seems true likewise of a captive. A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his descendants; for no man can stipulate without commission for another. The condition which he himself accepts, his son or grandson would have rejected. If we should admit, what perhaps may with morereason be denied, that there are certain relations between man and man which may make slavery necessary and just, yet it can never be proved that he who is now suing for his freedom ever stood in any of those relations. He is certainly subject by no law, but that of violence, to his present master, who pretends no claim to his obedience but that he bought him from a merchant of slaves, whose right to sell him never was examined. It is said that according to the constitutions of Jamaica he was legally enslaved; these constitutions are merely positive, and apparently injurious to the rights of mankind, because whoever is exposed to sale is condemned to slavery without appeal, by whatever fraud or violence he might have originally been brought into the merchant’s power. In our own time, princes have been sold, by wretches to whose care they were intrusted, that they might have an European education; but when once they were brought to a market in the plantations, little would avail either their dignity or their wrongs. The laws of Jamaica afford a negro no redress. His colour is considered as a sufficient testimony against him. It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give way to political convenience. But if temptations of interest are sometimes too strong for human virtue, let us at least retain a virtue where there is no temptation to quit it. In the present case there is apparent right on one side, and no convenience on the other. Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species. The sum of the argument is this: No man is by nature the property of another. The defendant is, therefore, by nature, free. The rights of nature must be some way forfeited before they can be justly taken away. That the defendant has, by any act, forfeited the rights of nature, we require to be proved; and if no proof of such forfeiture can be given, we doubt not but the justice of the court will declare him free.”
The author of this production has artfully surrounded his subject with such a plausibility of concessive proposals, doubtful suggestions, indefinite words and propositions, as will require a sifting of his ideas into a more distinct view. And we fear some will find his argument thus vague and indeterminate; the mind will pass it by, as one of those learned masterpieces of logic, so distant from the eye of our common judgment, that they will sooner yield their assent than endure the labour of examination.
The first suggestion we would offer on the subject of this production is its total inapplicability to the case. The negro washeld a slave in Jamaica. The inquiry was not, whether he was so held in obedience to the British law regulating the institution of slavery in Jamaica. The only question was, whether a slave in Jamaica, or elsewhere, who had by any means found his way into Scotland, was or was not free by operation of law. Not a word is directed to that point. And the court of session must have regarded its introduction before them as an argument in the case, as idle and as useless as would have been a page from his Rasselas. The British government established negro slavery by law in all her colonies, but made no provision by which the slave, when once found on the shores of England, could be taken thence again into slavery.
The object, no doubt, was wholly to prevent their introduction there, in favour to her own labouring poor. The British monarchy retained the whole subject of slavery under its own control. The colonies had no voice in the matter. They had no political right to say that the slave, thus imposed on them, should, after he had found his way into any part of the British Isles, be reclaimed, and their right of property in him restored. Their political condition differed widely from the condition of these United States at the formation of this republic.
They, as colonial dependants, had no power to dictate protection to their own rights, or to insist on a compromise of conflicting interests to be established by law.
Dr. Johnson’s argument is exclusively directed against the political and moral propriety of the institution of slavery as a state or condition of man anywhere, instead of the true question at issue. The argument, taken as a whole, is, therefore, a sophism, of the order which dialecticians call “ignoratio elenchi;” a dodging of the question; a substitution of something for the question which is not; a practice common among the pert pleaders of the day—sometimes, doubtless, without their own perception of the fact. In regard to him who uses this sophism to effect the issue, the conclusion is inevitable,—he is either dishonest or he is ignorant of his subject. And when we come to examine this celebrated production as an argument against the moral propriety of the existence of the institution of slavery in the world, we shall find every pillar presented for its foundation a mere sophism, now quite distinctly, and again more feebly enunciated, as if with a more timid tongue, and left to inquiry, adorned by festoons of doubt and supposition.
We shall requote some portions, with a view to their more particular consideration. And, first, “Yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man.” This clause, when put in the crucible, reads, “Yet slavery can never exist in conformity to the law of God.” Whoever doubts this to be the sense, we ask him to suppose what the sense is! The author did not choose these few words to express the proposition, because the law of Godcouldreadily be produced in contradiction: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant(δοῦλος,doulos,SLAVE)of sin.” Besides, then, he loses the benefit of the sophism,—the substitution of the condition of man in his fallen state, through the ambiguity of the word “natural,” for the condition of the first man, fresh from the hand of the Creator. This sophism is one of great art and covertness; so much so, that it takes its character rather from its effect on the mind than from its language; and we therefore desire him who reads, to notice the whole chain of thought passing in the author’s mind,—lest he forget how our present state is the subject of contemplation offered as data, when, on the word “natural,” as if it were a potter’s wheel, ouroriginal conditionis turned to the front, a postulate, from which we are left to compare and conclude.
The doctrine of the Bible is, that slavery is the consequence of sin. If “natural” be taken to mean the quality of a state of perfect holiness and purity, then slavery cannot be the natural condition of man; nodoubtsare required in the case. But if “natural” is used to express the quality of our condition under sin, sinking us under the curse of the law, then the propriety of its use will not be “doubtful,” when applied to slavery, because it is a consequent of the quality of the condition. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” The proposition, as thus explained, we think of no value in the argument; but, as left by the author, obscure, its real meaning and intent not obviously perceived nor easily detected, and he may have thought it logical and sound.
“It is impossible not to conceive that men, in their original state, were equal.”
Here is another sophism, which the learned callpetitio principii, introduced without the least disguise,—the assumption of a proposition without proof, which, upon examination, is not true. If the author mean, by “original state,” the state of man in paradise, we have no method of examining facts, except by a comparisonof Adam with Eve, who was placed in subjection. And if we may be permitted to examine the state of holy beings more elevated than was man,—“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,”—then, by analogy, we shall find it possible to conceive that men, in the original state, were not equal, since even the angels, who do the commands of God, are described as those “that excel in strength.”
But if Dr. Johnson mean the state of man after the fall, then Cain was told by God himself, that, if he did well, he should have rule over Abel.
“And very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another, but by violent compulsion.” The object of this singular remark is to enforce the proposition, That slavery is incompatible with the law of God, which is not true.
“And if the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master * * * I will not go out free:’ then his master shall bring him * * * and he shall serve (be a slave to) him for ever.”
But if it shall be said the value of the passage quoted resides in the term “violent compulsion;” that “violent compulsion,” sufficient to make a man a slave, is incompatible with the law of God, then it will have no weight in the argument, because the “violent compulsion” used may be in conformity to the law of God. “And I will cause thee to serve (be a slave) to thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not.”
“An individual may indeed forfeit his liberty by crime, but he cannot forfeit the liberty of his children.”
This, as a proposition, presents a sophism of the ordernon causa pro causa, in reverse. We all agree a man may forfeit his liberty by crime; but how are we to deduce from this fact that the liberty of the child cannot be affected by the same crime? The truth is, the crime that deprives a parent of liberty, may, or may not, deprive the child. The framework of this sophism is quite subtle; it implies the sophism, “a dicto secundum quid, ad dictum simpliciter,” to have full effect on the mind. Because, in truth, the crime that deprives the parent of liberty does not invariably involve the liberty of the child, we are, therefore, asked to assent to the proposition that it never does. But, perhaps, an analysis of the proposition before us may be more plain to some, when we remark, what is true in all such compound sophisms, that the proposition containing it is divisible into two distinct propositions.
In this case, the first one is true,—the second not. If, by crime, a man forfeits his life, he forfeits his liberty. If he is put to death previous to a condition of paternity, its prospect is cut off with him. Those beings who, otherwise, might have been his descendants, will never exist. Hence rude nations, from such analogy, in case of very high crimes, destroyed, with the parent, all his existing descendants. Ancient history is full of such examples. The principle is the same as the more modern attaint, and is founded, if in no higher law, in the common sense of mankind; for, when the statute establishing attaints is repealed, the public mind and the descendant both feel that the attaint essentially exists, even without law to enforce it. Who does not perceive that the descendants of certain traitors are effectually attainted at the present day, even among the most enlightened nations. He who denies that the crime of the parent can affect the liberty of the child, must also deny that the character of the parent can affect him; a fact that almost universally exists, and which every one knows.
“Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; * * * let his posterity be cut off; * * * let the iniquities of his fathers be remembered with the Lord.”
This doctrine was recognised and practised by the church, even in England, in the more early ages. Let one instance suffice. About the year 560, Mauricus, a Christian king of Wales, committed perjury and murdered Cynetus,—whereupon, Odouceus, Bishop of Llandaff, in full synod, pronounced excommunication, and cursed, for ever, him and all his offspring. See Milton’s ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΑΣΤΗΣ, cap. 28.
This principle actively exists in the physical world. The parent contracts some loathsome disease—the offspring are physically deteriorated thereby. He whose moral and physical degradation are such that slavery to him is a blessing, with few exceptions, will find his descendants fit only for that condition. The children of parents whose conduct in life fostered some mental peculiarity, are quite likely, with greater or less intensity, to exhibit traces of the same. “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” The law is not repealed by the mantle of love, which, in mercy, the Saviour has spread over the world, any more than forgiveness blots out the fact of a crime. The hope of happiness hereafter alleviates present suffering, but, in no sense, annihilates a cause which has previously existed.
“A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his descendants; for no man can stipulate, without commission, for another.”
All that is presented as argument here, is founded upon the proposition, that no man can stipulate for his descendants, whether unborn or not.
If what we have before said be true, little need be said on the subject of this paragraph. For we have already seen that the conduct of the ancestor, to an indefinite extent, both physically influences and morally binds the condition of the offspring. It is comparatively but a few ages since, over the entire world, the parent had full power, by law, to put his children to death for crime, or to sell them into slavery for causes of which he was the judge. And it may be remarked, that such is the present law among, perhaps, all the tribes who furnish from their own race slaves for the rest of the world. It is not necessary here to show why a people, who find such laws necessary to their welfare, also find slavery a blessing to them.
Civilization has ameliorated these, to us, harsh features of parental authority; yet, to-day, the world can scarcely produce a case where the condition of the child has not been greatly affected by the stipulations, the conduct, the influences of the parent, wholly beyond its control. The relation of parent has ever been found a sufficient commission to bind these results to the condition of the offspring.
“But our fathers dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to thy commandments, and refused to obey; * * * and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage.”
“The condition which he (the captive) accepts, his son or grandson would have rejected.”
This, at most, is supposititious, and, as an argument, we think, extremely weak; because it implies, either that the acceptance of the parent was not the result of necessity, and the wisest choice between evils, or that the rejection, by the son, was the fruit of extravagant pretension.
“He that is extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence and invite corruption.” * * * “I have avoided that empyrical morality that cures one vice by the means of another.”Johnson’s Rambler.
“If we should admit, what perhaps with more reason may be denied, that there are certain relations between man and man, which may make slavery necessary and just, yet it can never be proved, that he, who is suing for his freedom, ever stood in any of these relations.”
We cannot pretend to know what were the particular facts in relation to the slavery of the individual then in Scotland. It is not, however, pretended that the facts in relation to this slave were not the facts in relation to all others. No suggestion of any illegality as to his slavery in Jamaica is made, other than the broad ground of the illegality of slavery itself. This is quite evident from what follows:
“He is certainly subject, by no law but that of violence, to his present master, who pretends no claim to his obedience, but that he bought him from a merchant of slaves, whose right to sell him was never examined.”
In the passage under consideration, we are confined wholly to negro slavery; and had Dr. Johnson been serious in admitting that slavery, under “certain relations,” was “necessary and just,” he would have yielded his case; because, then, the slave in hand would have been placed in the category of proving that he did not exist under these relations. Johnson well knew that slavery existed in Jamaica by the sanction of the British Parliament, and he manifests his contempt for it, by the assertion that the slave was held only by the law of force. He was, therefore, not reaching for the freedom of that particular slave, but for the subversion of slavery as a condition of man.
The author has heretofore signified a willingness to admit the lawfulness of slavery, when induced by “crime or captivity;” but now denies the validity of such admission, because the relations of “crime and captivity” can never be proved. The apparent object of his admission was merely to rally us, by his liberality, to the admission that these relations could never be proved; and we admit they never can be in the way he provides; and he therefore announces the demonstration of the proposition, that slavery can never be just, because “these relations,” which alone make it so, can never be established. But what are the reasons? They are the very causes which render the Africans obnoxious to the condition of slavery—the degraded, deteriorated, and savage state of that people. The negro slave, in his transit from the interior of Africa, is often sold many times, by one master and chieftain to another, before he reaches the western coast, whence he was transferredby the slave factors to the English colonies. No memory of these facts, or of the slave’s origin, is preserved or attempted. Under these circumstances, though each individual of these slaves induced the condition by “crime or captivity,” such fact could never be established in the English colony. To attempt proof there of any fact touching the case, would be as idle and futile as to attempt such proof in regard to the biography of a baboon. Besides, the truth is, a very large portion of these slaves were born slaves in Africa, inheriting their condition from a slave ancestry of unknown ages, and recognised to be slaves by the laws and customs of the various tribes there, and sent to market as a surplus commodity, in accordance to the laws and usages among them, enforced from time immemorial.
So far as we have knowledge of the various families of man, we believe it to have ever been the practice for one nation to receive the national acts of another as facts fixed, and not subject to further investigation or alteration by a foreign people, especially when none but the people making the decision were affected by it. Johnson surely must have agreed to such a practice, because an opposite course, so far as carried into action, would have involved every nation in universal war and endless bloodshed. Besides, the right to usurp such control would involve the right to enslave, and can only exist when the degeneracy of a nation has become too great a nuisance to be longer tolerated with safety by the people annoyed: self-protection will then warrant the right.
If England makes it lawful for her subjects to buy slaves in Africa and hold them in Jamaica, then her subjects may lawfully hold there such as are decided by the laws of Africa to be slaves. But the author of the argument, with all this before him, having dictated what alone shall make a man a slave, would propose to set up a new tribunal contrary to all international law—contrary to the peace of the world—and, finally, as to the object to which it is to be applied, forever abortive: wherefore his argument in effect is, because “these relations,” which he admits would justly make a man a slave, cannot be proved, therefore what he admits to be true is not true; and puts us in mind of the sophism: “If, when a man speaks truth, he says he lies, he lies; but he lies when he speaks the truth; therefore, by speaking the truth, he lies!” which we think about as relevant to the question.
In his conclusion, Dr. Johnson frankly acknowledges the position we have assigned him:—
“The sum of the argument is this: No man is, by nature, the property of another. The defendant, therefore, is free by nature. The rights of nature must be someway forfeited before they can be justly taken away.”
There are, in our language, but few words of which we make such loose and indefinite use as we do of the word “nature,” and its variously modified forms. It would elucidate what we wish to bring to mind concerning the use of this word, to select some verbose author, of a fanatical habit of thought, or enough so to favour a negligence as to the clearness of the ideas expressed by the terms at his command, and compare the varied meanings which his application of the word will most clearly indicate. We do not accuse Dr. Johnson of any want of astute learning, but we wish to present an excuse for explaining that, by his use of the phrases, “men by nature”—“by nature free”—“the rights of nature,” he means,the rights established by the laws of God. He uses those phrases as synonyms of the Creator, of his providence influencing the condition of man, or the adaptations bestowed on him. The laws of nature are the laws of God. And we are bold to say, no discreet writer uses the words differently. As a sample of its legitimate use, we quote “Milton to Hortlib on Education:”—
“Not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter, both here and beyond the seas; either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway ofnature, which also is God’s working,” &c.
We all agree that God has made the world, and all things therein, and that he established laws for its government, and also for the government of every thing in it. Now we must all agree that it was an act of great condescension, love, and mercy, if God did come down from his throne in heaven, and, from his own mouth instruct a few of the lost men then in the world, his chosen people, what were some of his laws, such as were necessary for them to know and to be governed by, that they might, to the greatest possible extent, live happily in this world, and enjoy eternal life hereafter. Do you believe he did so? You either believe he did, or you believe the Bible is a fable. If you believe he did, then we refer you toEx.xx. and xxi., and toLev.xxv., for what he did then reveal, as his law, on the subject of slavery; not that other important revelations were not made concerning this subject, which we shall have occasion to notice in the course of these studies.
If we believe the Bible to be a true book, then we must believe that God did make these revelations to Moses. Among them, one law permitted the Israelites to buy, and inherit, and to hold slaves. And Dr. Wayland, the author of “The Elements of Moral Science,” agrees that what was the law of God must ever remain to be so.
It will follow then, if the laws of God authorize slavery, that a manby nature may be the property of another, because, whatever you may think the laws of nature to be, yet they can have no validity in opposition to the laws of God. If it shall be said that Jesus Christ repealed the law as delivered to Moses, then we answer: He says he came not to destroy, but to fulfil the law and that he fully completed his mission. He had no commission to repeal the law: therefore he had no power to do so.
This portion of Dr. Johnson’s argument is consonant with the notions of the advocates of the “higher law” doctrine, who persist that slavery is a sin, because they think it is.
But if the law permitted slavery, then to hold, cannot be a sin, because God “frameth not mischief by a law.” SeePs.xciv. 20. “Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees.”Isa.x. 1. If the law authorizing the Jews to hold slaves was unrighteous, then God pronounces the wo upon himself, which is gross contradiction.
But the law is “pure, holy, and just;” therefore a law permitting sin must be against itself—which cannot be; for, in such case, the law recoils against itself, and destroys its own end and character.
But again: “The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.” 1Tim.i. 5. Now it is not charity to permit that which cannot be done with a pure heart, because then conscience and faith are both deceived.
Again: The law “beareth not the sword in vain, but to be a terror to evil works, for he (the instrument executing the law) is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
If slavery, or to hold slaves, be sin, then also the law granting the license to do so destroys the very object which it was enacted to sustain. But again: If the law allows sin, then it is in covenant with sin and the law itself, therefore, must be sin.
In short, the doctrine is pure infidelity. It is destructive to the object of law, and blasphemous to God. What are we to think of him who holds that God descended in the majesty of his powerupon Sinai, and there, from the bottomless treasures of his wisdom and purity, commanding man to wash his garment of every pollution, opened to him—what? Why, an unclean system of morals, stained by a most unholy impurity; but which he is nevertheless to practise to the damning of his soul! Atheism, thou art indeed a maniac!
In the course of these studies, we shall attempt to show that man is not free in the unlimited sense with which the word is here used. Absolute freedom is incompatible with a state of accountability. Say, if you choose, Adam was free in paradise to eat the apple, to commit sin, yet we find his freedom was bounded by an accountability beyond his power to give satisfactory answer: hence the consequent, a change of state, a circumscribing of what you may call his freedom. This, in common parlance, we call punishment; yet our idea of punishment is inadequate to express the full idea; because God cannot be supposed to delight in punishment, or to be satisfied with punishment, in accordance with our narrow views. Such would be inconsistent with the combination of his attributes—a Being so constituted of all power, that each power is predominant, even love and mercy. Thus the law of God clothes the effect in mercy and positive good, inversely to the virulence of the cause, or in direct proportion to its propriety. Thus, righteousness, as a cause, exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people. Thus the law of God places the sinner under the government of shame, infamy, contempt, as schoolmasters to lead him back to virtue; and it may be observed that the schoolmaster is more forcing in his government in proportion to the virulence of vice, down to the various grades of subjection and slavery, and until the poison becomes so great that even death is a blessing.
But if the mind cannot perceive that the chastenings of the Lord are blessings, let it regard them as lessons. The parent, from the waywardness of the child, perceives that it will fall from a precipice, and binds it with a cord to circumscribe its walk. True, such are poor figures to outline a higher Providence!
The Being who created, surely had power to appoint the government. Can the thing created remain in the condition in which it is placed, except by obedience to the law established for its government? Disobedience must change the condition of the thing and bring it under new restraints—a lessening of the boundaries of freedom. The whole providence of God to man is upon this plan, and is abundantly illustrated, in the holy books, by preceptand example. These restraints follow quick on the footsteps of disobedience, until the law—the Spirit shall no longer strive for reformation, but say, “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”
Is this a too melancholy view? Let us, then, look at obedience and its consequents, and turn the eye from this downward path of mental and physical degradation, pain, misery, want, slavery, and death, to the bright prospect of a more elevated state of progressive improvement, secured to us as a consequent, a reward of obedience; the physical powers improving, the mental elevating, and all our faculties becoming instruments of greater truthfulness, until our condition shall be so elevated that the Creator shall say, “Come ye and sit at my right hand!”
The assertion, that “no man is by nature the property of another,” flatters our vanity and tumefies our pride, but is, nevertheless, untrue. We are all absolutely the property of Him who made, and who sustains his right to dispose of us; and does so in conformity to his law. Thus, qualifiedly, we are the property of the great family of man, and are under obligations of duty to all; more pressingly to the national community of which we compose a part, and so on down to the distinct family of which we are a member. It is upon this principle that Fleta says, (book i, chap. 17,) “He that has a companion has a master.” See also the same in Bracton, book i. chap. 16.
If, by the laws of God, other men could have no property in us, the laws of civil government could have no right to control us. But if the civil government, by the laws of God, has the right to govern and control us, so far as is for the benefit of ourselves and the community, then it will follow, that when our benefit will be enhanced, and that of the community, by our subjection to slavery, either temporary or perpetual, the laws of God, in mercy, will authorize such subjection. Or, if the state of our degradation be such that our continuance upon the earth be an evil past all remedy, then the laws of God will authorize the civil law to decree our exit.
The providence of God to man is practical. He never deals in the silly abstractions of foolish philosophers. He spends no time in experimenting by eristic syllogisms. He deals alone in his own power, which nowhere ever ceases to act, although wholly beyond our comprehension. Man may long for a full view of the Almighty, yet we are destined here to perceive but the “hinder parts” of his presence—the effect of his power, not Him! Letus worship; and, for our guidance, be content with the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night!
In conclusion: Should the author of “The Elements of Moral Science” examine this argument of the great dialectician of the past century, with his acknowledged logical acumen, free from the prejudices of his locality, now so abundantly displayed in that portion of his work to which we object, we would suggest the propriety of his applying the discoveries he may make to emendations in his succeeding thousands.