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+Project Gutenberg EBook, The Conflict With Slavery, Vol. VII., Complete
+The Works of Whittier: The Conflict With Slavery, Politics and Reform
+#44 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+Title: The Conflict With Slavery and Others, Complete, Vol. VII,
+       The Works of Whittier: The Conflict With Slavery, Politics
+       and Reform, The Inner Life and Criticism
+       
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: December 2005  [EBook #9599]
+[This file was first posted on October 25, 2003]
+[Last updated on February 9, 2007]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, VOLUME VII., COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               VOLUME VII.
+
+
+                        THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
+
+                           POLITICS AND REFORM
+
+                              THE INNER LIFE
+
+                                CRITICISM
+
+
+                                    BY
+
+                         JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
+     JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
+     THE ABOLITIONISTS; THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS
+     LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL
+     JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
+     THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY
+     WHAT IS SLAVERY
+     DEMOCRAT AND SLAVERY
+     THE TWO PROCESSIONS
+     A CHAPTER OF HISTORY
+     THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE QUESTION
+     FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
+     THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY
+     CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT
+     THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872
+     THE CENSURE OF SUMNER
+     THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833
+     KANSAS
+     WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+     ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY
+     RESPONSE TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+
+REFORM AND POLITICS.
+     UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS
+     PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
+     LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES
+     WOMAN SUFFRAGE
+     ITALIAN UNITY
+     INDIAN CIVILIZATION
+     READING FOR THE BLIND
+     THE INDIAN QUESTION
+     THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
+     OUR DUMB RELATIONS
+     INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
+     SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
+
+THE INNER LIFE.
+     THE AGENCY OF EVIL
+     HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES
+     SWEDENBORG
+     THE BETTER LAND
+     DORA GREENWELL
+     THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
+     JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
+     THE OLD WAY
+     HAVERFORD COLLEGE
+
+CRITICISM.
+     EVANGELINE
+     MIRTH AND MEDICINE
+     FAME AND GLORY
+     FANATICISM
+     THE POETRY OF THE NORTH
+
+
+
+
+                        THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
+
+
+
+                          JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
+
+OR, SLAVERY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO ITS RIGHTFUL AND EFFECTUAL REMEDY,
+ABOLITION.
+
+                                 [1833.]
+
+     "There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same
+     throughout the world, the same in all time,--such as it was before
+     the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened
+     to one world the sources of wealth and power and knowledge, to
+     another all unutterable woes; such as it is at this day: it is the
+     law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man; and by that
+     law, unchangeable and eternal while men despise fraud, and loathe
+     rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild
+     and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man."
+     --LORD BROUGHAM.
+
+IT may be inquired of me why I seek to agitate the subject of Slavery in
+New England, where we all acknowledge it to be an evil.  Because such an
+acknowledgment is not enough on our part.  It is doing no more than the
+slave-master and the slave-trader.  "We have found," says James Monroe,
+in his speech on the subject before the Virginia Convention, "that this
+evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union; and has been
+prejudicial to all the states in which it has existed."  All the states
+in their several Constitutions and declarations of rights have made a
+similar statement.  And what has been the consequence of this general
+belief in the evil of human servitude?  Has it sapped the foundations of
+the infamous system?  No.  Has it decreased the number of its victims?
+Quite the contrary.  Unaccompanied by philanthropic action, it has been
+in a moral point of view worthless, a thing without vitality, sightless,
+soulless, dead.
+
+But it may be said that the miserable victims of the system have our
+sympathies.  Sympathy the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking
+on, and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
+Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the blessing
+of those who are ready to perish answer it?  Does it hold back the lash
+from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread?  One's heart and soul are
+becoming weary of this sympathy, this heartless mockery of feeling; sick
+of the common cant of hypocrisy, wreathing the artificial flowers of
+sentiment over unutterable pollution and unimaginable wrong.  It is
+white-washing the sepulchre to make us forget its horrible deposit.  It
+is scattering flowers around the charnel-house and over the yet festering
+grave to turn away our thoughts "from the dead men's bones and all
+uncleanness," the pollution and loathsomeness below.
+
+No! let the truth on this subject, undisguised, naked, terrible as it is,
+stand out before us.  Let us no longer seek to cover it; let us no longer
+strive to forget it; let us no more dare to palliate it.  It is better to
+meet it here with repentance than at the bar of God.  The cry of the
+oppressed, of the millions who have perished among us as the brute
+perisheth, shut out from the glad tidings of salvation, has gone there
+before us, to Him who as a father pitieth all His children.  Their blood
+is upon us as a nation; woe unto us, if we repent not, as a nation, in
+dust and ashes.  Woe unto us if we say in our hearts, "The Lord shall not
+see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.  He that planted the ear,
+shall He not hear?  He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"
+
+But it may be urged that New England has no participation in slavery, and
+is not responsible for its wickedness.
+
+Why are we thus willing to believe a lie?  New England not responsible!
+Bound by the United States constitution to protect the slave-holder in
+his sins, and yet not responsible!  Joining hands with crime, covenanting
+with oppression, leaguing with pollution, and yet not responsible!
+Palliating the evil, hiding the evil, voting for the evil, do we not
+participate in it?
+
+     [Messrs.  Harvey of New Hampshire, Mallary of Vermont, and Ripley of
+     Maine, voted in the Congress of 1829 against the consideration of a
+     Resolution for inquiring into the expediency of abolishing slavery
+     in the District of Columbia.]
+
+Members of one confederacy, children of one family, the curse and the
+shame, the sin against our brother, and the sin against our God, all the
+iniquity of slavery which is revealed to man, and all which crieth in the
+ear, or is manifested to the eye of Jehovah, will assuredly be visited
+upon all our people.  Why, then, should we stretch out our hands towards
+our Southern brethren, and like the Pharisee thank God we are not like
+them?  For so long as we practically recognize the infernal principle
+that "man can hold property in man," God will not hold us guiltless.  So
+long as we take counsel of the world's policy instead of the justice of
+heaven, so long as we follow a mistaken political expediency in
+opposition to the express commands of God, so long will the wrongs of the
+slaves rise like a cloud of witnesses against us at the inevitable bar.
+
+Slavery is protected by the constitutional compact, by the standing army,
+by the militia of the free states.
+
+     [J. Q. Adams is the only member of Congress who has ventured to
+     speak plainly of this protection.  See also his very able Report
+     from the minority of the Committee on Manufactures.  In his speech
+     during the last session, upon the bill of the Committee of Ways and
+     Means, after discussing the constitutional protection of slavery, he
+     says: "But that same interest is further protected by the Laws of
+     the United States.  It was protected by the existence of a standing
+     army.  If the States of this Union were all free republican States,
+     and none of them possessed any of the machinery of which he had
+     spoken, and if another portion of the Union were not exposed to
+     another danger, from their vicinity to the tribes of Indian savages,
+     he believed it would be difficult to prove to the House any such
+     thing as the necessity of a standing army.  What in fact was the
+     occupation of the army?  It had been protecting this very same
+     interest.  It had been doing so ever since the army existed.  Of
+     what use to the district of Plymouth (which he there represented)
+     was the standing army of the United States?  Of not one dollar's
+     use, and never had been."]
+
+Let us not forget that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable,
+rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over
+the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England
+would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,--to tread out
+with the armed heel of her soldiery that spirit of freedom, which knows
+no distinction of cast or color; which has been kindled in the heart of
+the black as well as in that of the white.
+
+And what is this system which we are thus protecting and upholding?  A
+system which holds two millions of God's creatures in bondage, which
+leaves one million females without any protection save their own feeble
+strength, and which makes even the exercise of that strength in
+resistance to outrage punishable with death! which considers rational,
+immortal beings as articles of traffic, vendible commodities,
+merchantable property,--which recognizes no social obligations, no
+natural relations,--which tears without scruple the infant from the
+mother, the wife from the husband, the parent from the child.  In the
+strong but just language of another: "It is the full measure of pure,
+unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or
+comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed
+possession of its detestable preeminence."
+
+So fearful an evil should have its remedies.  The following are among the
+many which have been from time to time proposed:--
+
+1.  Placing the slaves in the condition of the serfs of Poland and
+Russia, fixed to the soil, and without the right on the part of the
+master to sell or remove them.  This was intended as a preliminary to
+complete emancipation at some remote period, but it is impossible to
+perceive either its justice or expediency.
+
+2.  Gradual abolition, an indefinite term, but which is understood to
+imply the draining away drop by drop, of the great ocean of wrong;
+plucking off at long intervals some, straggling branches of the moral
+Upas; holding out to unborn generations the shadow of a hope which the
+present may never feel gradually ceasing to do evil; gradually refraining
+from robbery, lust, and murder: in brief, obeying a short-sighted and
+criminal policy rather than the commands of God.
+
+3.  Abstinence on the part of the people of the free states from the use
+of the known products of slave labor, in order to render that labor
+profitless.  Beyond a doubt the example of conscientious individuals may
+have a salutary effect upon the minds of some of the slave-holders; I but
+so long as our confederacy exists, a commercial intercourse with slave
+states and a consumption of their products cannot be avoided.
+
+     [The following is a recorded statement of the venerated Sir William
+     Jones: "Let sugar be as cheap as it may, it is better to eat none,
+     better to eat aloes and colloquintida, than violate a primary law
+     impressed on every heart not imbruted with avarice; than rob one
+     human creature of those eternal rights of which no law on earth can
+     justly deprive him."]
+
+4.  Colonization.
+The exclusive object of the American Colonization Society, according to
+the second article of its constitution, is to colonize the free people of
+color residing among us, in Africa or such other place as Congress may
+direct.  Steadily adhering to this object it has nothing to do with
+slavery; and I allude to it as a remedy only because some of its friends
+have in view an eventual abolition or an amelioration of the evil.
+
+Let facts speak.  The Colonization Society was organized in 1817.  It has
+two hundred and eighteen auxiliary societies.  The legislatures of
+fourteen states have recommended it.  Contributions have poured into its
+treasury from every quarter of the United States.  Addresses in its favor
+have been heard from all our pulpits.  It has been in operation sixteen
+years.  During this period nearly one million human beings have died in
+slavery: and the number of slaves has increased more than half a million,
+or in round numbers, 550,000
+
+The Colonization Society has been busily engaged all this while in
+conveying the slaves to Africa; in other words, abolishing slavery.  In
+this very charitable occupation it has carried away of manumitted slaves
+613
+
+Balance against the society .  .  .  .  549,387!
+
+But enough of its abolition tendency.  What has it done for amelioration?
+Witness the newly enacted laws of some of the slave states, laws bloody
+as the code of Draco, violating the laws of Cod and the unalienable
+rights of His children?--[It will be seen that the society approves of
+these laws.]--But why talk of amelioration?  Amelioration of what? of
+sin, of crime unutterable, of a system of wrong and outrage horrible in
+the eye of God Why seek to mark the line of a selfish policy, a carnal
+expediency between the criminality of hell and that repentance and its
+fruits enjoined of heaven?
+
+For the principles and views of the society we must look to its own
+statements and admissions; to its Annual Reports; to those of its
+auxiliaries; to the speeches and writings of its advocates; and to its
+organ, the African Repository.
+
+1.  It excuses slavery and apologizes for slaveholders.
+
+Proof.  "Slavery is an evil entailed upon the present generation of
+slave-holders, which they must suffer, whether they will or not!"  "The
+existence of slavery among us, though not at all to be objected to our
+Southern brethren as a fault," etc?  "It (the society) condemns no man
+because he is a slave-holder." "Recognizing the constitutional and
+legitimate existence of slavery, it seeks not to interfere, either
+directly or indirectly, with the rights it creates.  Acknowledging the
+necessity by which its present continuance and the rigorous provisions
+for its maintenance are justified," etc. "They (the Abolitionists)
+confound the misfortunes of one generation with the crimes of another,
+and would sacrifice both individual and public good to an unsubstantial
+theory of the rights of man."
+
+2.  It pledges itself not to oppose the system of slavery.
+
+Proof.  "Our society and the friends of colonization wish to be
+distinctly understood upon this point.  From the beginning they have
+disavowed, and they do yet disavow, that their object is the emancipation
+of slaves."--[Speech of James S. Green, Esq., First Annual Report of the
+New Jersey Colonization Society.]
+
+"This institution proposes to do good by a single specific course of
+measures.  Its direct and specific purpose is not the abolition of
+slavery, or the relief of pauperism, or the extension of commerce and
+civilization, or the enlargement of science, or the conversion of the
+heathen.  The single object which its constitution prescribes, and to
+which all its efforts are necessarily directed, is African colonization
+from America.  It proposes only to afford facilities for the voluntary
+emigration of free people of color from this country to the country of
+their fathers."
+
+"It is no abolition society; it addresses as yet arguments to no master,
+and disavows with horror the idea of offering temptations to any slave.
+It denies the design of attempting emancipation, either partial or
+general."
+
+"The Colonization Society, as such, have renounced wholly the name and
+the characteristics of abolitionists.  On this point they have been
+unjustly and injuriously slandered.  Into their accounts the subject of
+emancipation does not enter at all."
+
+"From its origin, and throughout the whole period of its existence, it
+has constantly disclaimed all intention of interfering, in the smallest
+degree, with the rights of property, or the object of emancipation,
+gradual or immediate."  .  .  .  "The society presents to the American
+public no project of emancipation."--[ Mr. Clay's Speech, Idem, vol.  vi.
+pp.  13, 17.]
+
+"The emancipation of slaves or the amelioration of their condition, with
+the moral, intellectual, and political improvement of people of color
+within the United States, are subjects foreign to the powers of this
+society."
+
+"The society, as a society, recognizes no principles in reference to the
+slave system.  It says nothing, and proposes to do nothing, respecting
+it." . . . "So far as we can ascertain, the supporters of the
+colonization policy generally believe that slavery is in this country a
+constitptional and legitimate system, which they have no inclination,
+interest, nor ability to disturb."
+
+3.  It regards God's rational creatures as property.
+
+Proof.  "We hold their slaves, as we hold their other property, sacred."
+
+"It is equally plain and undeniable that the society, in the prosecution
+of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to
+interfere in any way with the rights of proprietors of slaves."
+
+"To the slave-holder, who has charged upon them the wicked design of
+interfering with the rights of property under the specious pretext of
+removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves
+in a tone of conciliation and sympathy.  We know your rights, say they,
+and we respect them."
+
+4.  It boasts that its measures are calculated to perpetuate the detested
+system of slavery, to remove the fears of the slave-holder, and increase
+the value of his stock of human beings.
+
+Proof.  "They (the Southern slave-holders) will contribute more
+effectually to the continuance and strength of this system (slavery) by
+removing those now free than by any or all other methods which can
+possibly be devised."
+
+"So far from being connected with the abolition of slavery, the measure
+proposed would be one of the greatest securities to enable the master to
+keep in possession his own property."--[Speech of John Randolph at the
+first meeting of the Colonization Society.]
+
+"The tendency of the scheme, and one of its objects, is to secure slave-
+holders, and the whole Southern country, against certain evil
+consequences growing out of the present threefold mixture of our
+population."
+
+"There was but one way (to avert danger), but that might be made
+effectual, fortunately.  It was to provide and keep open a drain for the
+excess beyond the occasions of profitable employment.  Mr. Archer had
+been stating the case in the supposition, that after the present class of
+free blacks had been exhausted, by the operation of the plan he was
+recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion
+of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off,
+by the process of voluntary manumission or sale.  This effect must result
+inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their
+disproportionate multiplication.  The depreciation would be relieved and
+retarded at the same time by the process.  The two operations would aid
+reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree
+beneficial.  It was on the ground of interest, therefore, the most
+indisputable pecuniary interest, that he addressed himself to the people
+and legislatures of the slave-holding states."
+
+"The slave-holder, who is in danger of having his slaves contaminated by
+their free friends of color, will not only be relieved from this danger,
+but the value of his slave will be enhanced."
+
+5.  It denies the power of Christian love to overcome an unholy prejudice
+against a portion of our fellow-creatures.
+
+Proof.  "The managers consider it clear that causes exist and are
+operating to prevent their (the blacks) improvement and elevation to any
+considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not
+only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human
+power.  Christianity will not do for them here what it will do for them
+in Africa.  This is not the fault of the colored man, nor Christianity;
+but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws
+of Nature!"--[Last Annual Report of the American Colonization Society.]
+
+"The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society--prejudices
+which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion
+itself, can subdue--mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as
+the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable.  The African in
+this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society, and
+from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his
+virtues what they may. .  .  .  They constitute a class by themselves, a
+class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which none
+can be depressed."
+
+"Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to
+admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must,
+in this country, remain for ages, probably forever, a separate and
+inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable;
+which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?"
+
+6.  It opposes strenuously the education of the blacks in this country as
+useless as well as dangerous.
+
+Proof.  "If the free colored people were generally taught to read it
+might be an inducement to them to remain in this country (that is, in
+their native country).  We would offer then no such inducement."--
+[Southern Religious Telegraph, February 19, 1831.]
+
+"The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them (the
+slaves) to be kept ignorant and uninstructed."
+
+"It is the business of the free (their safety requires it) to keep the
+slaves in ignorance.  But a few days ago a proposition was made in the
+legislature of Georgia to allow them so much instruction as to enable
+them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large
+majority."--[Proceedings of New York State Colonization Society at its
+second anniversary.]
+
+E. B. Caldwell, the first Secretary of the American Colonization Society,
+in his speech at its formation, recommended them to be kept "in the
+lowest state of ignorance and degradation, for (says he) the nearer you
+bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them
+of possessing their apathy."
+
+My limits will not admit of a more extended examination.  To the
+documents from whence the above extracts have been made I would call the
+attention of every real friend of humanity.  I seek to do the
+Colonization Society no injustice, but I wish the public generally to
+understand its character.
+
+The tendency of the society to abolish the slave-trade by means of its
+African colony has been strenuously urged by its friends.  But the
+fallacy of this is now admitted by all: witness the following from the
+reports of the society itself:--
+
+"Some appalling facts in regard to the slave-trade have come to the
+knowledge of the Board of Managers during the last year.  With
+undiminished atrocity and activity is this odious traffic now carried on
+all along the African coast.  Slave factories are established in the
+immediate vicinity of the colony; and at the Gallinas (between Liberia
+and Sierra Leone) not less than nine hundred slaves were shipped during
+the last summer, in the space of three weeks."
+
+April 6, 1832, the House of Commons of England ordered the printing of a
+document entitled "Slave-Trade, Sierra Leone," containing official
+evidence of the fact that the pirates engaged in the African slave-trade
+are supplied from the stores of Sierra Leone and Liberia with such
+articles as the infernal traffic demands!  An able English writer on the
+subject of Colonization thus notices this astounding fact:--
+
+"And here it may be well to observe, that as long as negro slavery lasts,
+all colonies on the African coast, of whatever description, must tend to
+support it, because, in all commerce, the supply is more or less
+proportioned to the demand.  The demand exists in negro slavery; the
+supply arises from the African slave-trade.  And what greater convenience
+could the African slave-traders desire than shops well stored along the
+coast with the very articles which their trade demands.  That the African
+slave-traders do get thus supplied at Sierra Leone and Liberia is matter
+of official evidence; and we know, from the nature of human things, that
+they will get so supplied, in defiance of all law or precaution, as long
+as the demand calls for the supply, and there are free shops stored with
+all they want at hand.  The shopkeeper, however honest, would find it
+impossible always to distinguish between the African slave-trader or his
+agents and other dealers.  And how many shopkeepers are there anywhere
+that would be over scrupulous in questioning a customer with a full
+purse?"
+
+But we are told that the Colonization Society is to civilize and
+evangelize Africa.
+
+"Each emigrant," says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which the society
+has yet found, "is a missionary, carrying with him credentials in the
+holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions."
+
+Beautiful and heart-cheering idea!  But stay who are these emigrants,
+these missionaries?
+
+The free people of color.  "They, and they only," says the African
+Repository, the society's organ, "are qualified for colonizing Africa."
+
+What are their qualifications?  Let the society answer in its own words:--
+Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves."--
+[African Repository, vol. ii.  p. 328.]
+
+"A horde of miserable people--the objects of universal suspicion--
+subsisting by plunder."
+
+"An anomalous race of beings the most debased upon earth."--[African
+Repository, vol. vii. p. 230.]
+
+"Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free
+colored."--[Tenth Annual Report of the Colonization Society.]
+
+I might go on to quote still further from the "credentials" which the
+free people of color are to carry with them to Liberia.  But I forbear.
+
+I come now to the only practicable, the only just scheme of emancipation:
+Immediate abolition of slavery; an immediate acknowledgment of the great
+truth, that man cannot hold property in man; an immediate surrender of
+baneful prejudice to Christian love; an immediate practical obedience to
+the command of Jesus Christ: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
+you, do ye even so to them."
+
+A correct understanding of what is meant by immediate abolition must
+convince every candid mind that it is neither visionary nor dangerous;
+that it involves no disastrous consequences of bloodshed and desolation;
+but, on the, contrary, that it is a safe, practicable, efficient remedy
+for the evils of the slave system.
+
+The term immediate is used in contrast with that of gradual.  Earnestly
+as I wish it, I do not expect, no one expects, that the tremendous system
+of oppression can be instantaneously overthrown.  The terrible and
+unrebukable indignation of a free people has not yet been sufficiently
+concentrated against it.  The friends of abolition have not forgotten the
+peculiar organization of our confederacy, the delicate division of power
+between the states and the general government.  They see the many
+obstacles in their pathway; but they know that public opinion can
+overcome them all.  They ask no aid of physical coercion.  They seek to
+obtain their object not with the weapons of violence and blood, but with
+those of reason and truth, prayer to God, and entreaty to man.
+
+They seek to impress indelibly upon every human heart the true doctrines
+of the rights of man; to establish now and forever this great and
+fundamental truth of human liberty, that man cannot hold property in his
+brother; for they believe that the general admission of this truth will
+utterly destroy the system of slavery, based as that system is upon a
+denial or disregard of it.  To make use of the clear exposition of an
+eminent advocate of immediate abolition, our plan of emancipation is
+simply this: "To promulgate the true doctrine of human rights in high
+places and low places, and all places where there are human beings; to
+whisper it in chimney corners, and to proclaim it from the house-tops,
+yea, from the mountain-tops; to pour it out like water from the pulpit
+and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from
+infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon
+precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts
+indestructible of the public soul.  Let those who contemn this plan
+renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting
+the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every
+plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification of their
+own animal natures."
+
+The friends of emancipation would urge in the first instance an immediate
+abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories
+of Florida and Arkansas.
+
+The number of slaves in these portions of the country, coming under the
+direct jurisdiction of the general government, is as follows:--
+
+District of Columbia ..... 6,119
+Territory of Arkansas .... 4,576
+Territory of Florida .... 15,501
+
+                  Total   26,196
+
+Here, then, are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image
+of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in
+the abhorrent chains of slavery.  The power to emancipate them is clear.
+It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes
+in Congress.  It lies with the free states.  Their duty is before them:
+in the fear of God, and not of man let them perform it.
+
+Let them at once strike off the grievous fetters.  Let them declare that
+man shall no longer hold his fellow-man in bondage, a beast of burden, an
+article of traffic, within the governmental domain.  God and truth and
+eternal justice demand this.  The very reputation of our fathers, the
+honor of our land, every principle of liberty, humanity, expediency,
+demand it.  A sacred regard to free principles originated our
+independence, not the paltry amount of practical evil complained of.  And
+although our fathers left their great work unfinished, it is our duty to
+follow out their principles.  Short of liberty and equality we cannot
+stop without doing injustice to their memories.  If our fathers intended
+that slavery should be perpetual, that our practice should forever give
+the lie to our professions, why is the great constitutional compact so
+guardedly silent on the subject of human servitude?  If state necessity
+demanded this perpetual violation of the laws of God and the rights of
+man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not
+met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly
+recognized as a settled part of our social system?  State necessity, that
+imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise.  In the language of Sheridan, "What
+he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than
+the great motives which placed the iron sceptre in his grasp."
+
+Can it be possible that our fathers felt this state necessity strong upon
+them?  No; for they left open the door for emancipation, they left us the
+light of their pure principles of liberty, they framed the great charter
+of American rights, without employing a term in its structure to which in
+aftertimes of universal freedom the enemies of our country could point
+with accusation or reproach.
+
+What, then, is our duty?
+
+To give effect to the spirit of our Constitution; to plant ourselves upon
+the great declaration and declare in the face of all the world that
+political, religious, and legal hypocrisy shall no longer cover as with
+loathsome leprosy the features of American freedom; to loose at once the
+bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go
+free.
+
+We have indeed been authoritatively told in Congress and elsewhere that
+our brethren of the South and West will brook no further agitation of the
+subject of slavery.  What then! shall we heed the unrighteous
+prohibition?  No; by our duty as Christians, as politicians, by our duty
+to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to God, we are called upon to agitate
+this subject; to give slavery no resting-place under the hallowed aegis
+of a government of freedom; to tear it root and branch, with all its
+fruits of abomination, at least from the soil of the national domain.
+The slave-holder may mock us; the representatives of property,
+merchandise, vendible commodities, may threaten us; still our duty is
+imperative; the spirit of the Constitution should be maintained within
+the exclusive jurisdiction of the government.  If we cannot "provide for
+the general welfare," if we cannot "guarantee to each of the states a
+republican form of government," let us at least no longer legislate for a
+free nation within view of the falling whip, and within hearing of the
+execrations of the task-master and the prayer of his slave!
+
+I deny the right of the slave-holder to impose silence on his brother of
+the North in reference to slavery.  What!  compelled to maintain the
+system, to keep up the standing army which protects it, and yet be denied
+the poor privilege of remonstrance!  Ready, at the summons of the master
+to put down the insurrections of his slaves, the outbreaking of that
+revenge which is now, and has been, in all nations, and all times, the
+inevitable consequence of oppression and wrong, and yet like automata to
+act but not speak!  Are we to be denied even the right of a slave, the
+right to murmur?
+
+I am not unaware that my remarks may be regarded by many as dangerous and
+exceptionable; that I may be regarded as a fanatic for quoting the
+language of eternal truth, and denounced as an incendiary for
+maintaining, in the spirit as well as the letter, the doctrines of
+American Independence.  But if such are the consequences of a simple
+performance of duty, I shall not regard them.  If my feeble appeal but
+reaches the hearts of any who are now slumbering in iniquity; if it shall
+have power given it to shake down one stone from that foul temple where
+the blood of human victims is offered to the Moloch of slavery; if under
+Providence it can break one fetter from off the image of God, and enable
+one suffering African
+
+"To feel
+The weight of human misery less, and glide
+Ungroaning to the tomb,"
+
+I shall not have written in vain; my conscience will be satisfied.
+
+Far be it from me to cast new bitterness into the gall and wormwood
+waters of sectional prejudice.  No; I desire peace, the peace of
+universal love, of catholic sympathy, the peace of a common interest, a
+common feeling, a common humanity.  But so long as slavery is tolerated,
+no such peace can exist.  Liberty and slavery cannot dwell in harmony
+together.  There will be a perpetual "war in the members" of the
+political Mezentius between the living and the dead.  God and man have
+placed between them an everlasting barrier, an eternal separation.  No
+matter under what name or law or compact their union is attempted, the
+ordination of Providence has forbidden it, and it cannot stand.  Peace!
+there can be no peace between justice and oppression, between robbery and
+righteousness, truth and falsehood, freedom and slavery.
+
+The slave-holding states are not free.  The name of liberty is there, but
+the spirit is wanting.  They do not partake of its invaluable blessings.
+Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of
+some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet
+felt in a great degree the baneful and deteriorating influences of slave
+labor, we hear at this moment the cry of suffering.  We are told of
+grass-grown streets, of crumbling mansions, of beggared planters and
+barren plantations, of fear from without, of terror within.  The once
+fertile fields are wasted and tenantless, for the curse of slavery, the
+improvidence of that labor whose hire has been kept back by fraud, has
+been there, poisoning the very earth beyond the reviving influence of the
+early and the latter rain.  A moral mildew mingles with and blasts the
+economy of nature.  It is as if the finger of the everlasting God had
+written upon the soil of the slave-holder the language of His
+displeasure.
+
+Let, then, the slave-holding states consult their present interest by
+beginning without delay the work of emancipation.  If they fear not, and
+mock at the fiery indignation of Him, to whom vengeance belongeth, let
+temporal interest persuade them.  They know, they must know, that the
+present state of things cannot long continue.  Mind is the same
+everywhere, no matter what may be the complexion of the frame which it
+animates: there is a love of liberty which the scourge cannot eradicate,
+a hatred of oppression which centuries of degradation cannot extinguish.
+The slave will become conscious sooner or later of his brute strength,
+his physical superiority, and will exert it.  His torch will be at the
+threshold and his knife at the throat of the planter.  Horrible and
+indiscriminate will be his vengeance.  Where, then, will be the pride,
+the beauty, and the chivalry of the South?  The smoke of her torment will
+rise upward like a thick cloud visible over the whole earth.
+
+     "Belie the negro's powers: in headlong will,
+     Christian, thy brother thou shalt find him still.
+     Belie his virtues: since his wrongs began,
+     His follies and his crimes have stamped him man."
+
+Let the cause of insurrection be removed, then, as speedily as possible.
+Cease to oppress.  "Let him that stole steal no more."  Let the laborer
+have his hire.  Bind him no longer by the cords of slavery, but with
+those of kindness and brotherly love.  Watch over him for his good.  Pray
+for him; instruct him; pour light into the darkness of his mind.
+
+Let this be done, and the horrible fears which now haunt the slumbers of
+the slave-holder will depart.  Conscience will take down its racks and
+gibbets, and his soul will be at peace.  His lands will no longer
+disappoint his hopes.  Free labor will renovate them.
+
+Historical facts; the nature of the human mind; the demonstrated truths
+of political economy; the analysis of cause and effect, all concur in
+establishing:
+
+1.  That immediate abolition is a safe and just and peaceful remedy for
+the evils of the slave system.
+
+2.  That free labor, its necessary consequence, is more productive, and
+more advantageous to the planter than slave labor.
+
+In proof of the first proposition it is only necessary to state the
+undeniable fact that immediate emancipation, whether by an individual or
+a community, has in no instance been attended with violence and disorder
+on the part of the emancipated; but that on the contrary it has promoted
+cheerfulness, industry, and laudable ambition in the place of sullen
+discontent, indolence, and despair.
+
+The case of St. Domingo is in point.  Blood was indeed shed on that
+island like water, but it was not in consequence of emancipation.  It was
+shed in the civil war which preceded it, and in the iniquitous attempt to
+restore the slave system in 1801.  It flowed on the sanguine altar of
+slavery, not on the pure and peaceful one of emancipation.  No; there, as
+in all the world and in all time, the violence of oppression engendered
+violence on the part of the oppressed, and vengeance followed only upon
+the iron footsteps of wrong.  When, where, did justice to the injured
+waken their hate and vengeance?  When, where, did love and kindness and
+sympathy irritate and madden the persecuted, the broken-hearted, the
+foully wronged?
+
+In September, 1793, the Commissioner of the French National Convention
+issued his proclamation giving immediate freedom to all the slaves of St.
+Domingo.  Did the slaves baptize their freedom in blood?  Did they fight
+like unchained desperadoes because they had been made free?  Did they
+murder their emancipators?  No; they acted, as human beings must act,
+under similar circumstances, by a law as irresistible as those of the
+universe: kindness disarmed them, justice conciliated them, freedom
+ennobled them.  No tumult followed this wide and instantaneous
+emancipation.  It cost not one drop of blood; it abated not one tittle of
+the wealth or the industry of the island.  Colonel Malenfant, a slave
+proprietor residing at the time on the island, states that after the
+public act of abolition, the negroes remained perfectly quiet; they had
+obtained all they asked for, liberty, and they continued to work upon all
+the plantations.--[Malenfant in Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo by
+General Lecroix, 1819.]
+
+"There were estates," he says, "which had neither owners nor managers
+resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes
+continued their labors where there were any, even inferior, agents to
+guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct
+them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all
+the plantations where the whites resided the blacks continued to labor as
+quietly as before."  Colonel Malenfant says that when many of his
+neighbors, proprietors or managers, were in prison, the negroes of their
+plantations came to him to beg him to direct them in their work.  "If you
+will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but
+talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their
+labor.  How did Toussaint succeed?  How did I succeed before his time in
+the plain of the Cul-de-Sac on the plantation of Gouraud, during more
+than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves?  Let
+those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves be asked.  They
+will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting
+of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work; and yet
+this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the
+slaves the most idle of any in the plain.  I inspired the same activity
+into three other plantations of which I had the management.  If all the
+negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of
+independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be
+employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that
+without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them;
+that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes.
+They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
+
+This is strong testimony.  In 1796, three years after the act of
+emancipation, we are told that the colony was flourishing under
+Toussaint, that the whites lived happily and peaceably on their estates,
+and the blacks continued to work for them.  Up to 1801 the same happy
+state of things continued.  The colony went on as by enchantment;
+cultivation made day by day a perceptible progress, under the
+recuperative energies of free labor.
+
+In 1801 General Vincent, a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent
+by Toussaint to Paris for the purpose of laying before the Directory the
+new Constitution which had been adopted at St. Domingo.  He reached
+France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his
+ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the
+island.  General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an
+expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a
+moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the
+proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when
+cultivation was making a rapid progress, and the blacks were industrious
+and happy beyond example.  He begged that this beautiful state of things
+might not be reversed.  The remonstrance was not regarded, and the
+expedition proceeded.  Its issue is well known.  Threatened once more
+with the horrors of slavery, the peaceful and quiet laborer became
+transformed into a demon of ferocity.  The plough-share and the pruning-
+hook gave way to the pike and the dagger.  The white invaders were driven
+back by the sword and the pestilence; and then, and not till then, was
+the property of the planters seized upon by the excited and infuriated
+blacks.
+
+In 1804 Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor of Hayti.  The black troops
+were in a great measure disbanded, and they immediately returned to the
+cultivation of the plantations.  From that period up to the present there
+has been no want of industry among the inhabitants.
+
+Mr. Harvey, who during the reign of Christophe resided at Cape Francois,
+in describing the character and condition of the inhabitants, says "It
+was an interesting sight to behold this class of the Haytiens, now in
+possession of their freedom, coming in groups to the market nearest which
+they resided, bringing the produce of their industry there for sale; and
+afterwards returning, carrying back the necessary articles of living
+which the disposal of their commodities had enabled them to purchase; all
+evidently cheerful and happy.  Nor could it fail to occur to the mind
+that their present condition furnished the most satisfactory answer to
+that objection to the general emancipation of slaves founded on their
+alleged unfitness to value and improve the benefits of liberty.  .  .  .
+As they would not suffer, so they do not require, the attendance of one
+acting in the capacity of a driver with the instrument of punishment in
+his hand.  As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining from what fell
+under my own observation, and from what I gathered from other European
+residents, I am persuaded of one general fact, which on account of its
+importance I shall state in the most explicit terms, namely, that the
+Haytiens employed in cultivating the plantations, as well as the rest of
+the population, perform as much work in a given time as they were
+accustomed to do during their subjection to the French.  And if we may
+judge of their future improvement by the change which has been already
+effected, it may be reasonably anticipated that Hayti will erelong
+contain a population not inferior in their industry to that of any
+civilized nation in the world.  .  .  .  Every man had some calling to
+occupy his attention; instances of idleness or intemperance were of rare
+occurrence; the most perfect subordination prevailed, and all appeared
+contented and happy.  A foreigner would have found it difficult to
+persuade himself, on his first entering the place, that the people he now
+beheld so submissive, industrious, and contented, were the same people
+who a few years before had escaped from the shackles of slavery."
+
+The present condition of Hayti may be judged of from the following well-
+authenticated facts its population is more than 700,000, its resources
+ample, its prosperity and happiness general, its crimes few, its labor
+crowned with abundance, with no paupers save the decrepit and aged, its
+people hospitable, respectful, orderly, and contented.
+
+The manumitted slaves, who to the number of two thousand were settled in
+Nova Scotia by the British Government at the close of the Revolutionary
+War, "led a harmless life, and gained the character of an honest,
+industrious people from their white neighbors."  Of the free laborers of
+Trinidad we have the same report.  At the Cape of Good Hope, three
+thousand negroes received their freedom, and with scarce a single
+exception betook themselves to laborious employments.
+
+But we have yet stronger evidence.  The total abolishment of slavery in
+the southern republics has proved beyond dispute the safety and utility
+of immediate abolition.  The departed Bolivar indeed deserves his
+glorious title of Liberator, for he began his career of freedom by
+striking off the fetters of his own slaves, seven hundred in number.
+
+In an official letter from the Mexican Envoy of the British Government,
+dated Mexico, March, 1826, and addressed 'to the Right Hon.  George
+Canning, the superiority of free over slave labor is clearly demonstrated
+by the following facts:--
+
+2.  It is now carried on exclusively by the labor of free blacks.
+
+3.  It was formerly wholly sustained by the forced labor of slaves,
+purchased at Vera Cruz at $300 to $400 each.
+
+4.  Abolition in this section was effected not by governmental
+interference, not even from motives of humanity, but from an irresistible
+conviction on the part of the planters that their pecuniary interest
+demanded it.
+
+5.  The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and
+the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return
+to the old system.
+
+Let our Southern brethren imitate this example.  It is in vain, in the
+face of facts like these, to talk of the necessity of maintaining the
+abominable system, operating as it does like a double curse upon planters
+and slaves.  Heaven and earth deny its necessity.  It is as necessary as
+other robberies, and no more.
+
+Yes, putting aside altogether the righteous law of the living God--the
+same yesterday, to-day, and forever--and shutting out the clearest
+political truths ever taught by man, still, in human policy selfish
+expediency would demand of the planter the immediate emancipation of his
+slaves.
+
+Because slave labor is the labor of mere machines; a mechanical impulse
+of body and limb, with which the mind of the laborer has no sympathy, and
+from which it constantly and loathingly revolts.
+
+Because slave labor deprives the master altogether of the incalculable
+benefit of the negro's will.  That does not cooperate with the forced
+toil of the body.  This is but the necessary consequence of all labor
+which does not benefit the laborer.  It is a just remark of that profound
+political economist, Adam Smith, that "a slave can have no other interest
+than to eat and waste as much, and work as little, as he can."
+
+To my mind, in the wasteful and blighting influences of slave labor there
+is a solemn and warning moral.
+
+They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after
+His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews,
+the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the
+avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of
+His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His
+rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the
+ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of
+His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.
+
+I shall offer a few more facts and observations on this point.
+
+1.  A distinguished scientific gentleman, Mr. Coulomb, the superintendent
+of several military works in the French West Indies, gives it as his
+opinion, that the slaves do not perform more than one third of the labor
+which they would do, provided they were urged by their own interests and
+inclinations instead of brute force.
+
+2.  A plantation in Barbadoes in 1780 was cultivated by two hundred and
+eighty-eight slaves ninety men, eighty-two women, fifty-six boys, and
+sixty girls.  In three years and three months there were on this
+plantation fifty-seven deaths, and only fifteen births.  A change was
+then made in the government of the slaves.  The use of the whip was
+denied; all severe and arbitrary punishments were abolished; the laborers
+received wages, and their offences were all tried by a sort of negro
+court established among themselves: in short, they were practically free.
+Under this system, in four years and three months there were forty-four
+births, and but forty-one deaths; and the annual net produce of the
+plantation was more than three times what it had been before.--[English
+Quarterly Magazine and Review, April, 1832.]
+
+3.  The following evidence was adduced by Pitt in the British Parliament,
+April, 1792.  The assembly of Grenada had themselves stated, "that though
+the negroes were allowed only the afternoon of one day in a week, they
+would do as much work in that afternoon, when employed for their own
+benefit, as in the whole day when employed in their master's service."
+"Now after this confession," said Mr. Pitt, "the house might burn all its
+calculations relative to the negro population.  A negro, if he worked for
+himself, could no doubt do double work.  By an improvement, then, in the
+mode of labor, the work in the islands could be doubled."
+
+4.  "In coffee districts it is usual for the master to hire his people
+after they have done the regular task for the day, at a rate varying from
+10d. to 15.8d.  for every extra bushel which they pluck from the trees;
+and many, almost all, are found eager to earn their wages."
+
+5.  In a report made by the commandant of Castries for the government of
+St. Lucia, in 1822, it is stated, in proof of the intimacy between the
+slaves and the free blacks, that "many small plantations of the latter,
+and occupied by only one man and his wife, are better cultivated and have
+more land in cultivation than those of the proprietors of many slaves,
+and that the labor on them is performed by runaway slaves;" thus clearly
+proving that even runaway slaves, under the all-depressing fears of
+discovery and oppression, labor well, because the fruits of their labor
+are immediately their own.
+
+Let us look at this subject from another point of view.  The large sum of
+money necessary for stocking a plantation with slaves has an inevitable
+tendency to place the agriculture of a slave-holding community
+exclusively in the hands of the wealthy, a tendency at war with practical
+republicanism and conflicting with the best maxims of political economy.
+
+Two hundred slaves at $200 per head would cost in the outset $40,000.
+Compare this enormous outlay for the labor of a single plantation with
+the beautiful system of free labor as exhibited in New England, where
+every young laborer, with health and ordinary prudence, may acquire by
+his labor on the farms of others, in a few years, a farm of his own, and
+the stock necessary for its proper cultivation; where on a hard and
+unthankful soil independence and competence may be attained by all.
+
+Free labor is perfectly in accordance with the spirit of our
+institutions; slave labor is a relic of a barbarous, despotic age.  The
+one, like the firmament of heaven, is the equal diffusion of similar
+lights, manifest, harmonious, regular; the other is the fiery
+predominance of some disastrous star, hiding all lesser luminaries around
+it in one consuming glare.
+
+Emancipation would reform this evil.  The planter would no longer be
+under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves.  He would only pay
+a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the
+cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the
+present system requires.
+
+In an old plantation of three hundred slaves, not more than one hundred
+effective laborers will be found.  Children, the old and superannuated,
+the sick and decrepit, the idle and incorrigibly vicious, will be found
+to constitute two thirds of the whole number.  The remaining third
+perform only about one third as much work as the same number of free
+laborers.
+
+Now disburden the master of this heavy load of maintenance; let him
+employ free able, industrious laborers only, those who feel conscious of
+a personal interest in the fruits of their labor, and who does not see
+that such a system would be vastly more safe and economical than the
+present?
+
+The slave states are learning this truth by fatal experience.  Most of
+them are silently writhing under the great curse.  Virginia has uttered
+her complaints aloud.  As yet, however, nothing has been done even there,
+save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free
+colored inhabitants of the state.  Is this a remedy?
+
+But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on
+condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible,
+forcibly if necessary.
+
+Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote
+period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her
+unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy
+apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
+
+It is a fact, strongly insisted upon by our Southern brethren as a reason
+for the perpetuation of slavery, that their climate and peculiar
+agriculture will not admit of hard labor on the part of the whites; that
+amidst the fatal malaria of the rice plantations the white man is almost
+annually visited by the country fever; that few of the white overseers of
+these plantations reach the middle period of ordinary life; that the
+owners are compelled to fly from their estates as the hot season
+approaches, without being able to return until the first frosts have
+fallen.  But we are told that the slaves remain there, at their work,
+mid-leg in putrid water, breathing the noisome atmosphere, loaded with
+contagion, and underneath the scorching fervor of a terrible sun; that
+they indeed suffer; but, that their habits, constitutions, and their long
+practice enable them to labor, surrounded by such destructive influences,
+with comparative safety.
+
+The conclusive answer, therefore, to those who in reality cherish the
+visionary hope of colonizing all the colored people of the United States
+in Africa or elsewhere, is this single, all-important fact: The labor of
+the blacks will not and cannot be dispensed with by the planter of the
+South.
+
+To what remedy, then, can the friends of humanity betake themselves but
+to that of emancipation?
+
+And nothing but a strong, unequivocal expression of public sentiment is
+needed to carry into effect this remedy, so far as the general government
+is concerned.
+
+And when the voice of all the non-slave-holding states shall be heard on
+this question, a voice of expostulation, rebuke, entreaty--when the full
+light of truth shall break through the night of prejudice, and reveal all
+the foul abominations of slavery, will Delaware still cling to the curse
+which is wasting her moral strength, and still rivet the fetters upon her
+three or four thousand slaves?  Let Delaware begin the work, and Maryland
+and Virginia must follow; the example will be contagious; and the great
+object of universal emancipation will be attained.  Freemen, Christians,
+lovers of truth and justice Why stand ye idle?  Ours is a government of
+opinion, and slavery is interwoven with it.  Change the current of
+opinion, and slavery will be swept away.  Let the awful sovereignty of
+the people, a power which is limited only by the sovereignty of Heaven,
+arise and pronounce judgment against the crying iniquity.  Let each
+individual remember that upon himself rests a portion of that
+sovereignty; a part of the tremendous responsibility of its exercise.
+The burning, withering concentration of public opinion upon the slave
+system is alone needed for its total annihilation.  God has given us the
+power to overthrow it; a power peaceful, yet mighty, benevolent, yet
+effectual, "awful without severity," a moral strength equal to the
+emergency.
+
+"How does it happen," inquires an able writer, "that whenever duty is named
+we begin to hear of the weakness of human nature?  That same nature which
+outruns the whirlwind in the chase of gain, which rages like a maniac at
+the trumpet call of glory, which laughs danger and death to scorn when
+its least passion is awakened, becomes weak as childhood when reminded of
+the claims of duty."  But let no one hope to find an excuse in hypocrisy.
+The humblest individual of the community in one way or another possesses
+influence; and upon him as well as upon the proudest rests the
+responsibility of its rightful exercise and proper direction.  The
+overthrow of a great national evil like that of slavery can only be
+effected by the united energies of the great body of the people.
+Shoulder must be put to shoulder and hand linked with hand, the whole
+mass must be put in motion and its entire strength applied, until the
+fabric of oppression is shaken to its dark foundations and not one stone
+is left upon another.
+
+Let the Christian remember that the God of his worship hateth oppression;
+that the mystery of faith can only be held by a pure conscience; and that
+in vain is the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, if the weihtier
+matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth, are forgotten.  Let him
+remember that all along the clouded region of slavery the truths of the
+everlasting gospel are not spoken, that the ear of iniquity is lulled,
+that those who minister between the "porch and the altar" dare not speak
+out the language of eternal justice: "Is not this the fast which I have
+chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and
+to let the oppressed go free?" (Isa. viii. 6.) "He that stealeth a man
+and selleth him; or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
+death."  (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial
+prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of
+slavery.  The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation,
+will be denounced as incendiary?  The night of that infidelity, which
+denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the
+land, to be broken only by the upheaving earthquake of eternal
+retribution.
+
+To the members of the religious Society of Friends, I would earnestly
+appeal.  They have already done much to put away the evil of slavery in
+this country and Great Britain.  The blessings of many who were ready to
+perish have rested upon them.  But their faithful testimony must be still
+steadily upborne, for the great work is but begun.  Let them not relax
+their exertions, nor be contented with a lifeless testimony, a formal
+protestation against the evil.  Active, prayerful, unwearied exertion is
+needed for its overthrow.  But above all, let them not aid in excusing
+and palliating it.  Slavery has no redeeming qualities, no feature of
+benevolence, nothing pure, nothing peaceful, nothing just.  Let them
+carefully keep themselves aloof from all societies and all schemes which
+have a tendency to excuse or overlook its crying iniquity.  True to a
+doctrine founded on love and mercy, "peace on earth and good will to
+men," they should regard the suffering slave as their brother, and
+endeavor to "put their souls in his soul's stead."  They may earnestly
+desire the civilization of Africa, but they cannot aid in building up the
+colony of Liberia so long as that colony leans for support upon the arm
+of military power; so long as it proselytes to Christianity under the
+muzzles of its cannon; and preaches the doctrines of Christ while
+practising those of Mahomet.  When the Sierra Leone Company was formed in
+England, not a member of the Society of Friends could be prevailed upon
+to engage in it, because the colony was to be supplied with cannon and
+other military stores.  Yet the Foreign Agent of the Liberia Colony
+Society, to which the same insurmountable objection exists, is a member
+of the Society of Friends, and I understand has been recently employed in
+providing gunpowder, etc., for the use of the colony.  There must be an
+awakening on this subject; other Woolmans and other Benezets must arise
+and speak the truth with the meek love of James and the fervent sincerity
+of Paul.
+
+To the women of America, whose sympathies know no distinction of cline,
+or sect, or color, the suffering slave is making a strong appeal.  Oh,
+let it not be unheeded! for of those to whom much is given much will be
+required at the last dread tribunal; and never in the strongest terms of
+human eulogy was woman's influence overrated.  Sisters, daughters, wives,
+and mothers, your influence is felt everywhere, at the fireside, and in
+the halls of legislation, surrounding, like the all-encircling
+atmosphere, brother and father, husband and son!  And by your love of
+them, by every holy sympathy of your bosoms, by every mournful appeal
+which comes up to you from hearts whose sanctuary of affections has been
+made waste and desolate, you are called upon to exert it in the cause of
+redemption from wrong and outrage.
+
+Let the patriot, the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no
+longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which
+all others dwindle into insignificance.  Our Union is tottering to its
+foundation, and slavery is the cause.  Remove the evil.  Dry up at their
+source the bitter waters.  In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs;
+in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession.  The accursed
+thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains.
+Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for
+national sin.
+
+The conflicting interests of free and slave labor furnish the only ground
+for fear in relation to the permanency of the Union.  The line of
+separation between them is day by day growing broader and deeper;
+geographically and politically united, we are already, in a moral point
+of view, a divided people.  But a few months ago we were on the very
+verge of civil war, a war of brothers, a war between the North and the
+South, between the slave-holder and the free laborer.  The danger has
+been delayed for a time; this bolt has fallen without mortal injury to
+the Union, but the cloud from whence it came still hangs above us,
+reddening with the elements of destruction.
+
+Recent events have furnished ample proof that the slave-holding interest
+is prepared to resist any legislation on the part of the general
+government which is supposed to have a tendency, directly or indirectly,
+to encourage and invigorate free labor; and that it is determined to
+charge upon its opposite interest the infliction of all those evils which
+necessarily attend its own operation, "the primeval curse of Omnipotence
+upon slavery."
+
+We have already felt in too many instances the extreme difficulty of
+cherishing in one common course of national legislation the opposite
+interests of republican equality and feudal aristocracy and servitude.
+The truth is, we have undertaken a moral impossibility.  These interests
+are from their nature irreconcilable.  The one is based upon the pure
+principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom,
+revives the ancient European system of barons and villains, nobles and
+serfs.  Indeed, the state of society which existed among our Anglo-Saxon
+ancestors was far more tolerable than that of many portions of our
+republican confederacy.  For the Anglo-Saxon slaves had it in their power
+to purchase their freedom; and the laws of the realm recognized their
+liberation and placed them under legal protection.
+
+     [The diffusion of Christianity in Great Britain was moreover
+     followed by a general manumission; for it would seem that the
+     priests and missionaries of religion in that early and benighted age
+     were more faithful in the performance of their duties than those of
+     the present.  "The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T.
+     Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and
+     deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was
+     for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men,
+     by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit
+     all their villains."--Hilt.  Commonwealth, Blackstone, p.  52.]
+
+To counteract the dangers resulting from a state of society so utterly at
+variance with the great Declaration of American freedom should be the
+earnest endeavor of every patriotic statesman.  Nothing unconstitutional,
+nothing violent, should be attempted; but the true doctrine of the rights
+of man should be steadily kept in view; and the opposition to slavery
+should be inflexible and constantly maintained.  The almost daily
+violations of the Constitution in consequence of the laws of some of the
+slave states, subjecting free colored citizens of New England and
+elsewhere, who may happen to be on board of our coasting vessels, to
+imprisonment immediately on their arrival in a Southern port should be
+provided against.  Nor should the imprisonment of the free colored
+citizens of the Northern and Middle states, on suspicion of being
+runaways, subjecting them, even after being pronounced free, to the costs
+of their confinement and trial, be longer tolerated; for if we continue
+to yield to innovations like these upon the Constitution of our fathers,
+we shall erelong have the name only of a free government left us.
+
+Dissemble as we may, it is impossible for us to believe, after fully
+considering the nature of slavery, that it can much longer maintain a
+peaceable existence among us.  A day of revolution must come, and it is
+our duty to prepare for it.  Its threatened evil may be changed into a
+national blessing.  The establishment of schools for the instruction of
+the slave children, a general diffusion of the lights of Christianity,
+and the introduction of a sacred respect for the social obligations of
+marriage and for the relations between parents and children, among our
+black population, would render emancipation not only perfectly safe, but
+also of the highest advantage to the country.  Two millions of freemen
+would be added to our population, upon whom in the hour of danger we
+could safely depend; "the domestic foe" would be changed into a firm
+friend, faithful, generous, and ready to encounter all dangers in our
+defence.  It is well known that during the last war with Great Britain,
+wherever the enemy touched upon our Southern coast, the slaves in
+multitudes hastened to join them.  On the other hand, the free blacks
+were highly serviceable in repelling them.  So warm was the zeal of the
+latter, so manifest their courage in the defence of Louisiana, that the
+present Chief Magistrate of the United States publicly bestowed upon them
+one of the highest eulogiums ever offered by a commander to his soldiers.
+
+Let no one seek an apology for silence on the subject of slavery because
+the laws of the land tolerate and sanction it.  But a short time ago the
+slave-trade was protected by laws and treaties, and sanctioned by the
+example of men eminent for the reputation of piety and integrity.  Yet
+public opinion broke over these barriers; it lifted the curtain and
+revealed the horrors of that most abominable traffic; and unrighteous law
+and ancient custom and avarice and luxury gave way before its
+irresistible authority.  It should never be forgotten that human law
+cannot change the nature of human action in the pure eye of infinite
+justice; and that the ordinances of man cannot annul those of God.  The
+slave system, as existing in this country, can be considered in no other
+light than as the cause of which the foul traffic in human flesh is the
+legitimate consequence.  It is the parent, the fosterer, the sole
+supporter of the slave-trade.  It creates the demand for slaves, and the
+foreign supply will always be equal to the demand of consumption.  It
+keeps the market open.  It offers inducements to the slave-trader which
+no severity of law against his traffic can overcome.  By our laws his
+trade is piracy; while slavery, to which alone it owes its existence, is
+protected and cherished, and those engaged in it are rewarded by an
+increase of political power proportioned to the increase of their stock
+of human beings!  To steal the natives of Africa is a crime worthy of an
+ignominious death; but to steal and enslave annually nearly one hundred
+thousand of the descendants of these stolen natives, born in this
+country, is considered altogether excusable and proper!  For my own part,
+I know no difference between robbery in Africa and robbery at home.  I
+could with as quiet a conscience engage in the one as the other.
+
+"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on
+which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery
+itself."  Kindred in iniquity, both must fall speedily, fall together,
+and be consigned to the same dishonorable grave.  The spirit which is
+thrilling through every nerve of England is awakening America from her
+sleep of death.  Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the
+baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the
+slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh?  Let them then beware; for the
+time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink
+under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which
+will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
+
+"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but
+fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man,
+but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!"  This counsel,
+given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be
+followed in the present.  An intense and powerful feeling is working in
+the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham
+and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity
+and according to the righteous law of God.  The immediate emancipation of
+eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot
+much longer be disputed or trifled with.  That demand will be obeyed;
+justice will be done; the heavy burdens will be unloosed; the oppressed
+set free.  It shall go well for England.
+
+And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the
+Declaration of our Independence and the practice of our people shall
+agree; when truth shall be exalted among us; when love shall take the
+place of wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and
+color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political liberty
+the slave-holding portions of our republic shall no longer sit, like the
+Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness, while all around
+them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality, then, and
+not till then, shall it go well for America!
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE ABOLITIONISTS.
+
+                      THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS.
+
+Two letters to the 'Jeffersonian and Times', Richmond, Va.
+
+
+                                    I.
+
+A FRIEND has banded me a late number of your paper, containing a brief
+notice of a pamphlet, which I have recently published on the subject of
+slavery.
+
+From an occasional perusal of your paper, I have formed a favorable
+opinion of your talent and independence.  Compelled to dissent from some
+of your political sentiments, I still give you full credit for the lofty
+tone of sincerity and manliness with which these sentiments are avowed
+and defended.
+
+I perceive that since the adjustment of the tariff question a new subject
+of discontent and agitation seems to engross your attention.
+
+The "accursed tariff" has no sooner ceased to be the stone of stumbling
+and the rock of offence, than the "abolition doctrines of the Northern
+enthusiasts," as you are pleased to term the doctrines of your own
+Jefferson, furnish, in your opinion, a sufficient reason for poising the
+"Ancient Dominion" on its sovereignty, and rousing every slaveowner to
+military preparations, until the entire South, from the Potomac to the
+Gulf, shall bristle with bayonets, "like quills upon the fretful
+porcupine."
+
+In proof of a conspiracy against your "vested rights," you have commenced
+publishing copious extracts from the pamphlets and periodicals of the
+abolitionists of New England and New York.  An extract from my own
+pamphlet you have headed "The Fanatics," and in introducing it to your
+readers you inform them that "it exhibits, in strong colors, the morbid
+spirit of that false and fanatical philanthropy, which is at work in the
+Northern states, and, to some extent, in the South."
+
+Gentlemen, so far as I am personally concerned in the matter, I feel no
+disposition to take exceptions to any epithets which you may see fit to
+apply to me or my writings.  A humble son of New England--a tiller of her
+rugged soil, and a companion of her unostentatious yeomanry--it matters
+little, in any personal consideration of the subject, whether the voice
+of praise or opprobrium reaches me from beyond the narrow limits of my
+immediate neighborhood.
+
+But when I find my opinions quoted as the sentiment of New England, and
+then denounced as dangerous, "false and fanatical;" and especially when I
+see them made the occasion of earnest appeals to the prejudices and
+sectional jealousies of the South, it becomes me to endeavor to establish
+their truths, and defend them from illegitimate influences and unjust
+suspicions.
+
+In the first place, then, let me say, that if it be criminal to publicly
+express a belief that it is in the power of the slave states to
+emancipate their slaves, with profit and safety to themselves, and that
+such is their immediate duty, a majority of the people of New England are
+wholly guiltless.  Of course, all are nominally opposed to slavery; but
+upon the little band of abolitionists should the anathemas of the slave-
+holder be directed, for they are the agitators of whom you complain, men
+who are acting under a solemn conviction of duty, and who are bending
+every energy of their minds to the accomplishment of their object.
+
+And that object is the overthrow of slavery in the United States, by such
+means only as are sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion.
+
+I shall endeavor, gentlemen, as briefly as may be, to give you some of
+our reasons for opposing slavery and seeking its abolition; and,
+secondly, to explain our mode of operation; to disclose our plan of
+emancipation, fully and entirely.  We wish to do nothing darkly; frank
+republicans, we acknowledge no double-dealing.  At this busy season of
+the year, I cannot but regret that I have not leisure for such a
+deliberate examination of the subject as even my poor ability might
+warrant.  My remarks, penned in the intervals of labor, must necessarily
+be brief, and wanting in coherence.
+
+We seek the abolishment of slavery
+
+1.  Because it is contrary to the law of God.
+
+In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the
+"false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves
+members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on
+the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."
+
+You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of
+"fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing
+slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:
+
+"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do
+ye even so to them."
+
+"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it;
+for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."
+
+"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?  To loose the bands of
+wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and
+that ye break every yoke?"
+
+"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise
+of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."
+
+"Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."
+
+"And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his
+hands, he shall surely be put to death."
+
+2.  Because it is an open violation of all human equality, of the laws of
+Nature and of nations.
+
+The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the
+following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec.  2.
+
+"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are
+therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the
+aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they
+are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by
+municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation
+has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself
+commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
+
+Has the negro committed such offence?  Above all, has his infant child
+forfeited its unalienable right?
+
+Surely it can be no act of the innocent child.
+
+Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive
+that child of its freedom.
+
+Its black skin constitutes the forfeiture!
+
+What! throw the responsibility upon God!  Charge the common Father of the
+white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering
+His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence
+desirable; their personal liberty!
+
+"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
+that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
+that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--
+[Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.]
+
+In this general and unqualified declaration, on the 4th of July, 1776,
+all the people of the United States, without distinction of color, were
+proclaimed free, by the delegates of the people of those states assembled
+in their highest sovereign capacity.
+
+For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn
+declaration.
+
+3.  Because it renders nugatory the otherwise beneficial example of our
+free institutions, and exposes us to the scorn and reproach of the
+liberal and enlightened of other nations.
+
+"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
+Congress."--[Francis Jeffrey.]
+
+"Man to be possessed by man!  Man to be made property of!  The image of
+the Deity to be put under the yoke!  Let these usurpers show us their
+title-deeds!"--[Simon Boliver.]
+
+"When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American
+liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large
+portion of the people are slaves!  It is a dark spot on the face of the
+nation.  Such a state of things cannot always exist."--[Lafayette.]
+
+"I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of
+America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those
+whose opinion ought to be valuable.  Man is the property of man in about
+one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of
+their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their
+fellow-men in bondage!  Of all men living, the American citizen who is
+the owner of slaves is the most despicable.  He is a political hypocrite
+of the very worst description.  The friends of humanity and liberty in
+Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave-
+holders!  'Base wretches!' should we shout in chorus; 'base wretches!
+how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of
+republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in
+chains and slavery!'"--[Daniel O'Connell.]
+
+4.  Because it subjects one portion of our American brethren to the
+unrestrained violence and unholy passions of another.
+
+Here, gentlemen, I might summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a
+host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a
+system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart.  But I will not
+descend to particulars.  I am willing to believe that the majority of the
+masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their
+unfortunate slaves with kindness.  But where the dreadful privilege of
+slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be
+individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity,
+whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies,
+nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly
+abused.
+
+Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?
+
+"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise, of
+the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one
+part, and degrading submission on the other.  Our children see this, and
+learn to imitate it.  The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
+lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
+slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated,
+and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot fail to be stamped by it with
+odious peculiarities.  The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
+morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."--[Notes on
+Virginia, p. 241.]
+
+"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais
+traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
+holder, in his late work on the United States.
+
+Gentlemen, is not this true?  Does there exist even in Virginia any law
+limiting the punishment of a slave?  Are there any bounds prescribed,
+beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
+acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
+
+You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
+alike to master and slave.  True; but will you point out instances of
+masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
+If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
+slave decided to be only a trespass!--[Virginia Reports, vol. v.  p. 481,
+Harris versus Nichols.]
+
+It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
+the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
+language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
+has been repealed.  But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
+practice remains the same.  In proof of this, I would refer to
+Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
+
+In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and
+justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of
+moderate correction!"
+
+In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still
+in force:--
+
+"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white
+person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give
+evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other
+person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be
+deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other
+person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or
+shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court
+where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and
+to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not
+made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
+notwithstanding."
+
+Is not this offering a reward for perjury?  And what shall we think of
+that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses,
+in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
+
+5.  Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of
+necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave
+labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.
+
+That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is
+of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed.  The moral sentiment of
+the free states is against slavery.  The freeman has declared his
+unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of
+slaves.  Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged,
+until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has
+become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling,
+interest, national pride, a moral division.
+
+What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was
+agitated?  What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the
+Union, and the Union against a state?
+
+From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.
+
+6.  Because of its pernicious influence upon national wealth and
+prosperity.
+
+Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia.  But there are
+some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto
+overlooked or wantonly disregarded.
+
+Population increasing with the means of subsistence is a fair test of
+national wealth.
+
+By reference to the several censuses of the United States, it will be
+seen that the white population increases nearly twice as fast in states
+where there are few or no slaves as in the slave states.
+
+Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as
+fast as the white.  Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years,
+from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three
+of the Southern states.
+
+Per cent. of whites.  Per cent. of blacks.
+
+Maryland       13                  31
+Virginia       24                  38
+North Carolina 30                  70
+
+The causes of this disproportionate increase, so inimical to the true
+interests of the country, are very manifest.
+
+A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are
+dependent upon their labor for subsistence.  The forced, unnatural system
+of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers
+less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the
+means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and
+as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.
+
+There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population.  In
+the free states labor is reputable.  The statesman, whose eloquence has
+electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
+service to handle the axe and the hoe.  And the woman whose beauty,
+talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
+degradation to "look well to her household."
+
+But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
+It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
+labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
+Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
+slave-holding community!  Compelled to perform the despised offices of
+the slave, they can hardly rise above his level.  They become the pariahs
+of society.  No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the
+slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.
+
+In New England the labor of a farmer or mechanic is worth from $150 to
+$200 per annum.  That of a female from $50 to $100.  Our entire
+population, with the exception of those engaged in mercantile affairs,
+the professional classes, and a very few moneyed idlers, are working men
+and women.  If that of the South were equally employed (and slavery
+apart, there is no reason why they should not be), how large an addition
+would be annually made to the wealth of the country?  The truth is, a
+very considerable portion of the national wealth produced by Northern
+labor is taxed to defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of
+Southern property in Congress, and to maintain an army mainly for the
+protection of the slave-master against the dangerous tendencies of that
+property.
+
+In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors
+and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon
+as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the
+once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden
+of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of
+life.  The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers,
+became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and
+there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting
+painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave.
+In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times
+of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant
+harvests?  It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the
+culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with
+fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their
+slavery."
+
+And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon
+the soil of your own Virginia.  A traveller in your state, in
+contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that,
+"if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for
+reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken
+the land with ugliness."
+
+Is the rapid increase of a population of slaves in itself no evil?  In
+all the slave states the increase of the slaves is vastly more rapid than
+that of the whites or free blacks.  When we recollect that they are under
+no natural or moral restraint, careless of providing food or clothing for
+themselves or their children; when, too, we consider that they are raised
+as an article of profitable traffic, like the cattle of New England and
+the hogs of Kentucky; that it is a matter of interest, of dollars and
+cents, to the master that they should multiply as fast as possible, there
+is surely nothing at all surprising in the increase of their numbers.
+Would to heaven there were also nothing alarming!
+
+7.  Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave
+states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the
+citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to
+aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the
+insurrection of the slaves.
+
+Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state.  And Nature, when her
+eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore
+them to their first estate.
+
+All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point.  Need
+I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody
+insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua?
+Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century,
+Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last?  Need I call to mind the
+untold horrors of St.  Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its
+servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,--an open hell?
+Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,--the frequent slave
+insurrections of the South?  One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still
+be fresh in your recollection,--Southampton, with its fired dwellings and
+ghastly dead!  Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death
+struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the
+lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and
+beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!
+
+"The hour of emancipation," said Thomas Jefferson, "is advancing in the
+march of time.  It will come.  If not brought on by the generous energy
+of our own minds, it will come by the bloody process of St. Domingo!"
+
+To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but
+a few words to add.  They shall be those of truth and soberness.
+
+We regard the slave system in your section of the country as a great
+evil, moral and political,--an evil which, if left to itself for even a
+few years longer, will give the entire South into the hands of the
+blacks.
+
+The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two
+millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally,
+really, de facto, but still legally your property!  We acknowledge that
+you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this
+"property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage
+of that power.  For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law
+or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and
+the eternal laws of Nature.
+
+We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding
+states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be
+dangerous to themselves in time and eternity, and full of injustice to
+their slaves and to their brethren of the free states.
+
+Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the
+continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in
+the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called
+upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.
+
+New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the
+Constitution of the land.  Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens,
+while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men--brutal
+and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings,
+struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know
+that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the
+part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and
+heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by
+robbery and wrong?
+
+All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has
+Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave
+and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with
+us."
+
+Understand us, gentlemen.  We only ask to have the fearful necessity
+taken away from us of sustaining the wretched policy of slavery by moral
+influence or physical force.  We ask alone to be allowed to wash our
+hands of the blood of millions of your fellow-beings, the cry of whom is
+rising up as a swift witness unto God against us.
+
+8.  Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most
+confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made
+with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation
+would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.
+
+Awful as may be their estimate in time and eternity, I will not,
+gentlemen, dwell upon the priceless benefits of a conscience at rest, a
+soul redeemed from the all-polluting influences of slavery, and against
+which the cry of the laborer whose hire has been kept back by fraud does
+not ascend.  Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact
+that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God.  These are the
+old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away
+like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility.  In
+the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.
+
+A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify
+me in advancing this general proposition.
+
+Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or
+in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative
+expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable
+to the former.
+
+     [See Brougham's Colonial Policy.  Hodgdon's Letter to Jean Baptiste
+     Say.  Waleh's Brazil.  Official Letter of Hon.  Mr. Ward, from
+     Mexico.  Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery.  Franklin on The
+     Peopling of Countries.  Ramsay's Essay.  Botham's Sugar Cultivation
+     in Batavia.  Marsden's History of Sumatra.  Coxe's Travels.  Dr.
+     Anderson's Observations on Slavery.  Storch's Political Economy.
+     Adam Smith.  J. Jeremies' Essays.  Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.]
+
+Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered.  Standing on your own ground of
+expediency, I am ready to defend my position.
+
+I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation.  And here,
+gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed
+consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!
+
+The facts, gentlemen!  In God's name, bring out your facts!  If slavery
+is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
+everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
+the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.
+
+Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics?  In
+Hayti?  In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands?
+Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears?  Can you find any
+excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by
+injury and conciliated by kindness?  No, gentlemen; the dangers of
+slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning.
+But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy,"
+exist only in your imaginations.  You cannot produce one fact in
+corroboration of your fears.  You cannot point to the stain of a single
+drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.
+
+I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery.  In my next
+letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
+able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
+"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.
+
+In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.
+
+HAVERHILL, MASS., 22d 7th Mo., 1833.
+
+
+
+
+                                   II.
+
+The abolitionists of the North have been grossly misrepresented.  In
+attacking the system of slavery, they have never recommended any measure
+or measures conflicting with the Constitution of the United States.
+
+They have never sought to excite or encourage a spirit of rebellion among
+the slaves: on the contrary, they would hold any such attempt, by
+whomsoever made, in utter and stern abhorrence.
+
+All the leading abolitionists of my acquaintance are, from principle,
+opposed to war of all kinds, believing that the benefits of no war
+whatever can compensate for the sacrifice of one human life by violence.
+
+Consequently, they would be the first to deprecate any physical
+interference with your slave system on the part of the general
+government.
+
+They are, without exception, opposed to any political interposition of
+the government, in regard to slavery as it exists in the states.  For,
+although they feel and see that the canker of the moral disease is
+affecting all parts of the confederacy, they believe that the remedy lies
+with yourselves alone.  Any such interference they would consider
+unlawful and unconstitutional; and the exercise of unconstitutional
+power, although sanctioned by the majority of a republican government,
+they believe to be a tyranny as monstrous and as odious as the despotism
+of a Turkish Sultan.
+
+Having made this disclaimer on the part of myself and my friends, let me
+inquire from whence this charge of advocating the interference of the
+general government with the sovereign jurisdiction of the states has
+arisen?  Will you, gentlemen, will the able editors of the United States
+Telegraph and the Columbian Telescope, explain?  For myself, I have
+sought in vain among the writings of our "Northern Enthusiasts," and
+among the speeches of the Northern statesmen and politicians, for some
+grounds for the accusation.
+
+The doctrine, such as it is, does not belong to us.  I think it may be
+traced home to the South, to Virginia, to her Convention of 1829, to the
+speech of Ex-President Monroe, on the white basis question.
+
+"As to emancipation," said that distinguished son of your state, "if ever
+that should take place, it cannot be done by the state; it must be done
+by the Union."
+
+Again, "If emancipation can ever be effected, it can only be done with
+the aid of the general government."
+
+Gentlemen, you are welcome to your doctrine.  It has no advocates among
+the abolitionists of New England.
+
+We aim to overthrow slavery by the moral influence of an enlightened
+public sentiment;
+
+By a clear and fearless exposition of the guilt of holding property in
+man;
+
+By analyzing the true nature of slavery, and boldly rebuking sin;
+
+By a general dissemination of the truths of political economy, in regard
+to free and slave labor;
+
+By appeals from the pulpit to the consciences of men;
+
+By the powerful influence of the public press;
+
+By the formation of societies whose object shall be to oppose the
+principle of slavery by such means as are consistent with our obligations
+to law, religion, and humanity;
+
+By elevating, by means of education and sympathy, the character of the
+free people of color among us.
+
+Our testimony against slavery is the same which has uniformly, and with
+so much success, been applied to prevailing iniquity in all ages of the
+world, the truths of divine revelation.
+
+Believing that there can be nothing in the Providence of God to which His
+holy and eternal law is not strictly applicable, we maintain that no
+circumstances can justify the slave-holder in a continuance of his
+system.
+
+That the fact that this system did not originate with the present
+generation is no apology for retaining it, inasmuch as crime cannot be
+entailed; and no one is under a necessity of sinning because others have
+done so before him;
+
+That the domestic slave-trade is as repugnant to the laws of God, and
+should be as odious in the eyes of a Christian community, as the foreign;
+
+That the black child born in a slave plantation is not "an entailed
+article of property;" and that the white man who makes of that child a
+slave is a thief and a robber, stealing the child as the sea pirate stole
+his father!
+
+We do not talk of gradual abolition, because, as Christians, we find no
+authority for advocating a gradual relinquishment of sin.  We say to
+slaveholders, "Repent now, to-day, immediately;" just as we say to the
+intemperate, "Break off from your vice at once; touch not, taste not,
+handle not, from henceforth forever."
+
+Besides, the plan of gradual abolition has been tried in this country and
+the West Indies, and found wanting.  It has been in operation in our
+slave states ever since the Declaration of Independence, and its results
+are before the nation.  Let us see.
+
+THE ABOLITIONISTS  79
+
+In 1790 there were in the slave states south of the Potomac and the Ohio
+20,415 free blacks.  Their increase for the ten years following was at
+the rate of sixty per cent., their number in 1800 being 32,604.  In 1810
+there were 58,046, an increase of seventy-five per cent.  This
+comparatively large increase was, in a great measure, owing to the free
+discussions going on in England and in this country on the subject of the
+slave-trade and the rights of man.  The benevolent impulse extended to
+the slave-masters, and manumissions were frequent.  But the salutary
+impression died away; the hand of oppression closed again upon its
+victims; and the increase for the period of twenty years, 1810 to 1830,
+was only seventy-seven per cent., about one half of what it was in the
+ten years from 1800 to 1810.  And this is the practical result of the
+much-lauded plan of gradual abolition.
+
+In 1790, in the states above mentioned, there were only 550,604 slaves,
+but in 1830 there were 1,874,098!  And this, too, is gradual abolition.
+
+"What, then!" perhaps you will ask, "do you expect to overthrow our whole
+slave system at once? to turn loose to-day two millions of negroes?"
+
+No, gentlemen; we expect no such thing.  Enough for us if in the spirit
+of fraternal duty we point to your notice the commands of God; if we urge
+you by every cherished remembrance of common sacrifices upon a common
+altar, by every consideration of humanity, justice, and expediency, to
+begin now, without a moment's delay, to break away from your miserable
+system,--to begin the work of moral reformation, as God commands you to
+begin, not as selfishness, or worldly policy, or short-sighted political
+expediency, may chance to dictate.
+
+Such is our doctrine of immediate emancipation.  A doctrine founded on
+God's eternal truth, plain, simple, and perfect,--the doctrine of
+immediate, unprocrastinated repentance applied to the sin of slavery.
+
+Of this doctrine, and of our plan for crrrying it into effect, I have
+given an exposition, with the most earnest regard to the truth.  Does
+either embrace anything false, fanatical, or unconstitutional?  Do they
+afford a reasonable protext for your fierce denunciations of your
+Northern brethren?  Do they furnish occasion for your newspaper chivalry,
+your stereotyped demonstrations of Southern magnanimity and Yankee
+meanness?--things, let me say, unworthy of Virginians, degrading to
+yourselves, insulting to us.
+
+Gentlemen, it is too late for Virginia, with all her lofty intellect and
+nobility of feeling, to defend and advocate the principle of slavery.
+The death-like silence which for nearly two centuries brooded over her
+execrable system has been broken; light is pouring in upon the minds of
+her citizens; truth is abroad, "searching out and overturning the lies of
+the age."  A moral reformation has been already awakened, and it cannot
+now be drugged to sleep by the sophistries of detected sin.  A thousand
+intelligences are at work in her land; a thousand of her noblest hearts
+are glowing with the redeeming spirit of that true philanthropy, which is
+moving all the world.  No, gentlemen; light is spreading from the hills
+of Western Virginia to the extremest East.  You cannot arrest its
+progress.  It is searching the consciences; it is exercising the reason;
+it is appealing to the noblest characteristics of intelligent Virginians.
+It is no foreign influence.  From every abandoned plantation where the
+profitless fern and thistle have sprung up under the heel of slavery;
+from every falling mansion of the master, through whose windows the fox
+may look out securely, and over whose hearth-stone the thin grass is
+creeping, a warning voice is sinking deeply into all hearts not imbruted
+by avarice, indolence, and the lust of power.
+
+Abolitionist as I am, the intellectual character of Virginia has no
+warmer admirer than myself.  Her great names, her moral trophies, the
+glories of her early day, the still proud and living testimonials of her
+mental power, I freely acknowledge and strongly appreciate.  And, believe
+me, it is with no other feelings than those of regret and heartfelt
+sorrow that I speak plainly of her great error, her giant crime, a crime
+which is visibly calling down upon her the curse of an offended Deity.
+But I cannot forget that upon some of the most influential and highly
+favored of her sons rests the responsibility at the present time of
+sustaining this fearful iniquity.  Blind to the signs of the times,
+careless of the wishes of thousands of their white fellow-citizens and of
+the manifold wrongs of the black man, they have dared to excuse, defend,
+nay, eulogize, the black abominations of slavery.
+
+Against the tottering ark of the idol these strong men have placed their
+shoulders.  That ark must fall; that idol must be cast down; what, then,
+will be the fate of their supporters?
+
+When the Convention of 1829 had gathered in its splendid galaxy of
+talents the great names of Virginia, the friends of civil liberty turned
+their eyes towards it in the earnest hope and confidence that it would
+adopt some measures in regard to slavery worthy of the high character of
+its members and of the age in which they lived.  I need not say how deep
+and bitter was our disappointment.  Western Virginia indeed spoke on that
+occasion, through some of her delegates, the words of truth and humanity.
+But their counsels and warnings were unavailing; the majority turned away
+to listen to the bewildering eloquence of Leigh and Upshur and Randolph,
+as they desecrated their great intellects to the defence of that system
+of oppression under which the whole land is groaning.  The memorial of
+the citizens of Augusta County, bearing the signatures of many slave-
+holders, placed the evils of slavery in a strong light before the
+convention.  Its facts and arguments could only be arbitrarily thrust
+aside and wantonly disregarded; they could not be disproved.
+
+"In a political point of view," says the memorial, "we esteem slavery an
+evil greater than the aggregate of all the other evils which beset us,
+and we are perfectly willing to bear our proportion of the burden of
+removing it.  We ask, further, What is the evil of any such alarm as our
+proposition may excite in minds unnecessarily jealous compared with that
+of the fatal catastrophe which ultimately awaits our country, and the
+general depravation of manners which slavery has already produced and is
+producing?"
+
+I cannot forbear giving one more extract from this paper.  The
+memorialists state their belief
+
+"That the labor of slaves is vastly less productive than that of freemen;
+that it therefore requires a larger space to furnish subsistence for a
+given number of the former than of the latter; that the employment of the
+former necessarily excludes that of the latter; that hence our
+population, white and black, averages seventeen, when it ought, and would
+under other circumstances, average, as in New England, at least sixty to
+a square mile; that the possession and management of slaves form a source
+of endless vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the
+farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of
+steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces
+idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that
+the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is
+bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the
+sparseness of population either prevent the institution of schools
+throughout the country, or keep them in a most languid and inefficient
+condition; and that the same causes most obviously paralyze all our
+schemes and efforts for the useful improvement of the country."
+
+Gentlemen, you have only to look around you to know that this picture has
+been drawn with the pencil of truth.  What has made desolate and sterile
+one of the loveliest regions of the whole earth?  What mean the signs of
+wasteful neglect, of long improvidence around you: the half-finished
+mansion already falling into decay, the broken-down enclosures, the weed-
+grown garden the slave hut open to the elements, the hillsides galled and
+naked, the fields below them run over with brier and fern?  Is all this
+in the ordinary course of nature?  Has man husbanded well the good gifts
+of God, and are they nevertheless passing from him, by a process of
+deterioration over which he has no control?  No, gentlemen.  For more
+than two centuries the cold and rocky soil of New England has yielded its
+annual tribute, and it still lies green and luxuriant beneath the sun of
+our brief summer.  The nerved and ever-exercised arm of free labor has
+changed a landscape wild and savage as the night scenery of Salvator Rosa
+into one of pastoral beauty,--the abode of independence and happiness.
+Under a similar system of economy and industry, how would Virginia, rich
+with Nature's prodigal blessings, have worn at this time over all her
+territory the smiles of plenty, the charms of rewarded industry!  What a
+change would have been manifest in your whole character!  Freemen in the
+place of slaves, industry, reputable  economy, a virtue, dissipation
+despised, emigration unnecessary!
+
+     [A late Virginia member of Congress described the Virginia slave-
+     holder as follows: "He is an Eastern Virginian whose good fortune it
+     has been to have been born wealthy, and to have become a profound
+     politician at twenty-one without study or labor.  This individual,
+     from birth and habit, is above all labor and exertion.  He never
+     moves a finger for any useful purpose; he lives on the labor of his
+     slaves, and even this labor he is too proud and indolent to direct
+     in person.  While he is at his ease, a mercenary with a whip in his
+     hand drives his slaves in the field.  Their dinner, consisting of a
+     few scraps and lean bones, is eaten in the burning sun.  They have
+     no time to go to a shade and be refreshed such easement is reserved
+     for the horses"!--Speech of Hon. P. P. Doddridge in House of
+     Delegates, 1829.]
+
+All this, you will say, comes too late; the curse is upon you, the evil
+in the vitals of your state, the desolation widening day by day.  No, it
+is not too late.  There are elements in the Virginian character capable
+of meeting the danger, extreme as it is, and turning it aside.  Could you
+but forget for a time partisan contest and unprofitable political
+speculations, you might successfully meet the dangerous exigencies of
+your state with those efficient remedies which the spirit of the age
+suggests; you might, and that too without pecuniary loss, relinquish your
+claims to human beings as slaves, and employ them as free laborers, under
+such restraint and supervision as their present degraded condition may
+render necessary.  In the language of one of your own citizens, "it is
+useless for you to attempt to linger on the skirts of the age which is
+departed.  The action of existing causes and principles is steady and
+progressive.  It cannot be retarded, unless you would blow out all the
+moral lights around you; and if you refuse to keep up with it, you will
+be towed in the wake, whether you will or not."--[Speech in Virginia
+legislature, 1832.]
+
+The late noble example of the eloquent statesman of Roanoke, the
+manumission of his slaves, speaks volumes to his political friends.  In
+the last hour of existence, when his soul was struggling from his broken
+tenement, his latest effort was the confirmation of this generous act of
+a former period.  Light rest the turf upon him beneath his own
+patrimonial oaks!  The prayers of many hearts made happy by his
+benevolence shall linger over his grave and bless it.
+
+Gentlemen, in concluding these letters, let me once more assure you that
+I entertain towards you and your political friends none other than kindly
+feelings.  If I have spoken at all with apparent harshness, it has been
+of principles rather than of men.  But I deprecate no censure.  Conscious
+of the honest and patriotic motives which have prompted their avowal, I
+cheerfully leave my sentiments to their fate.  Despised and contemned as
+they may be, I believe they cannot be gainsaid.  Sustained by the truth
+as it exists in Nature and Revelation, sanctioned by the prevailing
+spirit of the age, they are yet destined to work out the political and
+moral regeneration of our country.  The opposition which they meet with
+does not dishearten me.  In the lofty confidence of John Milton, I
+believe that "though all the winds of doctrine be let loose upon the
+earth, so Truth be among them, we need not fear.  Let her and Falsehood
+grapple; whoever knew her to be put to the worst in a free and open
+encounter?"
+
+HAVERHILL, MASS., 29th of 7th Mo., 1833.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL.
+
+                    HAVERHILL, 10th of 1st Mo., 1834.
+
+SAMUEL E. SEWALL, ESQ.,
+Secretary New England A. S. Society
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--I regret that circumstances beyond my control will not
+allow of my attendance at the annual meeting of the New England Anti-
+Slavery Society.
+
+I need not say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart
+and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical
+slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual
+slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered
+as with iron the moral energies and intellectual strength of New England.
+
+For what is slavery, after all, but fear,--fear, forcing mind and body
+into unnatural action?  And it matters little whether it be the terror of
+the slave-whip on the body, or of the scourge of popular opinion upon the
+inner man.
+
+We all know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the
+country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious
+name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer.  And how familiar have the
+significant epithets of "white slave" and "dough-face" become!
+
+I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied.  Have we not been
+told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges,
+divines, and politicians, that we, the free people of New England, have
+no right to discuss the subject of slavery?  Freemen, and no right to
+suggest the duty or the policy of a practical adherence to the doctrines
+of that immortal declaration upon which our liberties are founded!
+Christians, enjoying perfect liberty of conscience, yet possessing no
+right to breathe one whisper against a system of adultery and blood,
+which is filling the whole land with abomination and blasphemy!  And this
+craven sentiment is echoed by the very men whose industry is taxed to
+defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of property, vested in
+beings fashioned in the awful image of their Maker; by men whose hard
+earnings aid in supporting a standing army mainly for the protection of
+slaveholding indolence; by men who are liable at any moment to be called
+from the field and workshop to put down by force the ever upward
+tendencies of oppressed humanity, to aid the negro-breeder and the negro-
+trader in the prosecution of a traffic most horrible in the eye of God,
+to wall round with their bayonets two millions of colored Americans,
+children of a common Father and heirs of a common eternity, while the
+broken chain is riveted anew and the thrown-off fetter replaced.
+
+I am for the abolition of this kind of slavery.  It must be accomplished
+before we can hope to abolish the negro slavery of the country.  The
+people of the free states, with a perfect understanding of their own
+rights and a sacred respect for the rights of others, must put their
+strong shoulders to the work of moral reform, and our statesmen, orators,
+and politicians will follow, floating as they must with the tendency of
+the current, the mere indices of popular sentiment.  They cannot be
+expected to lead in this matter.  They are but instruments in the hands
+of the people for good or evil:--
+
+          "A breath can make them, as a breath has made."
+
+Be it our task to give tone and direction to these instruments; to turn
+the tide of popular feeling into the pure channels of justice; to break
+up the sinful silence of the nation; to bring the vaunted Christianity of
+our age and country to the test of truth; to try the strength and purity
+of our republicanism.  If the Christianity we profess has not power to
+pull down the strongholds of prejudice, and overcome hate, and melt the
+heart of oppression, it is not of God.  If our republicanism is based on
+other foundation than justice and humanity, let it fall forever.
+
+No better evidence is needed of the suicidal policy of this nation than
+the death-like silence on the subject of slavery which pervades its
+public documents.  Who that peruses the annual messages of the national
+executive would, from their perusal alone, conjecture that such an evil
+as slavery had existence among us?  Have the people reflected upon the
+cause of this silence?  The evil has grown to be too monstrous to be
+questioned.  Its very magnitude has sealed the lips of the rulers.
+Uneasily, and troubled with its dream of guilt, the nation sleeps on.
+The volcano is beneath.  God is above us.
+
+At every step of our peaceful and legal agitation of this subject we are
+met with one grave objection.  We are told that the system which we are
+conscientiously opposing is recognized and protected by the Constitution.
+For all the benefits of our fathers' patriotism--and they are neither few
+nor trifling--let us be grateful to God and to their memories.  But it
+should not be forgotten that the same constitutional compact which now
+sanctions slavery guaranteed protection for twenty years to the foreign
+slave-trade.  It threw the shield of its "sanctity" around the now
+universally branded pirate.  It legalized the most abhorrent system of
+robbery which ever cursed the family of man.
+
+During those years of sinful compromise the crime of man-robbery less
+atrocious than at present?  Because the Constitution permitted, in that
+single crime, the violation of all the commandments of God, was that
+violation less terrible to earth or offensive to heaven?
+
+No one now defends that "constitutional" slavetrade.  Loaded with the
+curse of God and man, it stands amidst minor iniquities, like Satan in
+Pandemonium, preeminent and monstrous in crime.
+
+And if the slave-trade has become thus odious, what must be the fate,
+erelong, of its parent, slavery?  If the mere consequence be thus
+blackening under the execration of all the world, who shall measure the
+dreadful amount of infamy which must finally settle on the cause itself?
+The titled ecclesiastic and the ambitious statesman should have their
+warning on this point.  They should know that public opinion is steadily
+turning to the light of truth.  The fountains are breaking up around us,
+and the great deep will soon be in motion.  A stern, uncompromising, and
+solemn spirit of inquiry is abroad.  It cannot be arrested, and its
+result may be easily foreseen.  It will not long be popular to talk of
+the legality of soul-murder, the constitutionality of man-robbery.
+
+One word in relation to our duty to our Southern brethren.  If we detest
+their system of slavery in our hearts, let us not play the hypocrite with
+our lips.  Let us not pay so poor a compliment to their understandings as
+to suppose that we can deceive them into a compliance with our views of
+justice by ambiguous sophistry, and overcome their sinful practices and
+established prejudices by miserable stratagem.  Let us not first do
+violence to our consciences by admitting their moral right to property in
+man, and then go to work like so many vagabond pedlers to cheat them out
+of it.  They have a right to complain of such treatment.  It is mean, and
+wicked, and dishonorable.  Let us rather treat our Southern friends as
+intelligent and high-minded men, who, whatever may be their faults,
+despise unmanly artifice, and loathe cant, and abhor hypocrisy.
+Connected with them, not by political ties alone, but by common
+sacrifices and mutual benefits, let us seek to expostulate with them
+earnestly and openly, to gain at least their confidence in our sincerity,
+to appeal to their consciences, reason, and interests; and, using no
+other weapons than those of moral truth, contend fearlessly with the evil
+system they are cherishing.  And if, in an immediate compliance with the
+strict demands of justice, they should need our aid and sympathy, let us
+open to them our hearts and our purses.  But in the name of sincerity,
+and for the love of peace and the harmony of the Union, let there be no
+more mining and countermining, no more blending of apology with
+denunciation, no more Janus-like systems of reform, with one face for the
+South and another for the North.
+
+If we steadily adhere to the principles upon which we have heretofore
+acted, if we present our naked hearts to the view of all, if we meet the
+threats and violence of our misguided enemies with the bare bosom and
+weaponless hand of innocence, may we not trust that the arm of our
+Heavenly Father will be under us, to strengthen and support us?  And
+although we may not be able to save our country from the awful judgment
+she is provoking, though the pillars of the Union fall and all the
+elements of her greatness perish, still let it be our part to rally
+around the standard of truth and justice, to wash our hands of evil, to
+keep our own souls unspotted, and, bearing our testimony and lifting our
+warning voices to the last, leave the event in the hands of a righteous
+God.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
+
+     In 1837 Isaac Knapp printed Letters from John Quincy Adams to his
+     Constituents of the Twelfth Congressional District in Massachusetts,
+     to which is added his Speech in Congress, delivered February 9,
+     1837, and the following stood as an introduction to the pamphlet.
+
+THE following letters have been published, within a few weeks, in the
+Quincy (Mass.) 'Patriot'.  Notwithstanding the great importance of the
+subjects which they discuss, the intense interest which they are
+calculated to awaken throughout this commonwealth and the whole country,
+and the exalted reputation of their author as a profound statesman and
+powerful writer, they are as yet hardly known beyond the limits of the
+constituency to whom they are particularly addressed.  The reason of this
+is sufficiently obvious.  John Quincy Adams belongs to neither of the
+prominent political parties, fights no partisan battles, and cannot be
+prevailed upon to sacrifice truth and principle upon the altar of party
+expediency and interest.  Hence neither party is interested in defending
+his course, or in giving him an opportunity to defend himself.  But
+however systematic may be the efforts of mere partisan presses to
+suppress and hold back from the public eye the powerful and triumphant
+vindication of the Right of Petition, the graphic delineation of the
+slavery spirit in Congress, and the humbling disclosure of Northern
+cowardice and treachery, contained in these letters, they are destined to
+exert a powerful influence upon the public mind.  They will constitute
+one of the most striking pages in the history of our times.  They will be
+read with avidity in the North and in the South, and throughout Europe.
+Apart from the interest excited by the subjects under discussion, and
+viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest
+intellectual efforts of their author.  Their sarcasm is Junius-like,--
+cold, keen, unsparing.  In boldness, directness, and eloquent appeal,
+they will bear comparison with O'Connell's celebrated 'Letters to the
+Reformers of Great Britain'.  They are the offspring of an intellect
+unshorn of its primal strength, and combining the ardor of youth with the
+experience of age.
+
+The disclosure made in these letters of the slavery influence exerted in
+Congress over the representatives of the free states, of the manner in
+which the rights of freemen have been bartered for Southern votes, or
+basely yielded to the threats of men educated in despotism, and stamped
+by the free indulgence of unrestrained tyranny with the "odious
+peculiarities" of slavery, is painful and humiliating in the extreme.  It
+will be seen that, in the great struggle for and against the Right of
+Petition, an account of which is given in the following pages, their
+author stood, in a great measure, alone and unsupported by his Northern
+colleagues.  On his "gray, discrowned head" the entire fury of slave-
+holding arrogance and wrath was expended.  He stood alone, beating back,
+with his aged and single arm, the tide which would have borne down and
+overwhelmed a less sturdy and determined spirit.
+
+We need not solicit for these letters, and the speech which accompanies
+them, a thorough perusal.  They deserve, and we trust will receive, a
+circulation throughout the entire country.  They will meet a cordial
+welcome from every lover of human liberty, from every friend of justice
+and the rights of man, irrespective of color or condition.  The
+principles which they defend, the sentiments which they express, are
+those of Massachusetts, as recently asserted, almost unanimously, by her
+legislature.  In both branches of that body, during the discussion of the
+subject of slavery and the right of petition, the course of the ex-
+President was warmly and eloquently commended.  Massachusetts will
+sustain her tried and faithful representative; and the time is not far
+distant when the best and worthiest citizens of the entire North will
+proffer him their thanks for his noble defence of their rights as
+freemen, and of the rights of the slave as a man.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY.
+
+     From a review of a pro-slavery pamphlet by "Evangelicus" in the
+     Boston Emancipator in 1843.
+
+THE second part of the essay is occupied in proving that the slavery in
+the Roman world, at the time of our Saviour, was similar in all essential
+features to American slavery at the present day; and the third and
+concluding part is devoted to an examination of the apostolical
+directions to slaves and masters, as applicable to the same classes in
+the United States.  He thinks the command to give to servants that which
+is just and equal means simply that the masters should treat their slaves
+with equity, and that while the servant is to be profitable to the
+master, the latter is bound in "a fair and equitable manner to provide
+for the slave's subsistence and happiness."  Although he professes to
+believe that a faithful adherence to Scriptural injunctions on this point
+would eventually terminate in the emancipation of the slaves, he thinks
+it not necessary to inquire whether the New Testament does or does not
+"tolerate slavery as a permanent institution"!
+
+From the foregoing synopsis it will be seen at once that whatever may
+have been the motives of the writer, the effect of his publication, so
+far as it is at all felt, will be to strengthen the oppressor in his
+guilt, and hold him back from the performance of his immediate duty in
+respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of
+that class who, according to "Evangelicus," have "no personal
+acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political
+connections of their Southern fellow-citizens."  We look upon it only as
+another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and
+criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of
+Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of
+human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine
+displeasure.  There is a grave-stone coldness about it.  The author
+manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra.
+No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb,
+chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the
+grave of Lazarus
+
+          "Wept, and forgot His power to save;"
+
+no outburst of that indignant reproof with which the Divine Master
+rebuked the devourers of widows' houses and the oppressors of the poor is
+called forth by the writer's stoical contemplation of the tyranny of his
+"Christian brethren" at the South.
+
+"It is not necessary," says Evangelicus, "to inquire whether the New
+Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution."  And
+this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its
+abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery,
+including within itself a violation of every command uttered amidst the
+thunders of Sinai, a system which has filled the whole South with the
+oppression of Egypt and the pollutions of Sodom, is declared to be an
+institution of the Most High.  With all due deference to the author, we
+tell him, and we tell the church, North and South, that this question
+must be met.  Once more we repeat the solemn inquiry which has been
+already made in our columns, "Is the Bible to enslave the world?"  Has it
+been but a vain dream of ours that the mission of the Author of the
+gospel was to undo the heavy burdens, to open the prison doors, and to
+break the yoke of the captive?  Let Andover and Princeton answer.  If the
+gospel does sanction the vilest wrong which man can inflict upon his
+fellow-man, if it does rivet the chains which humanity, left to itself,
+would otherwise cast off, then, in humanity's name, let it perish forever
+from the face of the earth.  Let the Bible societies dissolve; let not
+another sheet issue from their presses.  Scatter not its leaves abroad
+over the dark places of the earth; they are not for the healing of the
+nations.  Leave rather to the Persian his Zendavesta, to the Mussulman
+his Koran.  We repeat it, this question must be met.  Already we have
+heard infidelity exulting over the astute discoveries of bespectacled
+theological professors, that the great Head of the Christian Church
+tolerated the horrible atrocities of Roman slavery, and that His most
+favored apostle combined slave-catching with his missionary labors.  And
+why should it not exult?  Fouler blasphemy than this was never uttered.
+A more monstrous libel upon the Divine Author of Christianity was never
+propagated by Paine or Voltaire, Kneeland or Owen; and we are constrained
+to regard the professor of theology or the doctor of divinity who tasks
+his sophistry and learning in an attempt to show that the Divine Mind
+looks with complacency upon chattel slavery as the most dangerous enemy
+with which Christianity has to contend.  The friends of pure and
+undefiled religion must awake to this danger.  The Northern church must
+shake itself clean from its present connection with blasphemers and
+slave-holders, or perish with them.
+
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS SLAVERY
+
+
+     Addressed to the Liberty Party Convention at New Bedford in
+     September, 1843.
+
+I HAVE just received your kind invitation to attend the meeting of the
+Liberty Party in New Bedford on the 2d of next month.  Believe me, it is
+with no ordinary feelings of regret that I find myself under the
+necessity of foregoing the pleasure of meeting with you on that occasion.
+But I need not say to you, and through you to the convention, that you
+have my hearty sympathy.
+
+I am with the Liberty Party because it is the only party in the country
+which is striving openly and honestly to reduce to practice the great
+truths which lie at the foundation of our republic: all men created
+equal, endowed with rights inalienable; the security of these rights the
+only just object of government; the right of the people to alter or
+modify government until this great object is attained.  Precious and
+glorious truths!  Sacred in the sight of their Divine Author, grateful
+and beneficent to suffering humanity, essential elements of that ultimate
+and universal government of which God is laying the strong and wide
+foundations, turning and overturning, until He whose right it is shall
+rule.  The voice which calls upon us to sustain them is the voice of God.
+In the eloquent language of the lamented Myron Holley, the man who first
+lifted up the standard of the Liberty Party: "He calls upon us to sustain
+these truths in the recorded voice of the holy of ancient times.  He
+calls us to sustain them in the sound as of many waters and mighty
+thunderings rising from the fields of Europe, converted into one vast
+Aceldama by the exertions of despots to suppress them; in the persuasive
+history of the best thoughts and boldest deeds of all our brave, self-
+sacrificing ancestors; in the tender, heart-reaching whispers of our
+children, preparing to suffer or enjoy the future, as we leave it for
+them; in the broken and disordered but moving accents of half our race
+yet groping in darkness and galled by the chains of bondage.  He calls
+upon us to sustain them by the solemn and considerate use of all the
+powers with which He has invested us."  In a time of almost universal
+political scepticism, in the midst of a pervading and growing unbelief in
+the great principles enunciated in the revolutionary declaration, the
+Liberty Party has dared to avow its belief in these truths, and to carry
+them into action as far as it has the power.  It is a protest against the
+political infidelity of the day, a recurrence to first principles, a
+summons once more to that deserted altar upon which our fathers laid
+their offerings.
+
+It may be asked why it is that a party resting upon such broad principles
+is directing its exclusive exertions against slavery.  "Are there not
+other great interests?" ask all manner of Whig and Democrat editors and
+politicians.  "Consider, for instance," say the Democrats, "the mighty
+question which is agitating us, whether a 'Northern man with Southern
+principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula
+shall be President."  "Or look at us," say the Whigs, "deprived of our
+inalienable right to office by this Tyler-Calhoun administration.  And
+bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to
+vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves,
+and maintain that 'two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
+sanctified negro slavery,' is, at the same time, the champion of Greek
+liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short,
+of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home."
+
+Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one
+sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your
+subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them.  Nay,
+farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
+authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
+been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
+first object the breaking of these chains.
+
+What is slavery?  For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
+Party depend for its justification.
+
+The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
+articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
+"chattels personal."  The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
+to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
+of master and slave.  The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
+his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
+one and the same tenure.  The profit of the master is the great end of
+the slave's existence.  For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
+for in sickness.  He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself.  He
+cannot use his own body for his own benefit.  His very personality is
+destroyed.  He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
+the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,
+a machine moved not by his own will, but by another's.  In him the awful
+distinction between a person and a thing is annihilated: he is thrust
+down from the place which God and Nature assigned him, from the equal
+companionship of rational intelligence's,--a man herded with beasts, an
+immortal nature classed with the wares of the merchant!
+
+The relations of parent and child, master and apprentice, government and
+subject, are based upon the principle of benevolence, reciprocal
+benefits, and the wants of human society; relations which sacredly
+respect the rights and legacies which God has given to all His rational
+creatures.  But slavery exists only by annihilating or monopolizing these
+rights and legacies.  In every other modification of society, man's
+personal ownership remains secure.  He may be oppressed, deprived of
+privileges, loaded with burdens, hemmed about with legal disabilities,
+his liberties restrained.  But, through all, the right to his own body
+and soul remains inviolate.  He retains his inherent, original possession
+of himself.  Even crime cannot forfeit it, for that law which destroys
+his personality makes void its own claims upon him as a moral agent; and
+the power to punish ceases with the accountability of the criminal.  He
+may suffer and die under the penalties of the law, but he suffers as a
+man, he perishes as a man, and not as a thing.  To the last moments of
+his existence the rights of a moral agent are his; they go with him to
+the grave; they constitute the ground of his accountability at the bar of
+infinite justice,--rights fixed, eternal, inseparable; attributes of all
+rational intelligence in time and eternity; the same in essence, and
+differing in degree only, with those of the highest moral being, of God
+himself.
+
+Slavery alone lays its grasp upon the right of personal ownership, that
+foundation right, the removal of which uncreates the man; a right which
+God himself could not take away without absolving the being thus deprived
+of all moral accountability; and so far as that being is concerned,
+making sin and holiness, crime and virtue, words without significance,
+and the promises and sanctions of revelation, dreams.  Hence, the
+crowning horror of slavery, that which lifts it above all other
+iniquities, is not that it usurps the prerogatives of Deity, but that it
+attempts that which even He who has said, "All souls are mine," cannot
+do, without breaking up the foundations of His moral government.  Slavery
+is, in fact, a struggle with the Almighty for dominion over His rational
+creatures.  It is leagued with the powers of darkness, in wresting man
+from his Maker.  It is blasphemy lifting brazen brow and violent hand to
+heaven, attempting a reversal of God's laws.  Man claiming the right to
+uncreate his brother; to undo that last and most glorious work, which God
+himself pronounced good, amidst the rejoicing hosts of heaven!  Man
+arrogating to himself the right to change, for his own selfish purposes,
+the beautiful order of created existences; to pluck the crown of an
+immortal nature, scarce lower than that of angels, from the brow of his
+brother; to erase the God-like image and superscription stamped upon him
+by the hand of his Creator, and to write on the despoiled and desecrated
+tablet, "A chattel personal!"
+
+This, then, is slavery.  Nature, with her thousand voices, cries out
+against it.  Against it, divine revelation launches its thunders.  The
+voice of God condemns it in the deep places of the human heart.  The woes
+and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural
+justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the
+desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil
+uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the
+burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand
+outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which
+robs him of his body, and God of his soul.  These are but the natural
+results and outward demonstrations of slavery, the crystallizations from
+the chattel principle.
+
+It is against this system, in its active operation upon three millions of
+our countrymen, that the Liberty Party is, for the present, directing all
+its efforts.  With such an object well may we be "men of one idea."  Nor
+do we neglect "other great interests," for all are colored and controlled
+by slavery, and the removal of this disastrous influence would most
+effectually benefit them.
+
+Political action is the result and immediate object of moral suasion on
+this subject.  Action, action, is the spirit's means of progress, its
+sole test of rectitude, its only source of happiness.  And should not
+decided action follow our deep convictions of the wrong of slavery?
+Shall we denounce the slave-holders of the states, while we retain our
+slavery in the District of Columbia?  Shall we pray that the God of the
+oppressed will turn the hearts of "the rulers" in South Carolina, while
+we, the rulers of the District, refuse to open the prisons and break up
+the slave-markets on its ten miles square?  God keep us from such
+hypocrisy!  Everybody now professes to be opposed to slavery.  The
+leaders of the two great political parties are grievously concerned lest
+the purity of the antislavery enterprise will suffer in its connection
+with politics.  In the midst of grossest pro-slavery action, they are
+full of anti-slavery sentiment.  They love the cause, but, on the whole,
+think it too good for this world.  They would keep it sublimated, aloft,
+out of vulgar reach or use altogether, intangible as Magellan's clouds.
+Everybody will join us in denouncing slavery, in the abstract; not a
+faithless priest nor politician will oppose us; abandon action, and
+forsooth we can have an abolition millennium; the wolf shall lie down
+with the lamb, while slavery in practice clanks, in derision, its three
+millions of unbroken chains.  Our opponents have no fear of the harmless
+spectre of an abstract idea.  They dread it only when it puts on the
+flesh and sinews of a practical reality, and lifts its right arm in the
+strength which God giveth to do as well as theorize.
+
+As honest men, then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men
+engaged in a great and solemn cause.  Not by processions and idle parades
+and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can
+a cause like ours be carried onward.  Leave these to parties contending
+for office, as the "spoils of victory."  We need no disguises, nor false
+pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to present before our fellow-
+countrymen the holy truths of freedom, in their unadorned and native
+beauty.  Dark as the present may seem, let us remember with hearty
+confidence that truth and right are destined to triumph.  Let us blot out
+the word "discouragement" from the anti-slavery vocabulary.  Let the
+enemies of freedom be discouraged; let the advocates of oppression
+despair; but let those who grapple with wrong and falsehood, in the name
+of God and in the power of His truth, take courage.  Slavery must die.
+The Lord hath spoken it.  The vials of His hot displeasure, like those
+which chastised the nations in the Apocalyptic vision, are smoking even
+now, above its "habitations of cruelty."  It can no longer be borne with
+by Heaven.  Universal humanity cries out against it.  Let us work, then,
+to hasten its downfall, doing whatsoever our hands find to do, "with all
+our might."
+
+October, 1843.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY.
+
+                                 [1843.]
+
+THE great leader of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson, was an ultra-
+abolitionist in theory, while from youth to age a slave-holder in
+practice.  With a zeal which never abated, with a warmth which the frost
+of years could not chill, he urged the great truths, that each man should
+be the guardian of his own weal; that one man should never have absolute
+control over another.  He maintained the entire equality of the race, the
+inherent right of self-ownership, the equal claim of all to a fair
+participation in the enactment of the laws by which they are governed.
+
+He saw clearly that slavery, as it existed in the South and on his own
+plantation, was inconsistent with this doctrine.  His early efforts for
+emancipation in Virginia failed of success; but he next turned his
+attention to the vast northwestern territory, and laid the foundation of
+that ordinance of 1787, which, like the flaming sword of the angel at the
+gates of Paradise, has effectually guarded that territory against the
+entrance of slavery.  Nor did he stop here.  He was the friend and
+admirer of the ultra-abolitionists of revolutionary France; he warmly
+urged his British friend, Dr. Price, to send his anti-slavery pamphlets
+into Virginia; he omitted no opportunity to protest against slavery as
+anti-democratic, unjust, and dangerous to the common welfare; and in his
+letter to the territorial governor of Illinois, written in old age, he
+bequeathed, in earnest and affecting language, the cause of negro
+emancipation to the rising generation.  "This enterprise," said he, "is
+for the young, for those who can carry it forward to its consummation.
+It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old
+man."
+
+Such was Thomas Jefferson, the great founder of American Democracy, the
+advocate of the equality of human rights, irrespective of any conditions
+of birth, or climate, or color.  His political doctrines, it is strange
+to say, found their earliest recipients and most zealous admirers in the
+slave states of the Union.  The privileged class of slaveholders, whose
+rank and station "supersede the necessity of an order of nobility,"
+became earnest advocates of equality among themselves--the democracy of
+aristocracy.  With the misery and degradation of servitude always before
+them, in the condition of their own slaves, an intense love of personal
+independence, and a haughty impatience of any control over their actions,
+prepared them to adopt the democratic idea, so far as it might be applied
+to their own order.  Of that enlarged and generous democracy, the love,
+not of individual freedom alone, but of the rights and liberties of all
+men, the unselfish desire to give to others the privileges which all men
+value for themselves, we are constrained to believe the great body of
+Thomas Jefferson's slave-holding admirers had no adequate conception.
+They were just such democrats as the patricians of Rome and the
+aristocracy of Venice; lords over their own plantations, a sort of "holy
+alliance" of planters, admitting and defending each other's divine right
+of mastership.
+
+Still, in Virginia, Maryland, and in other sections of the slave states,
+truer exponents and exemplifiers of the idea of democracy, as it existed
+in the mind of Jefferson, were not wanting.  In the debate on the
+memorials presented to the first Congress of the United States, praying
+for the abolition of slavery, the voice of the Virginia delegation in
+that body was unanimous in deprecation of slavery as an evil, social,
+moral, and political.  In the Virginia constitutional convention--of 1829
+there were men who had the wisdom to perceive and the firmness to declare
+that slavery was not only incompatible with the honor and prosperity of
+the state, but wholly indefensible on any grounds which could be
+consistently taken by a republican people.  In the debate on the same
+subject in the legislature in 1832, universal and impartial democracy
+found utterance from eloquent lips.  We might say as much of Kentucky,
+the child of Virginia.  But it remains true that these were exceptions to
+the general rule.  With the language of universal liberty on their lips,
+and moved by the most zealous spirit of democratic propagandism, the
+greater number of the slave-holders of the Union seem never to have
+understood the true meaning, or to have measured the length and breadth
+of that doctrine which they were the first to adopt, and of which they
+have claimed all along to be the peculiar and chosen advocates.
+
+The Northern States were slow to adopt the Democratic creed.  The
+oligarchy of New England, and the rich proprietors and landholders of the
+Middle States, turned with alarm and horror from the levelling doctrines
+urged upon them by the "liberty and equality" propagandists of the South.
+The doctrines of Virginia were quite as unpalatable to Massachusetts at
+the beginning of the present century as those of Massachusetts now are to
+the Old Dominion.  Democracy interfered with old usages and time-honored
+institutions, and threatened to plough up the very foundations of the
+social fabric.  It was zealously opposed by the representatives of New
+England in Congress and in the home legislatures; and in many pulpits
+hands were lifted to God in humble entreaty that the curse and bane of
+democracy, an offshoot of the rabid Jacobinism of revolutionary France,
+might not be permitted to take root and overshadow the goodly heritage of
+Puritanism.  The alarmists of the South, in their most fervid pictures of
+the evils to be apprehended from the prevalence of anti-slavery doctrines
+in their midst, have drawn nothing more fearful than the visions of such
+
+          "Prophets of war and harbingers of ill"
+
+as Fisher Ames in the forum and Parish in the desk, when contemplating
+the inroads of Jeffersonian democracy upon the politics, religion, and
+property of the North.
+
+But great numbers of the free laborers of the Northern States, the
+mechanics and small farmers, took a very different view of the matter.
+The doctrines of Jefferson were received as their political gospel.  It
+was in vain that federalism denounced with indignation the impertinent
+inconsistency of slave-holding interference in behalf of liberty in the
+free states.  Come the doctrine from whom it might, the people felt it to
+be true.  State after state revolted from the ranks of federalism, and
+enrolled itself on the side of democracy.  The old order of things was
+broken up; equality before the law was established, religious tests and
+restrictions of the right of suffrage were abrogated.  Take
+Massachusetts, for example.  There the resistance to democratic
+principles was the most strenuous and longest continued.  Yet, at this
+time, there is no state in the Union more thorough in its practical
+adoption of them.  No property qualifications or religious tests prevail;
+all distinctions of sect, birth, or color, are repudiated, and suffrage
+is universal.  The democracy, which in the South has only been held in a
+state of gaseous abstraction, hardened into concrete reality in the cold
+air of the North.  The ideal became practical, for it had found lodgment
+among men who were accustomed to act out their convictions and test all
+their theories by actual experience.
+
+While thus making a practical application of the new doctrine, the people
+of the free states could not but perceive the incongruity of democracy
+and slavery.
+
+Selleck Osborn, who narrowly escaped the honor of a Democratic martyr in
+Connecticut, denounced slave-holding, in common with other forms of
+oppression.  Barlow, fresh from communion with Gregoire, Brissot, and
+Robespierre, devoted to negro slavery some of the most vigorous and
+truthful lines of his great poem.  Eaton, returning from his romantic
+achievements in Tunis for the deliverance of white slaves, improved the
+occasion to read a lecture to his countrymen on the inconsistency and
+guilt of holding blacks in servitude.  In the Missouri struggle of 1819-
+20, the people of the free states, with a few ignoble exceptions, took
+issue with the South against the extension of slavery.  Some ten years
+later, the present antislavery agitation commenced.  It originated,
+beyond a question, in the democratic element.  With the words of
+Jefferson on their lips, young, earnest, and enthusiastic men called the
+attention of the community to the moral wrong and political reproach of
+slavery.  In the name and spirit of democracy, the moral and political
+powers of the people were invoked to limit, discountenance, and put an
+end to a system so manifestly subversive of its foundation principles.
+It was a revival of the language of Jefferson and Page and Randolph, an
+echo of the voice of him who penned the Declaration of Independence and
+originated the ordinance of 1787.
+
+Meanwhile the South had wellnigh forgotten the actual significance of the
+teachings of its early political prophets, and their renewal in the shape
+of abolitionism was, as might have been expected, strange and unwelcome.
+Pleasant enough it had been to hold up occasionally these democratic
+abstractions for the purpose of challenging the world's admiration and
+cheaply acquiring the character of lovers of liberty and equality.
+Frederick of Prussia, apostrophizing the shades of Cato and Brutus,
+
+          "Vous de la liberte heros que je revere,"
+
+while in the full exercise of his despotic power, was quite as consistent
+as these democratic slaveowners, whose admiration of liberty increased in
+exact ratio with its distance from their own plantations.  They had not
+calculated upon seeing their doctrine clothed with life and power, a
+practical reality, pressing for application to their slaves as well as to
+themselves.  They had not taken into account the beautiful ordination of
+Providence, that no man can vindicate his own rights, without directly or
+impliedly including in that vindication the rights of all other men.  The
+haughty and oppressive barons who wrung from their reluctant monarch the
+Great Charter at Runnymede, acting only for themselves and their class,
+little dreamed of the universal application which has since been made of
+their guaranty of rights and liberties.  As little did the nobles of the
+parliament of Paris, when strengthening themselves by limiting the kingly
+prerogative, dream of the emancipation of their own serfs, by a
+revolution to which they were blindly giving the first impulse.  God's
+truth is universal; it cannot be monopolized by selfishness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE TWO PROCESSIONS.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+              "Look upon this picture, and on this."  HAMLET.
+
+CONSIDERING that we have a slave population of nearly three millions, and
+that in one half of the states of the Republic it is more hazardous to
+act upon the presumption that "all men are created free and equal" than
+it would be in Austria or Russia, the lavish expression of sympathy and
+extravagant jubilation with which, as a people, we are accustomed to
+greet movements in favor of freedom abroad are not a little remarkable.
+We almost went into ecstasies over the first French revolution; we filled
+our papers with the speeches of orator Hunt and the English radicals; we
+fraternized with the United Irishmen; we hailed as brothers in the cause
+of freedom the very Mexicans whom we have since wasted with fire and
+sword; our orators, North and South, grew eloquent and classic over the
+Greek and Polish revolutions.  In short, long ere this, if the walls of
+kingcraft and despotism had been, like those of Jericho, destined to be
+overthrown by sound, our Fourth of July cannon-shootings and bell-
+ringings, together with our fierce, grandiloquent speech-makings in and
+out of Congress, on the occasions referred to, would have left no stone
+upon another.
+
+It is true that an exception must be made in the case of Hayti.  We fired
+no guns, drank no toasts, made no speeches in favor of the establishment
+of that new republic in our neighborhood.  The very mention of the
+possibility that Haytien delegates might ask admittance to the congress
+of the free republics of the New World at Panama "frightened from their
+propriety" the eager propagandists of republicanism in the Senate, and
+gave a death-blow to their philanthropic projects.  But as Hayti is a
+republic of blacks who, having revolted from their masters as well as
+from the mother country, have placed themselves entirely without the pale
+of Anglo-Saxon sympathy by their impertinent interference with the
+monopoly of white liberty, this exception by no means disproves the
+general fact, that in the matter of powder-burning, bell-jangling,
+speech-making, toast-drinking admiration of freedom afar off and in the
+abstract we have no rivals.  The caricature of our "general sympathizers"
+in Martin Chuzzlewit is by no means a fancy sketch.
+
+The news of the revolution of the three days in Paris, and the triumph of
+the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of
+course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility.  We all
+threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down
+headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long-
+suffering and oppressed subjects.  We took half the credit of the
+performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in
+it.  Our editors, from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, indited paragraphs
+for a thousand and one newspapers, congratulating the Parisian patriots,
+and prophesying all manner of evil to holy alliances, kings, and
+aristocracies.  The National Intelligencer for September 27, 1830,
+contains a full account of the public rejoicings of the good people of
+Washington on the occasion.  Bells were rung in all the steeples, guns
+were fired, and a grand procession was formed, including the President of
+the United States, the heads of departments, and other public
+functionaries.  Decorated with tricolored ribbons, and with tricolored
+flags mingling with the stripes and stars over their heads, and gazed
+down upon by bright eyes from window and balcony, the "general
+sympathizers" moved slowly and majestically through the broad avenue
+towards the Capitol to celebrate the revival of French liberty in a
+manner becoming the chosen rulers of a free people.
+
+What a spectacle was this for the representatives of European kingcraft
+at our seat of government!  How the titled agents of Metternich and
+Nicholas must have trembled, in view of this imposing demonstration, for
+the safety of their "peculiar institutions!"
+
+Unluckily, however, the moral effect of this grand spectacle was marred
+somewhat by the appearance of another procession, moving in a contrary
+direction.  It was a gang of slaves!  Handcuffed in pairs, with the
+sullen sadness of despair in their faces, they marched wearily onward to
+the music of the driver's whip and the clanking iron on their limbs.
+Think of it!  Shouts of triumph, rejoicing bells, gay banners, and
+glittering cavalcades, in honor of Liberty, in immediate contrast with
+men and women chained and driven like cattle to market!  The editor of
+the American Spectator, a paper published at Washington at that time,
+speaking of this black procession of slavery, describes it as "driven
+along by what had the appearance of a man on horseback."  The miserable
+wretches who composed it were doubtless consigned to a slave-jail to
+await their purchase and transportation to the South or Southwest; and
+perhaps formed a part of that drove of human beings which the same editor
+states that he saw on the Saturday following, "males and females chained
+in couples, starting from Robey's tavern, on foot, for Alexandria, to
+embark on board a slave-ship."
+
+At a Virginia camp-meeting, many years ago, one of the brethren,
+attempting an exhortation, stammered, faltered, and finally came to a
+dead stand.  "Sit down, brother," said old Father Kyle, the one-eyed
+abolition preacher; "it's no use to try; you can't preach with twenty
+negroes sticking in your throat!" It strikes us that our country is very
+much in the condition of the poor confused preacher at the camp-meeting.
+Slavery sticks in its throat, and spoils its finest performances,
+political and ecclesiastical; confuses the tongues of its evangelical
+alliances; makes a farce of its Fourth of July celebrations; and, as in
+the case of the grand Washington procession of 1830, sadly mars the
+effect of its rejoicings in view of the progress of liberty abroad.
+There is a stammer in all our exhortations; our moral and political
+homilies are sure to run into confusions and contradictions; and the
+response which comes to us from the nations is not unlike that of Father
+Kyle to the planter's attempt at sermonizing: "It's no use, brother
+Jonathan; you can't preach liberty with three millions of slaves in your
+throat!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                          A CHAPTER OF HISTORY.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+THE theory which a grave and learned Northern senator has recently
+announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton-plant, is confined
+by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by
+no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and its
+auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case.
+Slavery is singularly cosmopolitan in its habits.  The offspring of
+pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world.  Rooted in
+the human heart, it defies the rigors of winter in the steppes of Tartary
+and the fierce sun of the tropics.  It has the universal acclimation of
+sin.
+
+The first account we have of negro slaves in New England is from the pen
+of John Josselyn.  Nineteen years after the landing at Plymouth, this
+interesting traveller was for some time the guest of Samuel Maverick, who
+then dwelt, like a feudal baron, in his fortalice on Noddle's Island,
+surrounded by retainers and servants, bidding defiance to his Indian
+neighbors behind his strong walls, with "four great guns" mounted
+thereon, and "giving entertainment to all new-comers gratis."
+
+"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr.
+Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her
+own country language and tune sang very loud and shrill.  Going out to
+her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and would willingly
+have expressed her grief in English had she been able to speak the
+language; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment.
+Whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved
+to entreat him in her behalf; for I had understood that she was a queen
+in her own country, and observed a very dutiful and humble garb used
+towards her by another negro, who was her maid.  Mr. Maverick was
+desirous to have a breed of negroes; and therefore, seeing she would not
+yield by persuasions to company with a negro young man he had in his
+house, he commanded him, willed she, nilled she, to go to her bed, which
+was no sooner done than she thrust him out again.  This she took in high
+disdain beyond her slavery; and this was the cause of her grief."
+
+That the peculiar domestic arrangements and unfastidious economy of this
+slave-breeding settler were not countenanced by the Puritans of that
+early time we have sufficient evidence.  It is but fair to suppose, from
+the silence of all other writers of the time with respect to negroes and
+slaves, that this case was a marked exception to the general habits and
+usage of the Colonists.  At an early period a traffic was commenced
+between the New England Colonies and that of Barbadoes; and it is not
+improbable that slaves were brought to Boston from that island.  The
+laws, however, discouraged their introduction and purchase, giving
+freedom to all held to service at the close of seven years.
+
+In 1641, two years after Josselyn's adventure on Noddle's Island, the
+code of laws known by the name of the Body of Liberties was adopted by
+the Colony.  It was drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, the learned and ingenious
+author of the 'Simple Cobbler of Agawarn', the earliest poetical satire
+of New England.  One of its provisions was as follows:--
+
+"There shall be never any bond slaverie, villainage, or captivitie
+amongst us, unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres and such
+strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.  And these
+shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God
+established in Israel doth morally require."
+
+In 1646, Captain Smith, a Boston church-member, in connection with one
+Keeser, brought home two negroes whom he obtained by the surprise and
+burning of a negro village in Africa and the massacre of many of its
+inhabitants.  Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the assistants, presented a
+petition to the General Court, stating the outrage thereby committed as
+threefold in its nature, namely murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-
+breaking; inasmuch as the offence of "chasing the negers, as aforesayde,
+upon the Sabbath day (being a servile work, and such as cannot be
+considered under any other head) is expressly capital by the law of God;"
+for which reason he prays that the offenders may be brought to justice,
+"soe that the sin they have committed may be upon their own heads and not
+upon ourselves."
+
+Upon this petition the General Court passed the following order,
+eminently worthy of men professing to rule in the fear and according to
+the law of God,--a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do
+well:--
+
+"The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity
+to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as
+also to prescribe such timely redress for what has passed, and such a law
+for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to
+have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good
+and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, and others unlawfully
+taken, be by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for the
+present, sent to his native country, Guinea, and a letter with him of the
+indignation of the Court thereabout, and justice thereof, desiring our
+honored Governor would please put this order in execution."
+
+There is, so far as we know, no historical record of the actual return of
+these stolen men to their home.  A letter is extant, however, addressed
+in behalf of the General Court to a Mr. Williams on the Piscataqua, by
+whom one of the negroes had been purchased, requesting him to send the
+man forthwith to Boston, that he may be sent home, "which this Court do
+resolve to send back without delay."
+
+Three years after, in 1649, the following law was placed upon the
+statute-book of the Massachusetts Colony:--
+
+"If any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."
+
+It will thus be seen that these early attempts to introduce slavery into
+New England were opposed by severe laws and by that strong popular
+sentiment in favor of human liberty which characterized the Christian
+radicals who laid the foundations of the Colonies.  It was not the rigor
+of her Northern winter, nor the unkindly soil of Massachusetts, which
+discouraged the introduction of slavery in the first half-century of her
+existence as a colony.  It was the Puritan's recognition of the
+brotherhood of man in sin, suffering, and redemption, his estimate of the
+awful responsibilities and eternal destinies of humanity, his hatred of
+wrong and tyranny, and his stern sense of justice, which led him to
+impose upon the African slave-trader the terrible penalty of the Mosaic
+code.
+
+But that brave old generation passed away.  The civil contentions in the
+mother country drove across the seas multitudes of restless adventurers
+and speculators.  The Indian wars unsettled and demoralized the people.
+Habits of luxury and the greed of gain took the place of the severe self-
+denial and rigid virtues of the fathers.  Hence we are not surprised to
+find that Josselyn, in his second visit to New England, some twenty-five
+years after his first, speaks of the great increase of servants and
+negroes.  In 1680 Governor Bradstreet, in answer to the inquiries of his
+Majesty's Privy Council, states that two years before a vessel from
+Madagasca "brought into the Colony betwixt forty and fifty negroes,
+mostly women and children, who were sold at a loss to the owner of the
+vessel."  "Now and then," he continues, "two or three negroes are brought
+from Barbadoes and other of his Majesty's plantations and sold for twenty
+pounds apiece; so that there may be within the government about one
+hundred or one hundred and twenty, and it may be as many Scots, brought
+hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and
+about half as many Irish."
+
+The owning of a black or white slave, or servant, at this period was
+regarded as an evidence of dignity and respectability; and hence
+magistrates and clergymen winked at the violation of the law by the
+mercenary traders, and supplied themselves without scruple.  Indian
+slaves were common, and are named in old wills, deeds, and inventories,
+with horses, cows, and household furniture.  As early as the year 1649 we
+find William Hilton, of Newbury, sells to George Carr, "for one quarter
+part of a vessel, James, my Indian, with all the interest I have in him,
+to be his servant forever."  Some were taken in the Narragansett war and
+other Indian wars; others were brought from South Carolina and the
+Spanish Main.  It is an instructive fact, as illustrating the retributive
+dealings of Providence, that the direst affliction of the Massachusetts
+Colony--the witchcraft terror of 1692--originated with the Indian Tituba,
+a slave in the family of the minister of Danvers.
+
+In the year 1690 the inhabitants of Newbury were greatly excited by the
+arrest of a Jerseyman who had been engaged in enticing Indians and
+negroes to leave their masters.  He was charged before the court with
+saying that "the English should be cut off and the negroes set free."
+James, a negro slave, and Joseph, an Indian, were arrested with him.
+Their design was reported to be, to seize a vessel in the port and escape
+to Canada and join the French, and return and lay waste and plunder their
+masters.  They were to come back with five hundred Indians and three
+hundred Canadians; and the place of crossing the Merrimac River, and of
+the first encampment on the other side, were even said to be fixed upon.
+When we consider that there could not have been more than a score of
+slaves in the settlement, the excitement into which the inhabitants were
+thrown by this absurd rumor of conspiracy seems not very unlike that of a
+convocation of small planters in a backwoods settlement in South Carolina
+on finding an anti-slavery newspaper in their weekly mail bag.
+
+In 1709 Colonel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, had several negroes, and among
+them a high-spirited girl, who, for some alleged misdemeanor, was
+severely chastised.  The slave resolved upon revenge for her injury, and
+soon found the means of obtaining it.  The Colonel had on hand, for
+service in the Indian war then raging, a considerable store of gunpowder.
+This she placed under the room in which her master and mistress slept,
+laid a long train, and dropped a coal on it.  She had barely time to
+escape to the farm-house before the explosion took place, shattering the
+stately mansion into fragments.  Saltonstall and his wife were carried on
+their bed a considerable distance, happily escaping serious injury.  Some
+soldiers stationed in the house were scattered in all directions; but no
+lives were lost.  The Colonel, on recovering from the effects of his
+sudden overturn, hastened to the farm-house and found his servants all up
+save the author of the mischief, who was snug in bed and apparently in a
+quiet sleep.
+
+In 1701 an attempt was made in the General Court of Massachusetts to
+prevent the increase of slaves.  Judge Sewall soon after published a
+pamphlet against slavery, but it seems with little effect.  Boston
+merchants and ship-owners became, to a considerable extent, involved in
+the slave-trade.  Distilleries, established in that place and in Rhode
+Island, furnished rum for the African market.  The slaves were usually
+taken to the West Indies, although occasionally part of a cargo found its
+way to New England, where the wholesome old laws against man-stealing had
+become a dead letter on the statute-book.
+
+In 1767 a bill was brought before the Legislature of Massachusetts to
+prevent "the unwarrantable and unnatural custom of enslaving mankind."
+The Council of Governor Bernard sent it back to the House greatly changed
+and curtailed, and it was lost by the disagreement of the two branches.
+Governor Bernard threw his influence on the side of slavery.  In 1774 a
+bill prohibiting the traffic in slaves passed both Houses; but Governor
+Hutchinson withheld his assent and dismissed the Legislature.  The
+colored men sent a deputation of their own to the Governor to solicit his
+consent to the bill; but he told them his instructions forbade him.  A
+similar committee waiting upon General Gage received the same answer.
+
+In the year 1770 a servant of Richard Lechmere, of Cambridge, stimulated
+by the general discussion of the slavery question and by the advice of
+some of the zealous advocates of emancipation, brought an action against
+his master for detaining him in bondage.  The suit was decided in his
+favor two years before the similar decision in the case of Somerset in
+England.  The funds necessary for carrying on this suit were raised among
+the blacks themselves.  Other suits followed in various parts of the
+Province; and the result was, in every instance, the freedom of the
+plaintiff.  In 1773 Caesar Hendrick sued his master, one Greenleaf, of
+Newburyport, for damages, laid at fifty pounds, for holding him as a
+slave.  The jury awarded him his freedom and eighteen pounds.
+
+According to Dr. Belknap, whose answers to the queries on the subject,
+propounded by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, have furnished us with many of
+the facts above stated, the principal grounds upon which the counsel of
+the masters depended were, that the negroes were purchased in open
+market, and included in the bills of sale like other property; that
+slavery was sanctioned by usage; and, finally, that the laws of the
+Province recognized its existence by making masters liable for the
+maintenance of their slaves, or servants.
+
+On the part of the blacks, the law and usage of the mother country,
+confirmed by the Great Charter, that no man can be deprived of his
+liberty but by the judgment of his peers, were effectually pleaded.  The
+early laws of the Province prohibited slavery, and no subsequent
+legislation had sanctioned it; for, although the laws did recognize its
+existence, they did so only to mitigate and modify an admitted evil.
+
+The present state constitution was established in 1780.  The first
+article of the Bill of Rights prohibited slavery by affirming the
+foundation truth of our republic, that "all men are born free and equal."
+The Supreme Court decided in 1783 that no man could hold another as
+property without a direct violation of that article.
+
+In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into
+slavery in one of the French islands.  An intense excitement followed.
+Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate
+men.  The clergy of Boston petitioned the Legislature for a total
+prohibition of the foreign slave-trade.  The Society of Friends, and the
+blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act
+was passed prohibiting the slave-trade and granting relief to persons
+kidnapped or decoyed out of the Commonwealth.  The fear of a burden to
+the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the Legislature, in
+connection with this law, to prevent those who were not citizens of the
+state or of other states from gaining a residence.
+
+The first case of the arrest of a fugitive slave in Massachusetts under
+the law of 1793 took place in Boston soon after the passage of the law.
+It is the case to which President Quincy alludes in his late letter
+against the fugitive slave law.  The populace at the trial aided the
+slave to escape, and nothing further was done about it.
+
+The arrest of George Latimer as a slave, in Boston, and his illegal
+confinement in jail, in 1842, led to the passage of the law of 1843 for
+the "protection of personal liberty," prohibiting state officers from
+arresting or detaining persons claimed as slaves, and the use of the
+jails of the Commonwealth for their confinement.  This law was strictly
+in accordance with the decision of the supreme judiciary, in the case of
+Prigg vs. The State of Pennsylvania, that the reclaiming of fugitives was
+a matter exclusively belonging to the general government; yet that the
+state officials might, if they saw fit, carry into effect the law of
+Congress on the subject, "unless prohibited by state legislation."
+
+It will be seen by the facts we have adduced that slavery in
+Massachusetts never had a legal existence.  The ermine of the judiciary
+of the Puritan state has never been sullied by the admission of its
+detestable claims.  It crept into the Commonwealth like other evils and
+vices, but never succeeded in clothing itself with the sanction and
+authority of law.  It stood only upon its own execrable foundation of
+robbery and wrong.
+
+With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people
+of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time-
+honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon
+liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the
+Fugitive Slave Bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which
+that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave-hunters in
+seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only
+of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and
+hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to
+"constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved
+for trained bloodhounds?  Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been,
+and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great-
+hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at
+Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning,
+some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the
+dogs of war upon her.  Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance
+her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride.  Her people,
+indeed, are awkward in the work of slave-catching, and, it would seem,
+rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston.  Whether they
+would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United
+States is a question which we leave with the President and his Secretary
+of State.  General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers,
+and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting;
+but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward
+march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand
+unclosed to receive a proffered musket.  Patriotic appeal, hard swearing,
+and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits;
+and the stout general gave them up in despair.  We are inclined to
+believe that any attempt on the part of the Commander-in-chief of our
+army and navy to convert the good people of Massachusetts into expert
+slave-catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would
+prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE-QUESTION.
+
+                                 [1846.]
+
+A LATE number of Fraser's Magazine contains an article bearing the
+unmistakable impress of the Anglo-German peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle,
+entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be
+interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so
+unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of
+amazement and disgust.  With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous
+irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of
+Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of
+Christianity.  Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices
+from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,--and that the
+negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without
+wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the
+latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to
+them, can afford to give,--the author considers himself justified in
+denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was
+specially sent into this world to belabor.  Had he confned himself to
+simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian
+abolitionists of England--"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter
+Hall"--there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic
+and discreditable production.  Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy
+--the alloy of human frailty and folly--in the most righteous reforms,
+which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of
+shows and falsities.  Whatever is hollow and hypocritical in politics,
+morals, or religion, comes very properly within the scope of his mockery,
+and we bid him Godspeed in plying his satirical lash upon it.  Impostures
+and frauds of all kinds deserve nothing better than detection and
+exposure.  Let him blow them up to his heart's content, as Daniel did the
+image of Bell and the Dragon.
+
+But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply
+his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to
+humanity itself.  He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the
+amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred
+rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his
+Heavenly Father to the doom of compulsory servitude.  He vituperates the
+poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a
+Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on
+the banks of the Potomac.  His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and
+auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good
+taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the author and insults
+his readers.
+
+He assumes (for he is one of those sublimated philosophers who reject the
+Baconian system of induction and depend upon intuition without recourse
+to facts and figures) that the emancipated class in the West India
+Islands are universally idle, improvident, and unfit for freedom; that
+God created them to be the servants and slaves of their "born lords," the
+white men, and designed them to grow sugar, coffee, and spices for their
+masters, instead of raising pumpkins and yams for themselves; and that,
+if they will not do this, "the beneficent whip" should be again employed
+to compel them.  He adopts, in speaking of the black class, the lowest
+slang of vulgar prejudice.  "Black Quashee," sneers the gentlemanly
+philosopher,--"black Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the
+spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little
+less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other
+methods avail not, will be compelled to work."
+
+It is difficult to treat sentiments so atrocious and couched in such
+offensive language with anything like respect.  Common sense and
+unperverted conscience revolt instinctively against them.  The doctrine
+they inculcate is that which underlies all tyranny and wrong of man
+towards man.  It is that under which "the creation groaneth and
+travaileth unto this day."  It is as old as sin; the perpetual argument
+of strength against weakness, of power against right; that of the Greek
+philosopher, that the barbarians, being of an inferior race, were born to
+be slaves to the Greeks; and of the infidel Hobbes, that every man, being
+by nature at war with every other man, has a perpetual right to reduce
+him to servitude if he has the power.  It is the cardinal doctrine of
+what John Quincy Adams has very properly styled the Satanic school of
+philosophy,--the ethics of an old Norse sea robber or an Arab plunderer
+of caravans.  It is as widely removed from the sweet humanities and
+unselfish benevolence of Christianity as the faith and practice of the
+East India Thug or the New Zealand cannibal.
+
+Our author does not, however, take us altogether by surprise.  He has
+before given no uncertain intimations of the point towards which his
+philosophy was tending.  In his brilliant essay upon 'Francia of
+Paraguay', for instance, we find him entering with manifest satisfaction
+and admiration into the details of his hero's tyranny.  In his 'Letters
+and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell'--in half a dozen pages of savage and
+almost diabolical sarcasm directed against the growing humanity of the
+age, the "rose-pink sentimentalisms," and squeamishness which shudders at
+the sight of blood and infliction of pain--he prepares the way for a
+justification of the massacre of Drogheda.  More recently he has
+intimated that the extermination of the Celtic race is the best way of
+settling the Irish question; and that the enslavement and forcible
+transportation of her poor, to labor under armed taskmasters in the
+colonies, is the only rightful and proper remedy for the political and
+social evils of England.  In the 'Discourse on Negro Slavery' we see this
+devilish philosophy in full bloom.  The gods, he tells us, are with the
+strong.  Might has a divine right to rule,--blessed are the crafty of
+brain and strong of hand!  Weakness is crime.  "Vae victis!" as Brennus
+said when he threw his sword into the scale,--Woe to the conquered!  The
+negro is weaker in intellect than his "born lord," the white man, and has
+no right to choose his own vocation.  Let the latter do it for him, and,
+if need be, return to the "beneficent whip."  "On the side of the
+oppressor there is power;" let him use it without mercy, and hold flesh
+and blood to the grindstone with unrelenting rigor.  Humanity is
+squeamishness; pity for the suffering mere "rose-pink sentimentalism,"
+maudlin and unmanly.  The gods (the old Norse gods doubtless) laugh to
+scorn alike the complaints of the miserable and the weak compassions and
+"philanthropisms" of those who would relieve them.  This is the substance
+of Thomas Carlyle's advice; this is the matured fruit of his philosophic
+husbandry,--the grand result for which he has been all his life sounding
+unfathomable abysses or beating about in the thin air of
+Transcendentalism.  Such is the substitute which he offers us for the
+Sermon on the Mount.
+
+He tells us that the blacks have no right to use the islands of the West
+Indies for growing pumpkins and garden stuffs for their own use and
+behoof, because, but for the wisdom and skill of the whites, these
+islands would have been productive only of "jungle, savagery, and swamp
+malaria."  The negro alone could never have improved the islands or
+civilized himself; and therefore their and his "born lord," the white
+man, has a right to the benefits of his own betterments of land and "two-
+legged cattle!"  "Black Quashee" has no right to dispose of himself and
+his labor because he owes his partial civilization to others!  And pray
+how has it been with the white race, for whom our philosopher claims the
+divine prerogative of enslaving?  Some twenty and odd centuries ago, a
+pair of half-naked savages, daubed with paint, might have been seen
+roaming among the hills and woods of the northern part of the British
+island, subsisting on acorns and the flesh of wild animals, with an
+occasional relish of the smoked hams and pickled fingers of some
+unfortunate stranger caught on the wrong side of the Tweed.  This
+interesting couple reared, as they best could, a family of children, who,
+in turn, became the heads of families; and some time about the beginning
+of the present century one of their descendants in the borough of
+Ecclefechan rejoiced over the birth of a man child now somewhat famous as
+"Thomas Carlyle, a maker of books."  Does it become such a one to rave
+against the West India negro's incapacity for self-civilization?  Unaided
+by the arts, sciences, and refinements of the Romans, he might have been,
+at this very day, squatted on his naked haunches in the woods of
+Ecclefechan, painting his weather-hardened epidermis in the sun like his
+Piet ancestors.  Where, in fact, can we look for unaided self-improvement
+and spontaneous internal development, to any considerable extent, on the
+part of any nation or people?  From people to people the original God-
+given impulse towards civilization and perfection has been transmitted,
+as from Egypt to Greece, and thence to the Roman world.
+
+But the blacks, we are told, are indolent and insensible to the duty of
+raising sugar and coffee and spice for the whites, being mainly careful
+to provide for their own household and till their own gardens for
+domestic comforts and necessaries.  The exports have fallen off somewhat.
+And what does this prove?  Only that the negro is now a consumer of
+products, of which, under the rule of the whip, he was a producer merely.
+As to indolence, under the proper stimulus of fair wages we have reason
+to believe that the charge is not sustained.  If unthrifty habits and
+lack of prudence on the part of the owners of estates, combined with the
+repeal of duties on foreign sugars by the British government, have placed
+it out of their power to pay just and reasonable wages for labor, who can
+blame the blacks if they prefer to cultivate their own garden plots
+rather than raise sugar and spice for their late masters upon terms
+little better than those of their old condition, the "beneficent whip"
+always excepted?  The despatches of the colonial governors agree in
+admitting that the blacks have had great cause for complaint and
+dissatisfaction, owing to the delay or non-payment of their wages.  Sir
+C. E.  Gray, writing from Jamaica, says, that "in a good many instances
+the payment of the wages they have earned has been either very
+irregularly made, or not at all, probably on account of the inability of
+the employers."  He says, moreover:--
+
+"The negroes appear to me to be generally as free from rebellious
+tendencies or turbulent feelings and malicious thoughts as any race of
+laborers I ever saw or heard of.  My impression is, indeed, that under a
+system of perfectly fair dealing and of real justice they will come to be
+an admirable peasantry and yeomanry; able-bodied, industrious, and hard-
+working, frank, and well-disposed."
+
+It must, indeed, be admitted that, judging by their diminished exports
+and the growing complaints of the owners of estates, the condition of the
+islands, in a financial point of view, is by no means favorable.  An
+immediate cause of this, however, must be found in the unfortunate Sugar
+Act of 1846.  The more remote, but for the most part powerful, cause of
+the present depression is to be traced to the vicious and unnatural
+system of slavery, which has been gradually but surely preparing the way
+for ruin, bankruptcy, and demoralization.  Never yet, by a community or
+an individual, have the righteous laws of God been violated with
+impunity.  Sooner or later comes the penalty which the infinite justice
+has affixed to sin.  Partial and temporary evils and inconveniences have
+undoubtedly resulted from the emancipation of the laborers; and many
+years must elapse before the relations of the two heretofore antagonistic
+classes can be perfectly adjusted and their interests brought into entire
+harmony.  But that freedom is not to be held mainly accountable for the
+depression of the British colonies is obvious from the fact that Dutch
+Surinam, where the old system of slavery remains in its original rigor,
+is in an equally depressed condition.  The 'Paramaribo Neuws en
+Advertentie Blad', quoted in the Jamaica Gazette, says, under date of
+January 2, 1850: "Around us we hear nothing but complaints.  People seek
+and find matter in everything to picture to themselves the lot of the
+place in which they live as bitterer than that of any other country.  Of
+a large number of flourishing plantations, few remain that can now be
+called such.  So deteriorated has property become within the last few
+years, that many of these estates have not been able to defray their
+weekly expenses.  The colony stands on the brink of a yawning abyss, into
+which it must inevitably plunge unless some new and better system is
+speedily adopted.  It is impossible that our agriculture can any longer
+proceed on its old footing; our laboring force is dying away, and the
+social position they held must undergo a revolution."
+
+The paper from which we have quoted, the official journal of the colony,
+thinks the condition of the emancipated British colonies decidedly
+preferable to that of Surinam, where the old slave system has continued
+in force, and insists that the Dutch government must follow the example
+of Great Britain.  The actual condition of the British colonies since
+emancipation is perfectly well known in Surinam: three of them,
+Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, being its immediate neighbors, whatever
+evils and inconveniences have resuited from emancipation must be well
+understood by the Dutch slave-holders; yet we find them looking towards
+emancipation as the only prospect of remedy for the greater evils of
+their own system.
+
+This fact is of itself a sufficient answer to the assumption of Carlyle
+and others, that what they call "the ruin of the colonies" has been
+produced by the emancipation acts of 1833 and 1838.
+
+We have no fears whatever of the effect of this literary monstrosity,
+which we have been considering upon the British colonies.  Quashee, black
+and ignorant as he may be, will not "get himself made a slave again."
+The mission of the "beneficent whip" is there pretty well over; and it
+may now find its place in museums and cabinets of ghastly curiosities,
+with the racks, pillories, thumbscrews, and branding-irons of old days.
+What we have feared, however, is, that the advocates and defenders of
+slave-holding in this country might find in this discourse matter of
+encouragement, and that our anti-christian prejudices against the colored
+man might be strengthened and confirmed by its malignant vituperation and
+sarcasm.  On this point we have sympathized with the forebodings of an
+eloquent writer in the London Enquirer:--
+
+"We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people
+than his [Carlyle's] last composition.  Every cruel practice of social
+exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom.  The slave-holder,
+of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but
+enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European
+celebrity.  But it is not merely the slave who will feel Mr. Carlyle's
+hand in the torture of his flesh, the riveting of his fetters, and the
+denial of light to his mind.  The free black will feel him, too, in the
+more contemptuous and abhorrent scowl of his brother man, who will easily
+derive from this unfortunate essay the belief that his inhuman feelings
+are of divine ordination.  It is a true work of the Devil, the fostering
+of a tyrannical prejudice.  Far and wide over space, and long into the
+future, the winged words of evil counsel will go.  In the market-place,
+in the house, in the theatre, and in the church,--by land and by sea, in
+all the haunts of men,--their influence will be felt in a perennial
+growth of hate and scorn, and suffering and resentment.  Amongst the
+sufferers will be many to whom education has given every refined
+susceptibility that makes contempt and exclusion bitter.  Men and women,
+faithful and diligent, loving and worthy to be loved, and bearing, it may
+be, no more than an almost imperceptible trace of African descent, will
+continue yet longer to be banished from the social meal of the white man,
+and to be spurned from his presence in the house of God, because a writer
+of genius has lent the weight of his authority and his fame, if not of
+his power, to the perpetuation of a prejudice which Christianity was
+undermining."
+
+A more recent production, 'Latter Day Pamphlets', in which man's
+capability of self-government is more than doubted, democracy somewhat
+contemptuously sneered at, and the "model republic" itself stigmatized as
+a "nation of bores," may have a salutary effect in restraining our
+admiration and in lessening our respect for the defender and eulogist of
+slavery.  The sweeping impartiality with which in this latter production
+he applies the principle of our "peculiar institution" to the laboring
+poor man, irrespective of color, recognizing as his only inalienable
+right "the right of being set to labor" for his "born lords," will, we
+imagine, go far to neutralize the mischief of his Discourse upon Negro
+Slavery.  It is a sad thing to find so much intellectual power as Carlyle
+really possesses so little under the control of the moral sentiments.  In
+some of his earlier writings--as, for instance, his beautiful tribute to
+the Corn Law Rhymer--we thought we saw evidence of a warm and generous
+sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human
+suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter
+Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society."  Latterly, however, like
+Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the
+wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the
+coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart of flesh for a
+cobblestone.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+              FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.
+
+     A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, President of the Society.
+
+                         AMESBURY, 24th 11th mo., 1863.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying
+circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth
+anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
+Philadelphia.  It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the
+feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my
+other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest.  How much
+it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell
+thee better than any words of mine.
+
+I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of
+my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
+Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still
+living, and true as ever to the good cause.  I recall the early gray
+morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to
+prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the
+small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first
+draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history.  I see
+the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one
+by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity
+to freedom.  Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have
+faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to
+rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what
+remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their
+youth and manhood thirty years ago.
+
+For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the
+prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States,
+we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty
+responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these
+millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and
+foodless in the wild chaos of civil war.  We have to undo the accumulated
+wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well-
+nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair
+field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the
+last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest
+external support of Southern slavery.  We must lift ourselves at once to
+the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are
+overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.
+
+I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be
+sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure
+through thy instrumentality, turned me away so early from what Roger
+Williams calls "the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor,"
+to take side with the poor and oppressed.  I am not insensible to
+literary reputation.  I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will
+of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the
+Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.
+Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice
+that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and that,
+in the long intervening years,
+
+    "My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom
+     raised her cry of pain."
+
+Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of
+our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of
+commemoration.  There is work yet to be done which will task the best
+efforts of us all.  For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem
+of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and
+
+                    I am, very cordially, thy friend,
+
+                              JOHN G.  WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY.
+
+                       From the Amesbury Villager.
+
+                                 [1865.]
+
+
+IN the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the unspeakably brutal
+assault upon Secretary Seward slavery has made another revelation of
+itself.  Perhaps it was needed.  In the magnanimity of assured victory we
+were perhaps disposed to overlook, not so much the guilty leaders and
+misguided masses of the great rebellion as the unutterable horror and sin
+of slavery which prompted it.
+
+How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty
+mischief!  How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its
+burthens!  How our churches reverenced it!  How our clergy contrasted the
+heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of
+slave-holding Christianity!  How all classes hunted down, not merely the
+fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and
+a Godspeed in his flight from bondage!  How utterly ignored was the
+negro's claim of common humanity!  How readily was the decision of the
+slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no
+rights which the white man is bound to respect"!
+
+We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his
+learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but
+murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the
+crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the
+dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal
+perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as
+a chivalrous gentleman.  We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in
+hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by
+secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers,
+fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments
+for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open
+hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
+helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
+for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
+occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
+massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
+and the murder of its principal citizens.  The flames of our merchant
+vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
+the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
+with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
+cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers.  Yet in
+spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
+and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
+point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
+reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
+men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
+religion and murder a sacrament.  The nation needed one more terrible
+lesson.  It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
+attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
+others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
+back to allegiance.
+
+Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned.  In
+the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
+traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
+chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
+little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
+abominations, slavery.  The government is exhorted to remember that it
+does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
+of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
+nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
+of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
+oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
+the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
+file of disbanded rebels.  The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
+not applied to them.  Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
+little of justice to loyal black men.  Hanging a few ringleaders of
+treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and
+reestablish the revolted states.  The negro is to be left powerless in
+the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred,
+exceeding that of the large slave-holders.  In short, four years of
+terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught
+us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had
+been written in letters of fire on the sky.  Why is it that we are so
+slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing
+which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of
+gentlemen and Christians, into fiends?  How pitiful is our exultation
+over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates!  The great
+criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks
+abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him
+her legislative sanction and protection.  He is in Pennsylvania,
+thrusting the black man from public conveyances.  Wherever God's children
+are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is
+the real assassin of the President still at large.  I do not wonder at
+the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have
+painfully shared it.  But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
+The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham
+Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss.  In wreaking revenge upon these
+miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do
+dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead.  We do well to be angry; and,
+if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a
+murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth.  As
+the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands
+to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to
+their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its
+last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the
+law.
+
+In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we
+should beware how we take counsel of passion.  Hatred has no place beside
+the calm and awful dignity of justice.  Human life is still a very sacred
+thing; Christian forbearance and patience are still virtues.  For my own
+part, I should be satisfied to see the chiefs of the great treason go out
+from among us homeless, exiled, with the mark of Cain on their foreheads,
+carrying with them, wherever they go, the avenging Nemesis of conscience.
+We cannot take lessons, at this late day, in their school of barbarism;
+we cannot starve and torture them as they have starved and tortured our
+soldiers.  Let them live.  Perhaps that is, after all, the most terrible
+penalty.  For wherever they hide themselves the story of their acts will
+pursue them; they can have no rest nor peace save in that deep repentance
+which, through the mercy of God, is possible for all.
+
+I have no disposition to stand between these men and justice.  If
+arrested, they can have no claim to exemption from the liabilities of
+criminals.  But it is not simply a question of deserts that is to be
+considered; we are to take into account our own reputation as a Christian
+people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts
+of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity.  Happily we are not
+called upon to take counsel of our fears.  Rabbinical writers tell us
+that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings
+lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief.  The defeated rebels
+are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons.  Deprived of
+slavery, they are like wasps that have lost their stings.
+
+As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled
+remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and
+children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless
+struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain.  We must forgive their
+past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty.  None
+but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless.  We must
+feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing
+patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a
+time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in
+rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom.  Our sole enemy was
+slavery, and slavery is dead.  We have now no quarrel with the people of
+the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the
+downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted
+their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and
+ridged their land with the graves of its victims.
+
+We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed
+forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous.  How better can we
+evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to
+those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have
+despitefully used us?  The hour is hastening for us all when our sole
+ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God.  Let us
+endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South
+that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently
+acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received
+gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might
+dwell among them."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE-DEPARTMENT.
+
+                                 [1868.]
+
+
+
+THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet
+has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
+That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will
+carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of
+patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who
+has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight,
+and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities
+of his past career, can reasonably doubt.
+
+It is not probable that the distinguished statesman now at the head of
+the State Department will, under the circumstances, look for a
+continuance in office.  History will do justice to his eminent services
+in the Senate and in the cabinet during the first years of the rebellion,
+but the fact that he has to some extent shared the unpopularity of the
+present chief magistrate seems to preclude the idea of his retention in
+the new cabinet.  In looking over the list of our public men in search of
+a successor, General Grant is not likely to be embarrassed by the number
+of individuals fitted by nature, culture, and experience for such an
+important post.  The newspaper press, in its wide license of conjecture
+and suggestion, has, as far as I have seen, mentioned but three or four
+names in this connection.  Allusions have been made to Senator Fessenden
+of Maine, ex-Minister Motley, General Dix, ex-Secretary Stanton, and
+Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
+
+Without disparaging in any degree his assumed competitors, the last-named
+gentleman is unquestionably preeminently fitted for the place.  He has
+had a lifelong education for it.  The entire cast of his mind, the bent
+of his studies, the habit and experience of his public life, his profound
+knowledge of international law and the diplomatic history of his own and
+other countries, his well-earned reputation as a statesman and
+constitutional lawyer, not only at home, but wherever our country has
+relations of amity and commerce, the honorable distinction which he
+enjoys of having held a foremost place in the great conflict between
+freedom and slavery, union and rebellion, all mark him as the man for the
+occasion.  There seems, indeed, a certain propriety in assigning to the
+man who struck the heaviest blows at secession and slavery in the
+national Senate the first place under him who, in the field, made them
+henceforth impossible.  The great captain and the great senator united in
+war should not be dissevered in peace.
+
+I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who
+have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical
+statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make
+manifest.  It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his
+senatorial career.  Few men have had the honor of introducing and
+defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of
+acknowledged practical importance to his immediate constituents, the
+country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
+In what exigency has he been found wanting?  What legislative act of
+public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
+At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision,
+firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time
+and place must be admitted by all parties.  It was shrewdly said by Burke
+that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self-
+denial, in business of all times except their own."  But Charles Sumner,
+the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown
+himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events
+transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those
+recorded in history.  Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he
+saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early
+adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
+One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had
+the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican
+senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.
+
+The Republicans of Massachusetts will make no fractious or importunate
+demand upon the new President.  They are content to leave to his unbiased
+and impartial judgment the selection of his cabinet.  But if, looking to
+the best interests of the country, he shall see fit to give their
+distinguished fellow-citizen the first place in it, they will feel no
+solicitude as to the manner in which the duties of the office will be
+discharged.  They will feel that "the tools are with him who can use
+them."  Nothing more directly affects the reputation of a country than
+the character of its diplomatic correspondence and its foreign
+representatives.  We have suffered in times past from sad mismanagement
+abroad, and intelligent Americans have too often been compelled to hang
+their heads with shame to see the flag of their country floating over the
+consular offices of worthless, incompetent agents.  There can be no
+question that so far as they are entrusted to Senator Sumner's hands, the
+interest, honor, and dignity of the nation will be safe.
+
+In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the
+United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of
+the legislature of Massachusetts.  Not a syllable of opposition to his
+reelection is heard from any quarter.  There is not a Republican in the
+legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually
+pledged to his support.  No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of
+his ability and integrity than this could be offered.  As a matter of
+course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness,
+persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions,
+naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his
+honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience,
+may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of
+his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and
+patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle.  He has lent himself to
+no schemes of greed.  While so many others have taken advantage of the
+facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly,
+their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the
+honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not
+only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne
+themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.
+
+In this connection it may be proper to state that, in the event of a
+change in the War Department, the claims of General Wilson, to whose
+services in the committee on military affairs the country is deeply
+indebted, may be brought under consideration.  In that case Massachusetts
+would not, if it were in her power, discriminate between her senators.
+Both have deserved well of her and of the country.  In expressing thus
+briefly my opinion, I do not forget that after all the choice and
+responsibility rest with General Grant alone.  There I am content to
+leave them.  I am very far from urging any sectional claim.  Let the
+country but have peace after its long discord, let its good faith and
+financial credit be sustained, and all classes of its citizens everywhere
+protected in person and estate, and it matters very little to me whether
+Massachusetts is represented at the Executive Council board, or not.
+Personally, Charles Sumner would gain nothing by a transfer from the
+Senate Chamber to the State Department.  He does not need a place in the
+American cabinet any more than John Bright does in the British.  The
+highest ambition might well be satisfied with his present position, from
+which, looking back upon an honorable record, he might be justified in
+using Milton's language of lofty confidence in the reply to Salmasius: "I
+am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct,
+or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave, but, by the grace
+of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                    THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.
+
+     The following letter was written on receiving a request from a
+     committee of colored voters for advice as to their action at the
+     presidential election of 1872.
+
+                              AMESBURY, 9th mo. 3d, 1872.
+
+DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking
+my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between
+General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency.  You state that you
+have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends
+of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and
+Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are
+pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.
+
+I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your
+generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I
+must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
+the already too long list of political epistles.  I have felt it my duty
+in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
+political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
+country from the crime and curse of slavery.  That great question being
+now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
+and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service.  Pained
+and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
+now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
+possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
+and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
+and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence.  In the
+present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
+action as an abolitionist was required at my hands.  Both of the great
+parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
+substantially the same platform.  The Republican party, originally
+pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
+representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
+Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
+instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
+Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
+North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
+interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
+civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
+events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
+departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate.  As a friend of the
+long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
+of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party.  The
+underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
+and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
+expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
+itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
+and irretrievable ruin.  In any point of view the new order of things is
+desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
+the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed
+friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving
+aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old
+party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.
+
+As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why
+colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an
+abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to
+his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their
+behalf.  Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust
+of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself
+as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by
+the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator
+of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom.
+Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the
+country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a
+presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it
+would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of
+uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in
+the shades of Chappaqua.  But they have chosen otherwise; and I am
+willing, for one, to leave my colored fellow-citizens to the unbiased
+exercise of their own judgment and instincts in deciding between them.
+The Democratic party labors under the disadvantage of antecedents not
+calculated to promote a rapid growth of confidence; and it is no matter
+of surprise that the vote of the emancipated class is likely to be
+largely against it.  But if, as will doubtless be the case, that vote
+shall be to some extent divided between the two candidates, it will have
+the effect of inducing politicians of the rival parties to treat with
+respect and consideration this new element of political power, from self-
+interest if from no higher motive.  The fact that at this time both
+parties are welcoming colored orators to their platforms, and that, in
+the South, old slave-masters and their former slaves fraternize at caucus
+and barbecue, and vote for each other at the polls, is full of
+significance.  If, in New England, the very men who thrust Frederick
+Douglass from car and stage-coach, and mobbed and hunted him like a wild
+beast, now crowd to shake his hand and cheer him, let us not despair of
+seeing even the Ku-Klux tarried into decency, and sitting "clothed in
+their right minds" as listeners to their former victims.  The colored man
+is to-day the master of his own destiny.  No power on earth can deprive
+him of his rights as an American citizen.  And it is in the light of
+American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men
+having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and
+not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a
+distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and
+incapable of self-determination.  Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson
+and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has
+already been done.  We can now only help them to help themselves.
+Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their
+children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress,
+are in a great measure in their own hands.
+
+You will, therefore, my friends and fellow-citizens, pardon me if I
+decline to undertake to decide for you the question of your political
+duty as respects the candidates for the presidency,--a question which you
+have probably already settled in your own minds.  If it had been apparent
+to me that your rights and liberties were really in danger from the
+success of either candidate, your letter would not have been needed to
+call forth my opinion.  In the long struggle of well-nigh forty years, I
+can honestly say that no consideration of private interest, nor my
+natural love of peace and retirement and the good-will of others, have
+kept me silent when a word could be fitly spoken for human rights.  I
+have not so long acted with the class to which you belong without
+acquiring respect for your intelligence and capacity for judging wisely
+for yourselves.  I shall abide your decision with confidence, and
+cheerfully acquiesce in it.
+
+If, on the whole, you prefer to vote for the reelection of General Grant,
+let me hope you will do so without joining with eleventh-hour friends in
+denouncing and reviling such an old and tried friend as Charles Sumner,
+who has done and suffered so much in your behalf.  If, on the other hand,
+some of you decide to vote for Horace Greeley, you need not in so doing
+forget your great obligations to such friends as William Lloyd Garrison,
+Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child.  Agree or disagree with them,
+take their advice or reject it, but stand by them still, and teach the
+parties with which you are connected to respect your feelings towards
+your benefactors.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CENSURE OF SUMNER.
+
+
+     A letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser in reference to the petition
+     for the rescinding of the resolutions censuring Senator Sumner for
+     his motion to erase from the United States flags the record of the
+     battles of the civil war.
+
+
+I BEG leave to occupy a small space in the columns of the Advertiser for
+the purpose of noticing a charge which has been brought against the
+petitioners for rescinding the resolutions of the late extra session
+virtually censuring the Hon. Charles Sumner.  It is intimated that the
+action of these petitioners evinces a lack of appreciation of the
+services of the soldiers of the Union, and that not to censure Charles
+Sumner is to censure the volunteers of Massachusetts.
+
+As a matter of fact, the petitioners express no opinion as to the policy
+or expediency of the senator's proposition.  Some may believe it not only
+right in itself, but expedient and well-timed; others that it was
+inexpedient or premature.  None doubt that, sooner or later, the thing
+which it contemplates must be done, if we are to continue a united
+people.  What they feel and insist upon is that the proposition is one
+which implies no disparagement of the soldiers of Massachusetts and the
+Union; that it neither receives nor merits the "unqualified condemnation
+of the people" of the state; and that it furnishes no ground whatever for
+legislative interference or censure.  A single glance at the names of the
+petitioners is a sufficient answer to the insinuation that they are
+unmindful of that self-sacrifice and devotion, the marble and granite
+memorials of which, dotting the state from the Merrimac to the
+Connecticut, testify the gratitude of the loyal heart of Massachusetts.
+
+I have seen no soldier yet who considered himself wronged or "insulted"
+by the proposition.  In point of fact the soldiers have never asked for
+such censure of the brave and loyal statesman who was the bosom friend
+and confidant of Secretary Stanton (the great war-minister, second, if at
+all, only to Carnot) and of John A.  Andrew, dear to the heart of every
+Massachusetts soldier, and whose tender care and sympathy reached them
+wherever they struggled or died for country and freedom.  The proposal of
+Senator Sumner, instead of being an "insult," was, in fact, the highest
+compliment which could be paid to brave men; for it implied that they
+cherished no vindictive hatred of fallen foes; that they were too proudly
+secure of the love and gratitude of their countrymen to need above their
+heads the flaunting blazon of their achievements; that they were as
+magnanimous in peace and victory as they were heroic and patient through
+the dark and doubtful arbitrament of war.  As such they understand it.  I
+should be sorry to think there existed a single son of Massachusetts weak
+enough to believe that his reputation and honor as a soldier needed this
+censure of Charles Sumner.  I have before me letters from men, ranking
+from orderly sergeant to general, who have looked at death full in the
+face on every battlefield where the flag of Massachusetts floated, and
+they all thank me for my efforts to rescind this uncalled-for censure,
+and pledge me their hearty support.  They cordially indorse the noble
+letter of Vice-President Wilson offering his signature to the petition
+for rescinding the obnoxious resolutions; and if these resolutions are
+not annulled, it will not be the fault of Massachusetts volunteers, but
+rather of the mistaken zeal of men more familiar with the drill of the
+caucus than with that of the camp.
+
+I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner.  I have often differed from him
+in opinion.  I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty
+to take during the late presidential campaign.  He felt the atmosphere
+about him thick and foul with corruption and bribery and greed; he saw
+the treasury ringed about like Saturn with unscrupulous combinations and
+corporations; and it is to be regretted more than wondered at if he
+struck out wildly in his indignation, and that his blows fell sometimes
+upon the wrong object.  But I did not intend to act the part of his
+apologist.  The twenty years of his senatorial life are crowded with
+memorials of his loyalty to truth and free dom and humanity, which will
+be enduring as our history.  He is no party to this movement, in which my
+name has been more prominent than I could have wished, and no word of his
+prompted or suggested it.  From its inception to the present time he has
+remained silent in his chamber of pain, waiting to bequeath, like the
+testator of the dramatist,
+
+         "A fame by scandal untouched
+          To Memory and Time's old daughter Truth."
+
+He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before
+our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us.  To use the
+words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law,
+the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will
+vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country,
+and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its
+own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict."
+
+AMESBURY, 3d month, 8, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                   THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833.
+
+                                 [1874.]
+
+In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years ago, a
+dear friend of mine, residing in Boston, made his appearance at the old
+farm-house in East Haverhill.  He had been deputed by the abolitionists
+of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E.  Sewall, and others, to
+inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Convention about to be
+held in Philadelphia for the formation of an American Anti-Slavery
+Society, and to urge upon me the necessity of my attendance.
+
+Few words of persuasion, however, were needed.  I was unused to
+travelling; my life had been spent on a secluded farm; and the journey,
+mostly by stage-coach, at that time was really a formidable one.
+Moreover, the few abolitionists were everywhere spoken against, their
+persons threatened, and in some instances a price set on their heads by
+Southern legislators.  Pennsylvania was on the borders of slavery, and it
+needed small effort of imagination to picture to one's self the breaking
+up of the Convention and maltreatment of its members.  This latter
+consideration I do not think weighed much with me, although I was better
+prepared for serious danger than for anything like personal indignity.  I
+had read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering of
+his hero MacFingal, when, after the application of the melted tar, the
+feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
+
+          "Not Maia's son, with wings for ears,
+          Such plumes about his visage wears,
+          Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
+          Such superfluity of feathers,"
+
+and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which my best
+friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at.  But a summons like that
+of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be unheeded by one who, from
+birth and education, held fast the traditions of that earlier
+abolitionism which, under the lead of Benezet and Woolman, had effaced
+from the Society of Friends every vestige of slave-holding.  I had thrown
+myself, with a young man's fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which
+commended itself to my reason and conscience, to my love of country, and
+my sense of duty to God and my fellow-men.  My first venture in
+authorship was the publication, at my own expense, in the spring of 1833,
+of a pamphlet entitled Justice and Expediency, on the moral and political
+evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipation.  Under such circumstances
+I could not hesitate, but prepared at once for my journey.  It was
+necessary that I should start on the morrow, and the intervening time,
+with a small allowance for sleep, was spent in providing for the care of
+the farm and homestead during my absence.
+
+So the next morning I took the stage for Boston, stopping at the ancient
+hostelry known as the Eastern Stage Tavern; and on the day following, in
+company with William Lloyd Garrison, I left for New York.  At that city
+we were joined by other delegates, among them David Thurston, a
+Congregational minister from Maine.  On our way to Philadelphia, we took,
+as a matter of necessary economy, a second-class conveyance, and found
+ourselves, in consequence, among rough and hilarious companions, whose
+language was more noteworthy for strength than refinement.  Our worthy
+friend the clergyman bore it awhile in painful silence, but at last felt
+it his duty to utter words of remonstrance and admonition.  The leader of
+the young roisterers listened with a ludicrous mock gravity, thanked him
+for his exhortation, and, expressing fears that the extraordinary effort
+had exhausted his strength, invited him to take a drink with him.  Father
+Thurston buried his grieved face in his cloak-collar, and wisely left the
+young reprobates to their own devices.
+
+On reaching Philadelphia, we at once betook, ourselves to the humble
+dwelling on Fifth Street occupied by Evan Lewis, a plain, earnest man and
+lifelong abolitionist, who had been largely interested in preparing the
+way for the Convention.  In one respect the time of our assembling seemed
+unfavorable.  The Society of Friends, upon whose cooperation we had
+counted, had but recently been rent asunder by one of those unhappy
+controversies which so often mark the decline of practical righteousness.
+The martyr-age of the society had passed, wealth and luxury had taken the
+place of the old simplicity, there was a growing conformity to the maxims
+of the world in trade and fashion, and with it a corresponding
+unwillingness to hazard respectability by the advocacy of unpopular
+reforms.  Unprofitable speculation and disputation on one hand, and a
+vain attempt on the other to enforce uniformity of opinion, had
+measurably lost sight of the fact that the end of the gospel is love, and
+that charity is its crowning virtue.  After a long and painful struggle
+the disruption had taken place; the shattered fragments, under the name
+of Orthodox and Hicksite, so like and yet so separate in feeling,
+confronted each other as hostile sects, and
+
+         "Never either found another
+          To free the hollow heart from paining;
+          They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
+          Like cliffs that have been torn asunder
+          A dreary sea now flows between;
+          But neither rain, nor frost, nor thunder,
+          Can wholly do away, I ween,
+          The marks of that which once has been."
+
+We found about forty members assembled in the parlors of our friend
+Lewis, and, after some general conversation, Lewis Tappan was asked to
+preside over an informal meeting, preparatory to the opening of the
+Convention.  A handsome, intellectual-looking man, in the prime of life,
+responded to the invitation, and in a clear, well-modulated voice, the
+firm tones of which inspired hope and confidence, stated the objects of
+our preliminary council, and the purpose which had called us together, in
+earnest and well-chosen words.  In making arrangements for the
+Convention, it was thought expedient to secure, if possible, the services
+of some citizen of Philadelphia, of distinction and high social standing,
+to preside over its deliberations.  Looking round among ourselves in vain
+for some titled civilian or doctor of divinity, we were fain to confess
+that to outward seeming we were but "a feeble folk," sorely needing the
+shield of a popular name.  A committee, of which I was a member, was
+appointed to go in search of a president of this description.  We visited
+two prominent gentlemen, known as friendly to emancipation and of high
+social standing.  They received us with the dignified courtesy of the old
+school, declined our proposition in civil terms, and bowed us out with a
+cool politeness equalled only by that of the senior Winkle towards the
+unlucky deputation of Pickwick and his unprepossessing companions.  As we
+left their doors we could not refrain from smiling in each other's faces
+at the thought of the small inducement our proffer of the presidency held
+out to men of their class.  Evidently our company was not one for
+respectability to march through Coventry with.
+
+On the following morning we repaired to the Adelphi Building, on Fifth
+Street, below Walnut, which had been secured for our use.  Sixty-two
+delegates were found to be in attendance.  Beriah Green, of the Oneida
+(New York) Institute, was chosen president, a fresh-faced, sandy-haired,
+rather common-looking man, but who had the reputation of an able and
+eloquent speaker.  He had already made himself known to us as a resolute
+and self-sacrificing abolitionist.  Lewis Tappan and myself took our
+places at his side as secretaries, on the elevation at the west end of
+the hall.
+
+Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed of
+comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
+period.  They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to comfort
+rather than elegance.  Many of the faces turned towards me wore a look of
+expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the earnestness which might
+be expected of men engaged in an enterprise beset with difficulty and
+perhaps with peril.  The fine, intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely
+bald, was conspicuous; the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all
+the beatitudes seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in
+his veins the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys,--a man so
+exceptionally pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that
+he could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.
+
+              "The de'il wad look into his face,
+               And swear he couldna wrang him."
+
+That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat
+martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley
+Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery;
+that slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was
+Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free
+colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently
+in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a
+class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty,
+and walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank from
+no sacrifice.  Braver men the world has not known.  Beside him, differing
+in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas
+Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in
+Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted
+by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting
+strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight.
+Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his
+place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration
+in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched
+the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
+directly to the purpose.  The portly form of Dr. Bartholomew Russell, the
+beloved physician, from that beautiful land of plenty and peace which
+Bayard Taylor has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be
+overlooked.  Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the
+shelter of runaway slaves, and no sportsman ever entered into the chase
+with such zest as he did into the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of
+aiding their escape and baffling their pursuers.  The youngest man
+present was, I believe, James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister from
+Columbia, afterwards one of our most efficient workers.  James Mott, E.
+L. Capron, Arnold Buffum, and Nathan Winslow, men well known in the anti-
+slavery agitation, were conspicuous members.  Vermont sent down from her
+mountains Orson S. Murray, a man terribly in earnest, with a zeal that
+bordered on fanaticism, and who was none the more genial for the mob-
+violence to which he had been subjected.  In front of me, awakening
+pleasant associations of the old homestead in Merrimac valley, sat my
+first school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
+and historian of Newbury.  A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
+division of Friends, were present, in broad brims and plain bonnets,
+among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott.
+
+Committees were chosen to draft a constitution for a national Anti-
+Slavery Society, nominate a list of officers, and prepare a declaration
+of principles to be signed by the members.  Dr. A. L. Cox of New York,
+while these committees were absent, read something from my pen eulogistic
+of William Lloyd Garrison; and Lewis Tappan and Amos A.  Phelps, a
+Congregational clergyman of Boston, afterwards one of the most devoted
+laborers in the cause, followed in generous commendation of the zeal,
+courage, and devotion of the young pioneer.  The president, after calling
+James McCrummell, one of the two or three colored members of the
+Convention, to the chair, made some eloquent remarks upon those editors
+who had ventured to advocate emancipation.  At the close of his speech a
+young man rose to speak, whose appearance at once arrested my attention.
+I think I have never seen a finer face and figure, and his manner, words,
+and bearing were in keeping.  "Who is he?"  I asked of one of the
+Pennsylvania delegates.  "Robert Purvis, of this city, a colored man,"
+was the answer.  He began by uttering his heart-felt thanks to the
+delegates who had convened for the deliverance of his people.  He spoke
+of Garrison in terms of warmest eulogy, as one who had stirred the heart
+of the nation, broken the tomblike slumber of the church, and compelled
+it to listen to the story of the slave's wrongs.  He closed by declaring
+that the friends of colored Americans would not be forgotten.  "Their
+memories," he said, "will be cherished when pyramids and monuments shall
+have crumbled in dust.  The flood of time which is sweeping away the
+refuge of lies is bearing on the advocates of our cause to a glorious
+immortality."
+
+The committee on the constitution made their report, which after
+discussion was adopted.  It disclaimed any right or intention of
+interfering, otherwise than by persuasion and Christian expostulation,
+with slavery as it existed in the states, but affirming the duty of
+Congress to abolish it in the District of Columbia and territories, and
+to put an end to the domestic slave-trade.  A list of officers of the new
+society was then chosen: Arthur Tappan of New York, president, and Elizur
+Wright, Jr., William Lloyd Garrison, and A. L. Cox, secretaries.  Among
+the vice-presidents was Dr. Lord of Dartmouth College, then professedly
+in favor of emancipation, but who afterwards turned a moral somersault, a
+self-inversion which left him ever after on his head instead of his feet.
+
+He became a querulous advocate of slavery as a divine institution, and
+denounced woe upon the abolitionists for interfering with the will and
+purpose of the Creator.  As the cause of freedom gained ground, the poor
+man's heart failed him, and his hope for church and state grew fainter
+and fainter.  A sad prophet of the evangel of slavery, he testified in
+the unwilling ears of an unbelieving generation, and died at last
+despairing of a world which seemed determined that Canaan should no
+longer be cursed, nor Onesimus sent back to Philemon.
+
+The committee on the declaration of principles, of which I was a member,
+held a long session, discussing the proper scope and tenor of the
+document.  But little progress being made, it was finally decided to
+entrust the matter to a sub-committee, consisting of William L.
+Garrison, S. J. May, and myself; and after a brief consultation and
+comparison of each other's views, the drafting of the important paper was
+assigned to the former gentleman.  We agreed to meet him at his lodgings
+in the house of a colored friend early the next morning.  It was still
+dark when we climbed up to his room, and the lamp was still burning by
+the light of which he was writing the last sentence of the declaration.
+We read it carefully, made a few verbal changes, and submitted it to the
+large committee, who unanimously agreed to report it to the Convention.
+
+The paper was read to the Convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the
+committee, and listened to with the profoundest interest.
+
+Commencing with a reference to the time, fifty-seven years before, when,
+in the same city of Philadelphia, our fathers announced to the world
+their Declaration of Independence,--based on the self-evident truths of
+human equality and rights,--and appealed to arms for its defence, it
+spoke of the new enterprise as one "without which that of our fathers is
+incomplete," and as transcending theirs in magnitude, solemnity, and
+probable results as much "as moral truth does physical force."  It spoke
+of the difference of the two in the means and ends proposed, and of the
+trifling grievances of our fathers compared with the wrongs and
+sufferings of the slaves, which it forcibly characterized as unequalled
+by any others on the face of the earth.  It claimed that the nation was
+bound to repent at once, to let the oppressed go free, and to admit them
+to all the rights and privileges of others; because, it asserted, no man
+has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; because liberty is
+inalienable; because there is no difference, in principle, between slave-
+holding and man-stealing, which the law brands as piracy; and because no
+length of bondage can invalidate man's claim to himself, or render slave
+laws anything but "an audacious usurpation."
+
+It maintained that no compensation should be given to planters
+emancipating slaves, because that would be a surrender of fundamental
+principles; "slavery is a crime, and is, therefore, not an article to be
+sold;" because slave-holders are not just proprietors of what they claim;
+because emancipation would destroy only nominal, not real property; and
+because compensation, if given at all, should be given to the slaves.
+
+It declared any "scheme of expatriation" to be "delusive, cruel, and
+dangerous."  It fully recognized the right of each state to legislate
+exclusively on the subject of slavery within its limits, and conceded
+that Congress, under the present national compact, had no right to
+interfere; though still contending that it had the power, and should
+exercise it, "to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several
+states," and "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in
+those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under
+its exclusive jurisdiction."
+
+After clearly and emphatically avowing the principles underlying the
+enterprise, and guarding with scrupulous care the rights of persons and
+states under the Constitution, in prosecuting it, the declaration closed
+with these eloquent words:--
+
+We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the highest
+obligations resting upon the people of the free states to remove slavery
+by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
+United States.  They are now living under a pledge of their tremendous
+physical force to fasten the galling fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of
+millions in the Southern states; they are liable to be called at any
+moment to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves; they authorize
+the slave-owner to vote on three fifths of his slaves as property, and
+thus enable him to perpetuate his oppression; they support a standing
+army at the South for its protection; and they seize the slave who has
+escaped into their territories, and send him back to be tortured by an
+enraged master or a brutal driver.  This relation to slavery is criminal
+and full of danger.  It must be broken up.
+
+"These are our views and principles,--these our designs and measures.
+With entire confidence in the overruling justice of God, we plant
+ourselves upon the Declaration of Independence and the truths of divine
+revelation as upon the everlasting rock.
+
+"We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city,
+town, and village in our land.
+
+"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
+warning, of entreaty and rebuke.
+
+"We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively anti-slavery tracts and
+periodicals.
+
+"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
+and the dumb.
+
+"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in
+the guilt of slavery.
+
+"We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by
+giving a preference to their productions; and
+
+"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
+speedy repentance.
+
+"Our trust for victory is solely in God.  We may be personally defeated,
+but our principles never.  Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and
+will gloriously triumph.  Already a host is coming up to the help of the
+Lord against the mighty, and the prospect before us is full of
+encouragement.
+
+"Submitting this declaration to the candid examination of the people of
+this country, and of the friends of liberty all over the world, we hereby
+affix our signatures to it; pledging ourselves that, under the guidance
+and by the help of Almighty God, we will do all that in us lies,
+consistently with this declaration of our principles, to overthrow the
+most execrable system of slavery that has ever been witnessed upon earth,
+to deliver our land from its deadliest curse, to wipe out the foulest
+stain which rests upon our national escutcheon, and to secure to the
+colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges
+which belong to them as men and as Americans, come what may to our
+persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness
+the triumph of justice, liberty, and humanity, or perish untimely as
+martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause."
+
+The reading of the paper was followed by a discussion which lasted
+several hours.  A member of the Society of Friends moved its immediate
+adoption.  "We have," he said, "all given it our assent: every heart here
+responds to it.  It is a doctrine of Friends that these strong and deep
+impressions should be heeded."  The Convention, nevertheless, deemed it
+important to go over the declaration carefully, paragraph by paragraph.
+During the discussion, one of the spectators asked leave to say a few
+words.  A beautiful and graceful woman, in the prime of life, with a face
+beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of Madame Roland,
+offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a clear, sweet voice, the
+charm of which I have never forgotten.  It was Lucretia Mott of
+Philadelphia.  The president courteously thanked her, and encouraged her
+to take a part in the discussion.  On the morning of the last day of our
+session, the declaration, with its few verbal amendments, carefully
+engrossed on parchment, was brought before the Convention.  Samuel J. May
+rose to read it for the last time.  His sweet, persuasive voice faltered
+with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of
+the concluding paragraphs.  After a season of silence, David Thurston of
+Maine rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries, and affixed
+his name to the document.  One after another passed up to the platform,
+signed, and retired in silence.  All felt the deep responsibility of the
+occasion the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon
+every countenance.
+
+Our work as a Convention was now done.  President Green arose to make the
+concluding address.  The circumstances under which it was uttered may
+have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but as I now recall it, it
+seems to me the most powerful and eloquent speech to which I have ever
+listened.  He passed in review the work that had been done, the
+constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the
+union and earnestness which had marked the proceedings.  His closing
+words will never be forgotten by those who heard them:--
+
+"Brethren, it has been good to be here.  In this hallowed atmosphere I
+have been revived and refreshed.  This brief interview has more than
+repaid me for all that I have ever suffered.  I have here met congenial
+minds; I have rejoiced in sympathies delightful to the soul.  Heart has
+beat responsive to heart, and the holy work of seeking to benefit the
+outraged and despised has proved the most blessed employment.
+
+"But now we must retire from these balmy influences and breathe another
+atmosphere.  The chill hoar-frost will be upon us.  The storm and tempest
+will rise, and the waves of persecution will dash against our souls.  Let
+us be prepared for the worst.  Let us fasten ourselves to the throne of
+God as with hooks of steel.  If we cling not to Him, our names to that
+document will be but as dust.
+
+"Let us court no applause, indulge in no spirit of vain boasting.  Let us
+be assured that our only hope in grappling with the bony monster is in an
+Arm that is stronger than ours.  Let us fix our gaze on God, and walk in
+the light of His countenance.  If our cause be just--and we know it is--
+His omnipotence is pledged to its triumph.  Let this cause be entwined
+around the very fibres of our hearts.  Let our hearts grow to it, so that
+nothing but death can sunder the bond."
+
+He ceased, and then, amidst a silence broken only by the deep-drawn
+breath of emotion in the assembly, lifted up his voice in a prayer to
+Almighty God, full of fervor and feeling, imploring His blessing and
+sanctification upon the Convention and its labors.  And with the
+solemnity of this supplication in our hearts we clasped hands in
+farewell, and went forth each man to his place of duty, not knowing the
+things that should befall us as individuals, but with a confidence, never
+shaken by abuse and persecution, in the certain triumph of our cause.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  KANSAS
+
+Read at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the state of
+Kansas.
+
+                    BEAR CAMP HOUSE, WEST OSSIPEE, N. H.,
+                              Eighth month, 29th, 1879.
+
+To J. S. EMERY,  R. MORROW, AND C. W. SMITH, COMMITTEE:
+
+I HAVE received your invitation to the twenty-fifth anniversary
+celebration of the first settlement of Kansas.  It would give me great
+pleasure to visit your state on an occasion of such peculiar interest,
+and to make the acquaintance of its brave and self-denying pioneers, but
+I have not health and strength for the journey.  It is very fitting that
+this anniversary should be duly recognized.  No one of your sister states
+has such a record as yours,--so full of peril and adventure, fortitude,
+self-sacrifice, and heroic devotion to freedom.  Its baptism of martyr
+blood not only saved the state to liberty, but made the abolition of
+slavery everywhere possible.  Barber and Stillwell and Colpetzer and
+their associates did not die in vain.  All through your long, hard
+struggle I watched the course of events in Kansas with absorbing
+interest.  I rejoiced, while I marvelled at the steady courage which no
+danger could shake, at the firm endurance which outwearied the
+brutalities of your slaveholding invaders, and at that fidelity to right
+and duty which the seduction of immediate self-interest could not swerve,
+nor the military force of a proslavery government overawe.  All my
+sympathies were with you in that stern trial of your loyalty to God and
+humanity.  And when, in the end, you had conquered peace, and the last of
+the baffled border ruffians had left your territory, I felt that the doom
+of the accursed institution was sealed, and that its abolition was but a
+question of time.  A state with such a record will, I am sure, be true to
+its noble traditions, and will do all in its power to aid the victims of
+prejudice and oppression who may be compelled to seek shelter within its
+borders.  I will not for a moment distrust the fidelity of Kansas to her
+foundation principle.  God bless and prosper her!  Thanking you for the
+kind terms of your invitation, I am, gentlemen, very truly your friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
+
+An Introduction to Oliver Johnson's "William Lloyd Garrison and his
+Times."
+
+                                 [1879.]
+
+I no not know that any word of mine can give additional interest to this
+memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the pen of one of his earliest
+and most devoted friends, whose privilege it has been to share his
+confidence and his labors for nearly half a century; but I cannot well
+forego the opportunity afforded me to add briefly my testimony to the
+tribute to the memory of the great Reformer, whose friendship I have
+shared, and with whom I have been associated in a common cause from youth
+to age.
+
+My acquaintance with him commenced in boyhood.  My father was a
+subscriber to his first paper, the Free Press, and the humanitarian tone
+of his editorials awakened a deep interest in our little household, which
+was increased by a visit which he made us.  When he afterwards edited the
+Journal of the Times, at Bennington, Vt., I ventured to write him a
+letter of encouragement and sympathy, urging him to continue his labors
+against slavery, and assuring him that he could "do great things," an
+unconscious prophecy which has been fulfilled beyond the dream of my
+boyish enthusiasm.  The friendship thus commenced has remained unbroken
+through half a century, confirming my early confidence in his zeal and
+devotion, and in the great intellectual and moral strength which he
+brought to the cause with which his name is identified.
+
+During the long and hard struggle in which the abolitionists were
+engaged, and amidst the new and difficult questions and side-issues which
+presented themselves, it could scarcely be otherwise than that
+differences of opinion and action should arise among them.  The leader
+and his disciples could not always see alike.  My friend, the author of
+this book, I think, generally found himself in full accord with him,
+while I often decidedly dissented.  I felt it my duty to use my right of
+citizenship at the ballot-box in the cause of liberty, while Garrison,
+with equal sincerity, judged and counselled otherwise.  Each acted under
+a sense of individual duty and responsibility, and our personal relations
+were undisturbed.  If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to
+do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his
+hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods,
+it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of
+purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and,
+while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men
+and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry people recognized his
+moral leadership.  The controversies of old and new organization,
+nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties
+to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows
+the subsidence of prejudice and passion.  We were but fallible men, and
+doubtless often erred in feeling, speech, and action.  Ours was but the
+common experience of reformers in all ages.
+
+          "Never in Custom's oiled grooves
+          The world to a higher level moves,
+          But grates and grinds with friction hard
+          On granite bowlder and flinty shard.
+          Ever the Virtues blush to find
+          The Vices wearing their badge behind,
+          And Graces and Charities feel the fire
+          Wherein the sins of the age expire."
+
+It is too late now to dwell on these differences.  I choose rather, with
+a feeling of gratitude to God, to recall the great happiness of laboring
+with the noble company of whom Garrison was the central figure.  I love
+to think of him as he seemed to me, when in the fresh dawn of manhood he
+sat with me in the old Haverhill farmhouse, revolving even then schemes
+of benevolence; or, with cheery smile, welcoming me to his frugal meal of
+bread and milk in the dingy Boston printing-room; or, as I found him in
+the gray December morning in the small attic of a colored man, in
+Philadelphia, finishing his night-long task of drafting his immortal
+Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society; or, as I
+saw him in the jail of Leverett Street, after his almost miraculous
+escape from the mob, playfully inviting me to share the safe lodgings
+which the state had provided for him; and in all the varied scenes and
+situations where we acted together our parts in the great endeavor and
+success of Freedom.
+
+The verdict of posterity in his case may be safely anticipated.  With the
+true reformers and benefactors of his race he occupies a place inferior
+to none other.  The private lives of many who fought well the battles of
+humanity have not been without spot or blemish.  But his private
+character, like his public, knew no dishonor.  No shadow of suspicion
+rests upon the white statue of a life, the fitting garland of which
+should be the Alpine flower that symbolizes noble purity.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY.
+
+Read at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Anti-Slavery
+Society at Philadelphia, on the 3d December, 1883.
+
+                              OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
+                                     11th mo., 30, 1883.
+
+I NEED not say how gladly I would be with you at the semi-centennial of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society.  I am, I regret to say, quite unable
+to gratify this wish, and can only represent myself by a letter.
+
+Looking back over the long years of half a century, I can scarcely
+realize the conditions under which the convention of 1833 assembled.
+Slavery was predominant.  Like Apollyon in Pilgrim's Progress, it
+"straddled over the whole breadth of the way."  Church and state, press
+and pulpit, business interests, literature, and fashion were prostrate at
+its feet.  Our convention, with few exceptions, was composed of men
+without influence or position, poor and little known, strong only in
+their convictions and faith in the justice of their cause.  To onlookers
+our endeavor to undo the evil work of two centuries and convert a nation
+to the "great renunciation" involved in emancipation must have seemed
+absurd in the last degree.  Our voices in such an atmosphere found no
+echo.  We could look for no response but laughs of derision or the
+missiles of a mob.
+
+But we felt that we had the strength of truth on our side; we were right,
+and all the world about us was wrong.  We had faith, hope, and
+enthusiasm, and did our work, nothing doubting, amidst a generation who
+first despised and then feared and hated us.  For myself I have never
+ceased to be grateful to the Divine Providence for the privilege of
+taking a part in that work.
+
+And now for more than twenty years we have had a free country.  No slave
+treads its soil.  The anticipated dangerous consequences of complete
+emancipation have not been felt.  The emancipated class, as a whole, have
+done wisely, and well under circumstances of peculiar difficulty.  The
+masters have learned that cotton can be raised better by free than by
+slave labor, and nobody now wishes a return to slave-holding.  Sectional
+prejudices are subsiding, the bitterness of the civil war is slowly
+passing away.  We are beginning to feel that we are one people, with no
+really clashing interests, and none more truly rejoice in the growing
+prosperity of the South than the old abolitionists, who hated slavery as
+a curse to the master as well as to the slave.
+
+In view of this commemorative semi-centennial occasion, many thoughts
+crowd upon me; memory recalls vanished faces and voices long hushed.  Of
+those who acted with me in the convention fifty years ago nearly all have
+passed into another state of being.  We who remain must soon follow; we
+have seen the fulfilment of our desire; we have outlived scorn and
+persecution; the lengthening shadows invite us to rest.  If, in looking
+back, we feel that we sometimes erred through impatient zeal in our
+contest with a great wrong, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we
+were influenced by no merely selfish considerations.  The low light of
+our setting sun shines over a free, united people, and our last prayer
+shall be for their peace, prosperity, and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 RESPONSE
+
+TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY BY THE COLORED CITIZENS OF
+WASHINGTON D. C.
+
+To R. H. TERRELL AND GEORGE W. WILLIAMS, ESQUIRES.
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Among the great number of tokens of interest and good-will
+which reached me on my birthday, none have touched me more deeply than
+the proceedings of the great meeting of the colored citizens of the
+nation's capital, of which you are the representatives.  The resolutions
+of that meeting came to me as the voice of millions of my fellow-
+countrymen.  That voice was dumb in slavery when, more than half a
+century ago, I put forth my plea for the freedom of the slave.
+
+It could not answer me from the rice swamp and cotton field, but now, God
+be praised, it speaks from your great meeting in Washington and from all
+the colleges and schools where the youth of your race are taught.  I
+scarcely expected then that the people for whom I pleaded would ever know
+of my efforts in their behalf.  I cannot be too thankful to the Divine
+Providence that I have lived to hear their grateful response.
+
+I stand amazed at the rapid strides which your people have made since
+emancipation, at your industry, your acquisition of property and land,
+your zeal for education, your self-respecting but unresentful attitude
+toward those who formerly claimed to be your masters, your pathetic but
+manly appeal for just treatment and recognition.  I see in all this the
+promise that the time is not far distant when, in common with the white
+race, you will have the free, undisputed rights of American citizenship
+in all parts of the Union, and your rightful share in the honors as well
+as the protection of the government.
+
+Your letter would have been answered sooner if it had been possible.  I
+have been literally overwhelmed with letters and telegrams, which, owing
+to illness, I have been in a great measure unable to answer or even read.
+
+I tender to you, gentlemen, and to the people you represent my heartfelt
+thanks, and the assurance that while life lasts you will find me, as I
+have been heretofore, under more difficult circumstances, your faithful
+friend.
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
+first mo., 9, 1888.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           REFORM AND POLITICS
+
+                 UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.
+
+THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
+also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
+organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
+its people with suspicion and distrust.  They admit, perhaps, the evils
+of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
+alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
+Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
+or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
+with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
+neighbors.  They wonder why people are not contented with their
+allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
+in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
+an old poet has quaintly described:--
+
+               "The citizens like pounded pikes;
+               The lesser feed the great;
+               The rich for food seek stomachs,
+               And the poor for stomachs meat."
+
+This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
+reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
+world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress.  They
+are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
+comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
+who would turn it upside down come hither also?  Why not let well enough
+alone?  Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good
+old-fashioned order of things in church and state?  The idea of making
+the world better and happier is to them an absurdity.  He who entertains
+it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical
+wisdom.  His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be
+impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, _Utopian._
+
+The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
+conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
+reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
+writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
+actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
+fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
+mind.  Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
+death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country.  In this
+are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
+ideal of a perfect commonwealth.  Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
+depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
+historical traditions.  At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
+Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
+solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
+
+The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class.  It is the work of
+a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
+could
+
+               "Forerun his age and race, and let
+               His feet millenniums hence be set
+               In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."
+
+Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
+European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are
+now practically recognized in our own democratic system.  As might be
+expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the
+exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands
+for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want
+of proportion and symmetry in the structure.  Many of his theories are no
+doubt impracticable and unsound.  But, as a whole, the work is an
+admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a
+government of religious toleration and political freedom.  The following
+extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than
+folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:--
+
+"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
+whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
+who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
+variety.  He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
+to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
+him as true."
+
+Passing by the "Telemachus" of Fenelon, we come to the political romance
+of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell.  "Oceana" is the name by
+which the author represents England; and the republican plan of
+government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would
+have recommended for adoption in case a free commonwealth had been
+established.  It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet
+the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who,
+after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole,
+with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman
+need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had
+won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."
+
+Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon
+government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir
+Thomas More, in after life, fell into the very practices of intolerance
+and bigotry which he condemned.  When in the possession of the great seal
+under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to
+the persecution of heretics.  Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a
+gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his
+presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical
+opinions.  In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with
+merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the
+chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith,
+"if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past
+life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a
+permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and
+conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of
+one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his
+own doctrines."
+
+Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel,
+held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith.  He
+published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably
+from the numerous attacks made upon it.  Regarded as too dangerous an
+enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of
+Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of
+St.  Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial
+derangement, from which he never recovered.
+
+Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has
+found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment,
+entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without
+priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the
+pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country,
+and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such
+persons as servants.  The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau
+during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in
+which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and
+intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society,
+comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from
+the real to the imaginary.  Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de
+Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy
+world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,--gladly
+escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and
+happiness,--at once misanthropes and philanthropists,--amused and solaced
+themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which
+the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught;
+where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to
+prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
+They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try,
+and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and
+luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or
+gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid
+plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in
+desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity.  Religion
+was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature.  Death was
+no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open
+through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be
+equally an object of desire.
+
+The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young
+Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of
+benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of
+carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt.  He is shipwrecked on
+his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is
+entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from
+whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of
+Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully
+exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his
+daughter.  This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly.
+Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian
+Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its
+pastoral descriptions.  The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's
+upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising
+and the singing of birds:--
+
+"Tyrteus conducted his guests to an adjoining chamber.  It had a window
+shut by a curtain of rushes, through the crevices of which the islands of
+the Alpheus might be seen in the light of the moon.  There were in this
+chamber two excellent beds, with coverlets of warm and light wool.
+
+"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of
+the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the
+shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none
+worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the
+next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as
+happy as this sequestered family.  Converse so delightful might have
+charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been
+invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the
+window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant
+noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount
+Lyceum."
+
+The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal
+republic.  Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as
+the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner.  Bacon's college, in
+his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford.  More's
+"Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the
+vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics.  The merciless wits,
+clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II.  regarded Harrington's
+romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule.  The gay
+dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the
+prose pastoral of St.  Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to
+his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural
+society.
+
+The world had its laugh over these romances.  When unable to refute their
+theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
+satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
+charge of lunacy.  Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
+of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
+years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
+making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
+and sunshine.  But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
+medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
+however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
+finding a lodging-place in the popular mind.  The speculations of the
+political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
+
+                                "such stuff
+          As dreams are made of, and their little life
+          Rounded with sleep."
+
+They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
+fabrics of Europe and America.  The prophecies of imagination have been
+fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
+
+What is the moral suggested by this record?  Is it not that we should
+look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the
+political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture
+upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider
+that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another
+generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now
+seem to us absurd and impossible?  Many of the evils of society have been
+measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the
+Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although
+quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper
+application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general
+suffering?  Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or
+hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope
+for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply
+those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political,
+and industrial relations of the race.  If it is not permitted us to
+believe all things, we can at least hope them.  Despair is infidelity and
+death.  Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds
+good, "We are saved by hope."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS.
+
+                                 [1851.]
+
+BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country
+neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and
+monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp.  "Rather,"
+he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering
+man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find
+a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly
+and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope
+of those who love God and their fellow-men."
+
+We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist--a wish even
+yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.--
+by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of
+the State of Massachusetts.  They indicate, in our view, the real glory
+of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's
+definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the
+description of an existing fact,--"a huge Christian personage, a mighty
+growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of
+God and of mankind."
+
+Some years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the suggestion of
+several benevolent gentlemen whose attention had been turned to the
+subject, appointed a commission to inquire into the condition of the
+idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their numbers, and whether
+anything could be done in their behalf.
+
+The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known
+for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington,
+and Dr. Gilman Kimball.  The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman,
+who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical
+adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his
+varied schemes of benevolence.  On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a
+full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor,
+accompanied by statistical tables and minute details.  One hundred towns
+had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five
+hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered.
+These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as
+mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw
+light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection
+in the creation of God.  The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be
+found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and
+disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the
+parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers.  Out of 420 cases of
+idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the
+progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one
+or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way
+departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or
+predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried
+with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual
+excesses.
+
+Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy
+afterwards.  Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age,
+and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement.  Of those above twenty-five
+years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental
+condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of
+the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in
+the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public
+charge in almshouses.  A large proportion of them were found to be given
+over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly
+sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.
+
+Those in private houses were found, if possible, in a still more
+deplorable state.  Their parents were generally poor, feeble in mind and
+body, and often of very intemperate habits.  Many of them seemed scarcely
+able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of
+ordinary children.  It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility
+teaching imbecility.  Some instances of the experiments of parental
+ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr.
+Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their
+heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish
+parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his
+ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering
+lessons.  In other cases, finding that the child could not be made to
+comprehend anything, the sagacious heads of the household, on the
+supposition that its brain was too hard, tortured it with hot poultices
+of bread and milk to soften it.  Others plastered over their children's
+heads with tar.  Some administered strong doses of mercury, to "solder up
+the openings" in the head and make it tight and strong.  Others
+encouraged the savage gluttony of their children, stimulating their
+unnatural and bestial appetites, on the ground that "the poor creatures
+had nothing else to enjoy but their food, and they should have enough of
+that!"
+
+In consequence of this report, the legislature, in the spring of 1848,
+made an annual appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, for three
+years, for the purpose of training and teaching ten idiot children, to be
+selected by the Governor and Council.  The trustees of the Asylum for the
+Blind, under the charge of Dr. Howe, made arrangements for receiving
+these pupils.  The school was opened in the autumn of 1848; and its first
+annual report, addressed to the Governor and printed by order of the
+Senate, is now before us.
+
+Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of
+muscular motion,--the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile
+will.  Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions;
+others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were
+without any power of locomotion.
+
+One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the
+day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could
+scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of
+touch.  He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would
+lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed.  He could not feed
+himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an
+infant.  His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no
+affections.  A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have
+been selected.
+
+A year of patient endeavor has nevertheless wrought a wonderful change in
+the condition of this miserable being.  Cold bathing, rubbing of the
+limbs, exercise of the muscles, exposure to the air, and other appliances
+have enabled him to stand upright, to sit at table and feed himself, and
+chew his food, and to walk about with slight assistance.  His habits are
+no longer those of a brute; he observes decency; his eye is brighter; his
+cheeks glow with health; his countenance, is more expressive of thought.
+He has learned many words and constructs simple sentences; his affections
+begin to develop; and there is every prospect that he will be so far
+renovated as to be able to provide for himself in manhood.
+
+In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been
+equally remarkable.  The gentleman who first called attention to him, in
+a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his
+present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic
+demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of
+communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing
+with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining
+what I gave him,--and when I see him already selecting articles named by
+his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,--
+improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is
+creation; it is making him anew."
+
+All the pupils have more or less advanced.  Their health and habits have
+improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the
+close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful
+as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated.  Dr. Howe has
+been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has
+devoted his whole time to the pupils.  Of the nature and magnitude of
+their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter
+listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his
+attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to
+impressions.  All his senses are dulled and perverted.  Touch, hearing,
+sight, smell, are all more or less defective.  His gluttony is
+unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,--the most savory viands
+and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him.  His
+mental state is still worse than his physical.  Thought is painful and
+irksome to him.
+
+His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud,
+earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of
+some visible object of bright color and striking form.  The eye wanders,
+and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned
+into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the
+teacher's exertions.  The names of objects presented to him must
+sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them.  Yet
+the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress,
+slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest.  Step by step, often
+compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the
+idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his
+sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of
+death, breath as from the Almighty--is breathed into him, and he becomes
+a living soul.
+
+After the senses of the idiot are trained to take note
+of their appropriate objects, the various perceptive faculties are next
+to be exercised.  The greatest possible number of facts are to be
+gathered up through the medium of these faculties into the storehouse of
+memory, from whence eventually the higher faculties of mind may draw the
+material of general ideas.  It has been found difficult, if not
+impossible, to teach the idiot to read by the letters first, as in the
+ordinary method; but while the varied powers of the three letters, h, a,
+t, could not be understood by him, he could be made to comprehend the
+complex sign of the word hat, made by uniting the three.
+
+The moral nature of the idiot needs training and development as well as
+his physical and mental.  All that can be said of him is, that he has the
+latent capacity for moral development and culture.  Uninstructed and left
+to himself, he has no ideas of regulated appetites and propensities, of
+decency and delicacy of affection and social relations.  The germs of
+these ideas, which constitute the glory and beauty of humanity,
+undoubtedly exist in him; but there can be no growth without patient and
+persevering culture.  Where this is afforded, to use the language of the
+report, "the idiot may learn what love is, though he may not know the
+word which expresses it; he may feel kindly affections while unable to
+understand the simplest virtuous principle; and he may begin to live
+acceptably to God before he has learned the name by which men call him."
+
+In the facts and statistics presented in the report, light is shed upon
+some of the dark pages of God's providence, and it is seen that the
+suffering and shame of idiocy are the result of sin, of a violation of
+the merciful laws of God and of the harmonies of His benign order.  The
+penalties which are ordained for the violators of natural laws are
+inexorable and certain.  For the transgressor of the laws of life there
+is, as in the case of Esau, "no place for repentance, though he seek it
+earnestly and with tears."  The curse cleaves to him and his children.
+In this view, how important becomes the subject of the hereditary
+transmission of moral and physical disease and debility! and how
+necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a
+willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent
+the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and
+the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing
+loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the
+restraints of the moral faculties!  Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and
+his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present
+actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in
+vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great
+laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a
+vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.
+
+The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our
+attention to a kindred institution of charity.  The chief magistrate
+congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and
+heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals,
+established by an act of a previous legislature.  The act provides that,
+when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime
+punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by
+imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or
+justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such
+imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence.  The school is
+placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy
+thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in
+the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal
+law of the state.  They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at
+their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth.  And whenever any
+boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age
+of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.
+
+It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in
+piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular
+course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such
+other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment,
+reformation, and future benefit of the boys.  The class of offenders for
+whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by
+crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims often of
+circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,--issuing from
+homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome
+impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance,
+and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly
+chargeable.  In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law
+were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts,
+where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly
+corrupted by contact with older criminals, familiar with atrocity, and
+rolling their loathsome vices "as a sweet morsel under the tongue."  In
+view of this state of things the Reform School has been established,
+twenty-two thousand dollars having been contributed to the state for that
+purpose by an unknown benefactor of his race.  The school is located in
+Westboro', on a fine farm of two hundred acres.  The buildings are in the
+form of a square, with a court in the centre, three stories in front,
+with wings.  They are constructed with a degree of architectural taste,
+and their site is happily chosen,--a gentle eminence, overlooking one of
+the loveliest of the small lakes which form a pleasing feature in New
+England scenery.  From this place the atmosphere and associations of the
+prison are excluded.  The discipline is strict, as a matter of course;
+but it is that of a well-regulated home or school-room,--order, neatness,
+and harmony within doors; and without, the beautiful 'sights and sounds
+and healthful influences of Nature.  One would almost suppose that the
+poetical dream of Coleridge, in his tragedy of Remorse, had found its
+realization in the Westboro' School, and that, weary of the hopelessness
+and cruelty of the old penal system, our legislators had embodied in
+their statutes the idea of the poet:--
+
+"With other ministrations thou, O Nature,
+Healest thy wandering and distempered child
+Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
+Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
+Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
+Till he relent, and can no more endure
+To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
+Amidst this general dance and minstrelsy."
+
+Thus it is that the Christian idea of reformation, rather than revenge,
+is slowly but surely incorporating itself in our statute books.  We have
+only to look back but a single century to be able to appreciate the
+immense gain for humanity in the treatment of criminals which has been
+secured in that space of time.  Then the use of torture was common
+throughout Europe.  Inability to comprehend and believe certain religious
+dogmas was a crime to be expiated by death, or confiscation of estate, or
+lingering imprisonment.  Petty offences against property furnished
+subjects for the hangman.  The stocks and the whipping-post stood by the
+side of the meeting-house.  Tongues were bored with redhot irons and ears
+shorn off.  The jails were loathsome dungeons, swarming with vermin,
+unventilated, unwarmed.  A century and a half ago the populace of
+Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a
+miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking-
+stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the
+unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'--pressed slowly to
+death under planks,--for refusing to plead to an indictment for
+witchcraft.  What a change from all this to the opening of the State
+Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries,
+to keen-eyed benevolence watching over the administration of justice,
+which, in securing society from lawless aggression, is not suffered to
+overlook the true interest and reformation of the criminal, nor to forget
+that the magistrate, in the words of the Apostle, is to be indeed "the
+minister of God to man for good!"
+
+
+
+
+                       LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES.
+
+"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was
+the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who
+took offence at his companions,--the poor, the degraded, the weak, and
+the sinful.  "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
+not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
+repentance."
+
+The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher
+has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly
+governed by His maxims.  The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as
+broad as those of the old Jewish saints.  The respectable Christian
+detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the
+Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day.  He folds his robe of
+self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than
+sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to
+restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise than by
+pains and penalties as wicked collusion with crime, dangerous to the
+stability and safety of society, and offensive in the sight of God.  And
+yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the example
+of our Lord has been followed in respect to the outcast and criminal, the
+effect has been to reform and elevate,--to snatch as brands from the
+burning souls not yet wholly given over to the service of evil.  The
+wonderful influence for good exerted over the most degraded and reckless
+criminals of London by the excellent and self-denying Elizabeth Fry, the
+happy results of the establishment of houses of refuge, and reformation,
+and Magdalen asylums, all illustrate the wisdom of Him who went about
+doing good, in pointing out the morally diseased as the appropriate
+subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples.  No one is to be
+despaired of.  We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures
+as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most
+repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a
+consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the
+loathsomeness of sin,--one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly
+profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable
+spirit for deliverance.  Deep down under the squalid exterior,
+unparticipative in the hideous merriment and recklessness of the
+criminal, there is another self,--a chained and suffering inner man,--
+crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like
+Jonah from the bosom of hell.  To this lingering consciousness the
+sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in
+vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the
+way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are
+inseparable.  Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake;
+but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality
+extremely difficult to the unhappy wanderer, and often seems as well nigh
+impossible.  The laws of social life rise up like insurmountable barriers
+between him and escape.  As he turns towards the society whose rights he
+has outraged, its frown settles upon him; the penalties of the laws he
+has violated await him; and he falls back despairing, and suffers the
+fetters of the evil habit to whose power he has yielded himself to be
+fastened closer and heavier upon him.  O for some good angel, in the form
+of a brother-man and touched with a feeling of his sins and infirmities,
+to reassure his better nature and to point out a way of escape from its
+body of death!
+
+We have been led into these remarks by an account, given in the London
+Weekly Chronicle, of a most remarkable interview between the professional
+thieves of London and Lord Ashley,--a gentleman whose best patent of
+nobility is to be found in his generous and untiring devotion to the
+interests of his fellow-men.  It appears that a philanthropic gentleman
+in London had been applied to by two young thieves, who had relinquished
+their evil practices and were obtaining a precarious but honest
+livelihood by picking up bones and rags in the streets, their loss of
+character closing against them all other employments.  He had just been
+reading an address of Lord Ashley's in favor of colonial emigration, and
+he was led to ask one of the young men how he would like to emigrate.
+
+"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the
+gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts
+of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,--
+localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness.
+Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who
+declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be
+held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the
+colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course
+was the impossibility of extricating themselves.  He gave them such
+advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble
+again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at
+the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord
+Ashley.  On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place.
+At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent
+gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation
+to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh
+filled.  Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present.  "Several
+of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the
+admission of any but thieves.  Some four or five individuals, who were
+not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to
+remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the
+dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced
+the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether
+any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he
+was.  The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of
+'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their
+crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and
+another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who
+naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening
+their minds."
+
+What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society!  All that
+is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian
+grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong
+depravity of men living "without God in the world,"--the pariahs of
+civilization,--the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its
+face, and cries out, "Unclean!"  After a prayer had been offered, Lord
+Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his
+strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which
+offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and
+enter upon a respectable course of life.  The hard heart melted and the
+cold and cruel eye moistened.  With one accord the wretched felons
+responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared
+their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend.  They looked
+up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which
+had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence
+of simple goodness.  He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una
+amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of
+meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence
+with sudden adoration and mute awe."
+
+Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in
+prison,"--the female tenants of Newgate,--her temerity was regarded with
+astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable
+objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary.  Her personal
+safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the
+language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as
+lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of
+the enemy."  The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus
+far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a
+new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and
+ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices
+of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
+
+                    Letter to the Newport Convention.
+
+                 AMESBURY, MASS., 12th, 8th Month, 1869.
+
+I HAVE received thy letter inviting me to attend the Convention in behalf
+of Woman's Suffrage, at Newport, R.  I., on the 25th inst.  I do not see
+how it is possible for me to accept the invitation; and, were I to do so,
+the state of my health would prevent me from taking such a part in the
+meeting as would relieve me from the responsibility of seeming to
+sanction anything in its action which might conflict with my own views of
+duty or policy.  Yet I should do myself great injustice if I did not
+embrace this occasion to express my general sympathy with the movement.
+I have seen no good reason why mothers, wives, and daughters should not
+have the same right of person, property, and citizenship which fathers,
+husbands, and brothers have.
+
+The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women
+of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like
+equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with
+noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their
+household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of
+unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and
+strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human
+nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than
+acquiescence on the efforts you are making.  I frankly confess that I am
+not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political
+change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to
+do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice.  I can understand,
+without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote
+drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment,
+the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it.  But in this
+matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature.  Stronger than statutes
+or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves
+and honors in woman.  Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed
+Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain.
+I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when
+they meet on terms of equality before the law.
+
+On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman
+will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains.  It
+is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something
+less than manhood to withhold it.  But, unsupported by a more practical
+education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of
+life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more
+than in man's.
+
+With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ITALIAN UNITY
+
+                   AMESBURY, MASS., 1st Mo., 4th, 1871.
+
+     Read at the great meeting in New York, January, 1871, in celebration
+     of the freedom of Rome and complete unity of Italy.
+
+IT would give me more than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting on
+the 12th instant for the celebration of Italian Unity, the emancipation
+of Rome, and its occupation as the permanent capital of the nation.
+
+For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular
+movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the
+deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries.  I
+looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their
+ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings.  Had I been a Catholic instead of a
+Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from
+Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical,
+desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty
+which I prized so highly for myself.
+
+I lost all confidence in the French republic of 1849, when it forfeited
+its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic
+under Mazzini and Garibaldi.  From that hour it was doomed, and the
+expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on.  My sympathies are
+with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and
+sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris
+by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of
+Rome by Oudinot.  And is it not a significant fact that the terrible
+chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed
+Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of
+French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia?  It was
+said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized
+the guillotine.  The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.
+
+It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been
+effected so easily and bloodlessly.  The despotism of a thousand years
+fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness.  The people of Rome, fifty to
+one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth
+upon its grave.  Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general
+acquiescence in its downfall.  No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in
+its behalf.  No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger
+for it.  Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the
+fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its
+rescue.  It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in
+professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call
+an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their
+own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio
+Nono.
+
+The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
+the Catholic Church, as well as to the world.  Many of its most learned
+and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a
+change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer
+be excused or tolerated.  A century hence it will have as few apologists
+as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
+
+In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering
+and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the
+way for the triumph which we celebrate.  As we call the long, illustrious
+roll of Italian patriotism--the young, the brave, and beautiful; the
+gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut
+out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the
+slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom--let us hope that they also rejoice
+with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our thanksgiving:
+"Alleluia!  for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!  He hath avenged the
+blood of his servants!"
+
+In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule
+will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I
+am very truly thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
+
+THE present condition and future prospects of the remnants of the
+aboriginal inhabitants of this continent can scarcely be a matter of
+indifference to any class of the people of the United States.  Apart from
+all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our
+own well-being would compel attention to the subject.  The irreversible
+laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political
+and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and
+wrong of one part of the community must affect all others.  A common
+responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten
+ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect
+no nation has ever escaped.
+
+It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian
+Civilization could be appropriately used in this country.  Very little
+real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when
+Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced.  So
+little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the
+assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and
+progress.  The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a
+superficial observer.
+
+The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the
+imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying
+Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes.
+The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was
+greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless
+converts of Gnadenhutten.  But since the first visit of Commissioner
+Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization,
+and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature,
+and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been
+practically solved.
+
+The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are
+indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their
+elevation.  The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those
+Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and
+who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
+conquered.  The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
+from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
+Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
+of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
+ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell
+was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by
+diligence in robbery and courage in murder.  The descendants of these
+human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing
+influence of the gospel of Christ.  The report of the Superintendent of
+the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable
+and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the
+Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of
+improvement.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the
+wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every
+instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic
+disregard of their rights of person, property, and life.  The letter of
+Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month,
+1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman,
+Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching
+investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not
+astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in
+silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence.
+The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."
+
+It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer
+settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind
+vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the
+real wrong-doers.  They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as
+proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can
+prevent their repetition.  But a moment's consideration compels us to
+admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man.  "All wars
+are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom
+has been a great battle-field.  What Indian raid has been more dreadful
+than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless
+atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St.
+Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under
+the demoniac rule of revolution!  All history, black with crime and red
+with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man,"
+and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's
+ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his
+extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal
+force to the whole family of man.
+
+A late lecture of my friend, Stanley Pumphrey, comprises more of valuable
+information and pertinent suggestions on the Indian question than I have
+found in any equal space; and I am glad of the opportunity to add to it
+my hearty endorsement, and to express the conviction that its general
+circulation could not fail to awaken a deeper and more kindly interest in
+the condition of the red man, and greatly aid in leading the public mind
+to a fuller appreciation of the responsibility which rests upon us as a
+people to rectify, as far as possible, past abuses, and in our future
+relations to the native owners of the soil to "deal justly and love
+mercy."
+
+
+
+
+
+READING FOR THE BLIND.
+
+[1880.]
+
+To Mary C.  Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy
+class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them
+to read through the sense of touch some of my writings, and thus hold
+what I hope will prove a pleasant communion with me.  Very glad I shall
+be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I
+have tried to make, are understood and appreciated by those who cannot
+discern them by natural vision.  I shall count it a great privilege to
+see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes.  It is the mind
+after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things.  What visions
+of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of
+blind Milton and Beethoven!
+
+I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and
+blind; yet under these circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high
+degree, and has written poems of great beauty, and vivid descriptions of
+scenes which have been witnessed only by the "light within."
+
+I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that
+I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer
+is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can
+well dispense with the outward and material ones.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INDIAN QUESTION.
+
+Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the
+condition of the Indians in the United States.
+
+AMESBURY, 4th mo., 1883.
+
+I REGRET that I cannot be present at the meeting called in reference to
+the pressing question of the day, the present condition and future
+prospects of the Indian race in the United States.  The old policy,
+however well intended, of the government is no longer available.  The
+westward setting tide of immigration is everywhere sweeping over the
+lines of the reservations.  There would seem to be no power in the
+government to prevent the practical abrogation of its solemn treaties and
+the crowding out of the Indians from their guaranteed hunting grounds.
+Outbreaks of Indian ferocity and revenge, incited by wrong and robbery on
+the part of the whites, will increasingly be made the pretext of
+indiscriminate massacres.  The entire question will soon resolve itself
+into the single alternative of education and civilization or
+extermination.
+
+The school experiments at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove in Oregon
+have proved, if such proof were ever needed, that the roving Indian can
+be enlightened and civilized, taught to work and take interest and
+delight in the product of his industry, and settle down on his farm or in
+his workshop, as an American citizen, protected by and subject to the
+laws of the republic.  What is needed is that not only these schools
+should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened
+without delay.  The matter does not admit of procrastination.  The work
+of education and civilization must be done.  The money needed must be
+contributed with no sparing hand.  The laudable example set by the
+Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by
+other sects and philanthropic societies.  Christianity, patriotism, and
+enlightened self interest have a common stake in the matter.  Great and
+difficult as the work may be the country is strong enough, rich enough,
+wise enough, and, I believe, humane and Christian enough to do it.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
+
+Read at a meeting of the Essex Club, in Boston,
+November, 1885.
+
+AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 10, 1885.
+
+I AM sorry that I cannot accept thy invitation to attend the meeting of
+the Essex Club on the 14th inst.  I should be glad to meet my old
+Republican friends and congratulate them on the results of the election
+in Massachusetts, and especially in our good old county of Essex.
+
+Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last
+year saw fit to vote with the opposite party.  I would be the last to
+deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I
+think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and
+evils which they complained of.  President Cleveland has proved himself
+better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I
+give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him,
+and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his
+carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him.  It has already
+compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering
+purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his
+vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician.  I would
+not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a
+good deal like it.
+
+As a Republican from the outset, I am proud of the noble record of the
+party, but I should rejoice to see its beneficent work taken up by the
+Democratic party and so faithfully carried on as to make our organization
+no longer necessary.  But, as far as we can see, the Republican party has
+still its mission and its future.  When labor shall everywhere have its
+just reward, and the gains of it are made secure to the earners; when
+education shall be universal, and, North and South, all men shall have
+the free and full enjoyment of civil rights and privileges, irrespective
+of color or former condition; when every vice which debases the community
+shall be discouraged and prohibited, and every virtue which elevates it
+fostered and strengthened; when merit and fitness shall be the conditions
+of office; and when sectional distrust and prejudice shall give place to
+well-merited confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of all, then will
+the work of the Republican party, as a party, be ended, and all political
+rivalries be merged in the one great party of the people, with no other
+aim than the common welfare, and no other watchwords than peace, liberty,
+and union.  Then may the language which Milton addressed to his
+countrymen two centuries ago be applied to the United States, "Go on,
+hand in hand, O peoples, never to be disunited; be the praise and heroic
+song of all posterity.  Join your invincible might to do worthy and
+godlike deeds; and then he who seeks to break your Union, a cleaving
+curse be his inheritance."
+
+
+
+
+
+OUR DUMB RELATIONS.
+
+[1886.]
+
+IT was said of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had attained, through the
+fervor of his love, the secret of that deep amity with God and His
+creation which, in the language of inspiration, makes man to be in league
+with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace
+with him.  The world has never been without tender souls, with whom the
+golden rule has a broader application than its letter might seem to
+warrant.  The ancient Eastern seers recognized the rights of the brute
+creation, and regarded the unnecessary taking of the life of the humblest
+and meanest as a sin; and in almost all the old religions of the world
+there are legends of saints, in the depth of whose peace with God and
+nature all life was sacredly regarded as the priceless gift of heaven,
+and who were thus enabled to dwell safely amidst lions and serpents.
+
+It is creditable to human nature and its unperverted instincts that
+stories and anecdotes of reciprocal kindness and affection between men
+and animals are always listened to with interest and approval.  How
+pleasant to think of the Arab and his horse, whose friendship has been
+celebrated in song and romance.  Of Vogelwied, the Minnesinger, and his
+bequest to the birds.  Of the English Quaker, visited, wherever he went,
+by flocks of birds, who with cries of joy alighted on his broad-brimmed
+hat and his drab coat-sleeves.  Of old Samuel Johnson, when half-blind
+and infirm, groping abroad of an evening for oysters for his cat.  Of
+Walter Scott and John Brown, of Edinburgh, and their dogs.  Of our own
+Thoreau, instinctively recognized by bird and beast as a friend.  Emerson
+says of him: "His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller
+records of Butler, the apologist, that either he had told the bees
+things, or the bees had told him.  Snakes coiled round his legs; the
+fishes swam into his hand; he pulled the woodchuck out of his hole by his
+tail, and took foxes under his protection from the hunters."
+
+In the greatest of the ancient Hindu poems--the sacred book of the
+Mahabharata--there is a passage of exceptional beauty and tenderness,
+which records the reception of King Yudishthira at the gate of Paradise.
+A pilgrim to the heavenly city, the king had travelled over vast spaces,
+and, one by one, the loved ones, the companions of his journey, had all
+fallen and left him alone, save his faithful dog, which still followed.
+He was met by Indra, and invited to enter the holy city.  But the king
+thinks of his friends who have fallen on the way, and declines to go in
+without them.  The god tells him they are all within waiting for him.
+Joyful, he is about to seek them, when he looks upon the poor dog, who,
+weary and wasted, crouches at his feet, and asks that he, too, may enter
+the gate.  Indra refuses, and thereupon the king declares that to abandon
+his faithful dumb friend would be as great a sin as to kill a Brahmin.
+
+     "Away with that felicity whose price is to abandon the faithful!
+     Never, come weal or woe, will I leave my faithful dog.
+     The poor creature, in fear and distress, has trusted in my power to
+     save him;
+     Not, therefore, for life itself, will I break my plighted word."
+
+In full sight of heaven he chooses to go to hell with his dog, and
+straightway descends, as he supposes, thither.  But his virtue and
+faithfulness change his destination to heaven, and he finds himself
+surrounded by his old friends, and in the presence of the gods, who thus
+honor and reward his humanity and unselfish love.
+
+
+
+
+
+INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
+
+Read at the reception in Boston of the English delegation representing
+more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor
+international arbitration.
+
+AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 9, 1887.
+
+IT is a very serious disappointment to me not to be able to be present at
+the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than
+two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international
+arbitration.  Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the
+presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United
+States.  It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best
+interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must
+respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his
+colleagues who represented the workingmen of England.  We do not need to
+be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by
+professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and
+boomerang.  We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the
+demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the
+spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in
+preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like
+Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that
+the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.
+
+The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a
+cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of
+peace among English speaking peoples.  I cannot doubt that whatever stump
+orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America
+will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water.
+No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the
+United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."
+
+In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common
+claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are
+essentially one people.  Whatever other nations may do, we at least
+should be friends.  God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall
+not be in vain!  May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us
+shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of
+good.
+
+              "When closer strand shall lean to strand,
+               Till meet beneath saluting flags,
+               The eagle of our mountain crags,
+               The lion of our mother land!"
+
+
+
+
+
+SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN.
+
+Read at the Woman's Convention at Washington.
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS., Third Mo., 8, 1888.
+
+I THANK thee for thy kind letter.  It would be a great satisfaction to be
+able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman's Suffrage
+Association.  But, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my
+hearty sympathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart
+and assurance in view of all that has been accomplished.  There is no
+easy royal road to a reform of this kind, but if the progress has been
+slow there has been no step backward.  The barriers which at first seemed
+impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice have been undermined and
+their fall is certain.  A prophecy of your triumph at no distant day is
+in the air; your opponents feel it and believe it.  They know that yours
+is a gaining and theirs a losing cause.  The work still before you
+demands on your part great patience, steady perseverance, a firm,
+dignified, and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you
+have so much reason to complain, and of serene confidence which is not
+discouraged by temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor
+provoked to use any weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall
+back on the heads of those who use them.  You can afford
+in your consciousness of right to be as calm and courteous as the
+archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture in his controversy with
+Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him.  A wise
+adaptation of means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should
+be taken to avoid all such methods as have disgraced political and
+religious parties of the masculine sex.  Continue to make it manifest
+that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in womanhood is
+entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and
+the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our
+country.  Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving
+as to your success, I bid you Godspeed.  I find I have written to the
+association rather than to thyself, but as one of the principal
+originators and most faithful supporters, it was very natural that I
+should identify thee with it.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIFE
+
+THE AGENCY OF EVIL.
+
+From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for
+1843.
+
+IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so
+written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets
+and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future
+state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and
+most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of
+evil,--the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and
+suffering and discord,--the wrong which all men see in others and feel
+in themselves,--the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery.  A
+superficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of
+man's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the
+thoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes.  The
+grossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread
+of an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our
+nature.  Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing
+before its face, the form whereof is not discerned.
+
+It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone
+for the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously
+consigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and
+witchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected
+impostures,
+
+              "Over the backside of the world far off,
+               Into a limbo broad and large, and called
+               The paradise of fools,"--
+
+that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine
+of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and
+unbelievers among us.  Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the
+marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others.  In certain
+states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional
+garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us.  Imagination
+goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt.  We
+think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with
+Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us.  For what is the
+priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the
+supernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in
+the shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual
+wonders?  Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and
+demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his
+faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints
+at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and
+speculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon
+of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,
+Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the
+universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in
+itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process
+of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed
+of the spiritual world and supernatural agency?  That fearful being with
+his tributaries and agents,--"the Devil and his angels,"--how awfully he
+rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers!  How
+he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas
+of Milton and Dante!  What a note of horror does his name throw into the
+sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches.  What strange, dark fancies are
+connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand
+juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed
+"at the instigation of the Devil"!
+
+How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood!  Even at this day,
+at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with
+which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's
+Progress.  Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
+extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the
+tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled
+over the whole breadth of the way."  There was another print of the enemy
+which made no slight impression upon me.  It was the frontispiece of an
+old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
+(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
+enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
+fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
+declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
+lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
+commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
+without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
+were worn off to the knees!  The rude wood-cut represented the demon
+fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
+"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels."  He would have answered very
+well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.
+
+To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we
+are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and
+possession.  Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of
+evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of
+good.  Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves
+constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are
+always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm.  "The
+Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat
+faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."
+
+The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and
+existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.
+The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided
+sovereignty of the universe.  The Divine Teacher, it is true, in
+discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and
+which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He
+nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
+power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
+are all things.  Pure himself, He can create nothing impure.  Evil,
+therefore, has no eternity in the past.  The fact of its present actual
+existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
+the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
+become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of
+the Infinite Parent.  Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark
+mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of
+humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,
+justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at
+all."
+
+"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
+Robinson.  "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"
+
+Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils
+do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,
+ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded."  Origen, in his Platonic
+speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by
+repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed
+to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all.  Justin Martyr was of
+the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the
+Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded.  One is
+irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the
+Deil_, by Burns:--
+
+              "But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!
+               Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,
+               Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
+               Still has a stake
+               I'm was to think upon yon den
+               Fen for your sake."
+
+The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
+ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
+liable to injury and pain.  Origen has a curious notion that any evil
+spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
+thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
+has lost his sting.
+
+"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a
+discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks."
+Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious
+consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in that state of
+the drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some
+shape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as
+Winslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than to
+others."  I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had
+bitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time
+devoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the
+editor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid
+impression on my mind.  He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for
+the sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his
+abode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the
+seaboard.  Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the
+whole time in a state of semi-intoxication.  One night he stood leaning
+against a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the
+waves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels
+vaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream.  He was startled by
+a voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _"You have murdered a man; the
+officers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!"_  Every
+syllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in
+the hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably
+dreadful.  He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear
+moonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim
+of illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary
+horror.  Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass
+of brandy, and retired to his chamber.  He had scarcely lain his head on
+the pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper,
+repeating the same words.  He describes his sensations at this time as
+inconceivably fearful.  Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst
+the confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself.  Had
+he not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record,
+actually murdered some one?  And was not this a warning from Heaven?
+Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated,
+with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!"  He
+walked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to
+the head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he
+heard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"
+
+Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found
+himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,
+or cellar, where he had never been before.  The voice still beckoned him
+onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against
+which he leaned for a moment.  He heard it again, apparently only two or
+three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are
+close behind you; follow me!"  Putting one foot forward while his hand
+still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty
+recovered himself.  Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found
+himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled
+nearly to the top with water.  The sudden shock of this discovery broke
+the horrible enchantment.  The whisperer was silent.  He believed, at the
+time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a
+diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection
+of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal
+tempter.
+
+Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance
+guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.
+The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of
+the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's.  They
+stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the
+gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer
+and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before
+the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of
+perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend."  In their grand old
+wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,
+hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of
+mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars
+of a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored
+wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower
+had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the
+misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,
+they recognized no holy revelation.  It was to them terrible as the
+forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain.  Every
+advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory.  And one has only
+to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was
+to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment
+of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between
+the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean
+mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or
+soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing
+its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how
+else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?"  What
+was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips
+of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their
+wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion?  Was not his evil
+finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams?  Who else
+gave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a
+hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled
+to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles?  To
+the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light
+wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot
+to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied
+gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr.
+Moore calls them?  Perilous and glorious was it, under these
+circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their
+stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.
+Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry.  The heroes
+of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,
+and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention
+in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal
+sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits
+that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"--
+encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual
+armorer of Geneva.  The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as
+the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in
+Amadis de Gaul.  All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him
+in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;
+while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and
+spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle,
+with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of
+the enemy.  No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against
+him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut
+up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the
+presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands
+on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl
+flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches.  How edifying is his
+account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
+purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
+Sadducees"!  How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
+the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
+attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
+Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
+was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
+diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!
+
+     [The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,
+     emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser
+     superstitions of their times.  William Penn, indeed, had a law in
+     his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person
+     suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its
+     absurdity.  George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his
+     journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the
+     subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that
+     the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died
+     there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all
+     the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the
+     power of God, and feared no such thing."
+
+     The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
+     influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
+     sorcery.  "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
+     does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
+     slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
+     drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
+     horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
+     and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off."  In his
+     account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
+     I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
+     face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
+     stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
+     husband."
+
+     Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in
+     about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians.  The first of the
+     sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,--the latter a
+     young girl,--were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the
+     absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the
+     purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's
+     mark on them.  In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two
+     venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by
+     Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey
+     into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and
+     wolves.]
+
+All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his
+demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem
+Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with
+planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his
+life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a
+whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick
+dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie.  We may
+laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also
+pity and shudder.  The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in
+its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,
+their spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,
+the English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the
+benefactors of their race.  It is true they were branded through life as
+infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered
+lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine
+commission and Godspeed.
+
+         "The oracles are dumb;
+          No voice nor hideous hum
+Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
+          Apollo from his shrine
+          Can now no more divine,
+With hollow shriek the steep of Delphns leaving."
+
+Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,
+this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of
+motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination.  The once
+imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
+Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
+planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance.  The heretic now
+laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
+All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan.  And for the sake of
+abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
+consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
+Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
+temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
+despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
+with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
+terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
+that torment the smoke of which rises forever.  Through fear of a Satan
+of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
+ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
+brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
+God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
+of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
+terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
+Rhadamanthus.  And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
+degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
+accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
+of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
+necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
+soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
+many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
+to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
+return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
+gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one.  Better
+is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more
+acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of
+slavish terror.  The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which
+has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of
+old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on
+earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect
+love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick
+dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and
+startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.
+
+There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,--_Die
+Kohlerfamilie_.  The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its
+bloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever
+increasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought
+in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient
+watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle
+visitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, at
+times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the
+bushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely,
+such as the soul may conceive, but no words express.  He felt its power
+in the depths of his being,--felt it like the mystic breathing of the
+Spirit of God."
+
+The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all
+sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and
+diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan
+and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would
+diverge into universal skepticism.  It is one of the saddest of sights to
+see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting
+against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from
+profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful
+Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and
+convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched
+on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of
+science.  A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and
+necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite
+Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of
+outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under
+different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of
+every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much
+anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless
+championship of error.  The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of
+Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
+sane men.  But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in
+its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds
+and thought-wearying spaces, remains.  Nature's mighty miracle is still
+over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the
+inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy
+deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,
+starlike, the great idea of duty.  By higher and better influences than
+the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to
+reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,
+and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy
+of an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and
+mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his
+apparent allotment,--
+
+    "God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;
+     Round our restlessness His rest."
+
+It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and
+its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and
+credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if
+possible, there is one still sadder.  It is that of men in our own time
+regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and
+professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a
+godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as
+cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism.  Alas!  in comparison with
+such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still
+feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom
+God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man.  Better
+is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing
+Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,
+than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon
+ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a
+dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth
+gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to
+the worm, "Thou art my sister."
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul
+and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures
+of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
+spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
+eloquent language, its vindication.  "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
+melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
+every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
+principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
+immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind.  A
+tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds.  It first
+presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
+everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
+a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
+stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
+virtuous character.
+
+"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
+that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
+From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
+have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
+love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue.  Hence it is that
+we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
+an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
+are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
+repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
+of her virtues.  In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
+need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings.  The more simple they are, the
+more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy.  They
+produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
+than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
+the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power.  It is in the
+country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
+lively manner.  A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to
+flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment.  There it is that
+grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
+it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
+all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
+murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
+the night."
+
+Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city.  It
+is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
+or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
+covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
+conspicuous.  The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
+marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
+lots."  It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
+its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
+solitary farm-house attracts the eye.  All is still and solemn, as befits
+the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
+great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
+foliage of the autumnal forest.
+
+Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting.  The Lowell and Boston
+Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
+there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
+along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
+young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
+years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
+hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
+over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
+
+It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
+resort.  The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
+these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
+upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
+these leafy recesses.  Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
+gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
+--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow.  How true is it, that, in the
+language of Wordsworth,--
+
+         "In youth we love the darkling lawn,
+          Brushed by the owlet's wing;
+          Then evening is preferred to dawn,
+          And autumn to the spring.
+          Sad fancies do we then affect,
+          In luxury of disrespect
+          To our own prodigal excess
+          Of too familiar happiness."
+
+The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
+their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
+resort.  The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
+which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
+beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
+the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
+indifference of the indolent East.  Most of the visitors whom I met at
+the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
+apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
+perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
+stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
+mounds.  But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
+of the dead.  I cannot jest above the gravestone.  My spirit is silenced
+and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
+and involuntarily pays:
+
+         "The deep reverence taught of old,
+          The homage of man's heart to death."
+
+Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
+me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
+and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
+to the same wild music of the woods for the last time.  Then, too, comes
+the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
+these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
+upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
+the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
+forever.  It is hard for us to realize this.  We are so accustomed to
+look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
+strange that they should survive us.  Tennyson, in his exquisite
+metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
+sentiment:--
+
+         "Alas!  though I should die, I know
+          That all about the thorn will blow
+          In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.
+
+         "Not less the bee will range her cells,
+          The furzy prickle fire the dells,
+          The foxglove cluster dappled bells."
+
+"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the
+Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when
+they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly
+desireth the shadow."  Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,
+to the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our
+common mother.  Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with
+life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary
+eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.
+
+Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
+on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
+shadow.  No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
+state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
+mysteries towards which we are all moving.  "Man giveth up the ghost; and
+where is he?"
+
+Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an
+answer to this momentous question.  Over the blackness of darkness a
+light is shining.  The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land
+of darkness and where the light is as darkness."  The presence of a
+serene and holy life pervades it.  Above its pale tombs and crowded
+burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him
+who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at
+Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life."  We
+know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what
+it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that
+dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps
+lingers in the path.  Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer
+in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow.  He who
+ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit
+when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I
+have elsewhere used,
+
+          --when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
+          The soul may know
+          No fearful change nor sudden wonder,
+          Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
+          But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.
+
+          And all we shrink from now may seem
+          No new revealing;
+          Familiar as our childhood's stream,
+          Or pleasant memory of a dream,
+          The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.
+
+          Serene and mild the untried light
+          May have its dawning;
+          As meet in summer's northern night
+          The evening gray and dawning white,
+          The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
+
+
+
+
+                                SWEDENBORG
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is
+almost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the
+Benares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-
+places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses,
+stalls for the sale of relics.  A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved
+by awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the
+"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise."  I grow weary of seeing
+man and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,
+answering to the same bell-call.  A nightmare of materialism broods over
+all.  I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like
+that of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that
+the Lord alone is God.
+
+Yet is there not another side to the picture?  High over sounding
+workshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.
+The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes
+than cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving.  Each human being who watches
+beside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a
+solemn thing to live.  Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,
+outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch
+beyond the horizon of time into eternity.  Death is here.  The graveyard
+utters its warning.  Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and
+mystery.  Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.
+Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt
+rather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful
+questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--"If a man
+die, shall he live again?"  "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
+Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing
+inquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?"  "Who shall deliver me from the
+body of this death?"
+
+As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of
+our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their
+representatives in Lowell.  The young city is dotted over with "steeple
+houses," most of them of the Yankee order of architecture.  The
+Episcopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,--a pile of dark
+stone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows.  A plat of grass lies
+between it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house
+intended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and
+surrounded by trees and shrubbery.  The attention of the stranger is also
+attracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of
+Belvidere,--one of Irving's a "shingle palaces," painted in imitation of
+stone,--a great wooden sham, "whelked and horned" with pine spires and
+turrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast of
+the Apocalypse.
+
+In addition to the established sects which have reared their visible
+altars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet marked
+the boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains of
+their sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and "upper chambers" and in
+the solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and,
+wrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain the
+integrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation.
+
+Not long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, I
+visited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg.
+Passing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached the
+stream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Mills
+and mingles its waters with the Concord.  The hall in which the followers
+of the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, like
+those of "the people called Quakers," and looks out upon the still woods
+and that "willowy stream which turns a mill."  An organ of small size,
+yet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filled
+the place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plain
+desk, placed modestly by the side of it.  The congregation have no
+regular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers,
+and selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the lay
+members.  A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, was
+read, and apparently listened to with much interest.  It was well written
+and deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church.  I was impressed by
+the gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience.  There were
+here no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of the
+pomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of the
+truth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought them
+together.  I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them,
+that here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the very
+centre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted and
+undoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of the
+Swedish prophet,--revelations which look through all external and outward
+manifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the world
+of sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literally
+unmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life.
+
+The character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of the
+puzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology.  A man remarkable for
+his practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed
+in all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he has
+evolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system of
+transcendent spiritualism.  From his aggregation of cold and apparently
+lifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth
+like blossoms on the rod of the Levite.  A politician and a courtier, a
+man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the
+science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural
+language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:
+detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual
+world, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder
+at their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency.
+These remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerful
+imagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, the
+marvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guarded
+channels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as
+"facts."  His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seem
+to have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as well
+as feeling.  What he thought, that he saw.
+
+He relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidents
+of a walk round his own city of Stockholm.  One can almost see him in his
+"brown coat and velvet breeches," lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel,
+or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headed
+cane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in
+walking.  His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and
+probability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost
+bordering on the ludicrous.  In his Memorable Relations he manifests
+nothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of
+paradise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos;
+nothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heaven
+to heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe.  We
+can scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;
+and the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances.  We seem to
+recognize the "John Smiths," and "Mr. Browns," and "the old familiar
+faces" of our mundane habitation.  The evil principle in Swedenborg's
+picture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that
+stern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an
+aggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save
+in the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses."  These small fry of devils
+remind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, who
+seem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who are
+manifestly given over to believe a lie.  Thus it is that the very
+"heavens" and "hells" of the Swedish mystic seem to be "of the earth,
+earthy."  He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with the
+material one.
+
+In this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt an
+analysis of the great doctrines which underlie the "revelations" of
+Swedenborg.  His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to the
+reading and reflecting portion of the community.  They are not unworthy
+of study; but, in the language of another, I would say, "Emulate
+Swedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, his
+independent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good and
+true; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no man
+your master."
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE BETTER LAND.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution,"
+said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the
+Quarterly Review.
+
+He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact
+of a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the
+present stands to it.  The actual nature and conditions of that life He
+has hidden from us,--no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us,--no
+celestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for
+the wonders of the spiritual world.  Hence imagination has a wide field
+for its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict
+the revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved.
+
+We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and
+reverence on earth.  Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the
+imposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship.  There the
+Methodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by the
+still waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes.  The Quaker, in
+the stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence in
+heaven."
+
+The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep
+tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps
+of the New Jerusalem.
+
+The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual
+reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.
+
+The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a
+beautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with
+deer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes,--the happy
+hunting-ground of souls.  In a late letter from a devoted missionary
+among the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a
+beautiful illustration of this belief.  Near the Omaha mission-house, on
+a high luff, was a solitary Indian grave.  "One evening,"
+says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had been
+seeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from
+whence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house.  In a
+moment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and,
+turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and
+supplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain
+the splendid luminary from running his course.  With his body leaning
+forward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most
+striking figure of sorrow and petition.  It was solemnly awful.  He
+seemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to
+pray."
+
+A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, just
+before the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an
+awfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death
+and eternity.
+
+The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,
+seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite
+purity and happiness.  A friend once related an incident concerning him
+which made a deep impression upon my mind.  They had been travelling
+through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest
+beneath a solitary tree.  The Doctor lay for a long time, silently
+looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still
+heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if
+communing with himself in view of the wonders he described:--
+
+    "O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!
+     O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!
+     O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!
+     O brightness on brightness!  the pearl gate uncloses!
+     O white wings of angels!  O fields white with roses!
+     O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes
+     O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"
+
+The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better
+land are inspiring and beautiful.  Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,
+neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in
+store for the righteous.  Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a
+rest remaining for the people of God.  Tears shall be wiped away from all
+eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither
+shall there be any more pain.  To how many death-beds have these words
+spoken peace!  How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them
+to pass through the dark valley of shadows!
+
+Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that it
+is the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,
+the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of
+eternity.  What is really momentous and all-important with us is the
+present, by which the future is shaped and colored.  A mere change of
+locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.
+Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable
+as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence
+would transform hell itself into heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+DORA GREEN WELL.
+
+First published as an introduction to an American edition of that
+author's _The Patience of Hope_.
+
+THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in
+the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of
+Christendom.  Our doors open of their own accord to receive them.  For in
+them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the
+Divine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of
+them; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the
+bloom of Paradise.  So of books.  There are volumes which perhaps contain
+many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our
+reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a
+certain sweetness and savor of life.  They have the Divine seal and
+imprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with
+the leaves which are for the healing of the nations.  The meditations of
+the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and
+Protestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under
+Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his
+bishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in
+the same language.  The unknown author of that book which Luther loved
+next to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in
+this present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in
+the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century.  For such
+books know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual
+freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience
+heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and
+the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them.  The
+bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this
+or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--
+reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine
+goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the
+life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the
+fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling
+Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our
+hearts.  They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or
+the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human
+speculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to
+save unto the uttermost all who trust in Him.  They insist upon simple
+faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they
+leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to
+take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the
+necessary, and the permanent.
+
+With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume
+herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place.  It assumes the
+life and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears
+unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the
+truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but
+present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its
+branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine
+love; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be
+repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the
+perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever
+old and forever new.  It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and
+holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian
+experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves
+guidingly forward.  It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who
+minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the
+vaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too
+much the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will
+feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,
+the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied
+learning which illustrates it.
+
+     ["The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,
+     and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
+     testify for God and holiness, than I once believed."--Baxter.]
+
+To use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--
+
+"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of
+nature here and there shine out from its lines,--a charm wanting which
+meditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too,
+there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the
+way to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read,
+you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautiful
+hills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty
+into the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing,
+amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenborn
+consolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet
+evermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it is
+still haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeating
+snatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to
+join the great river of God's truth.  .  .  .
+
+"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,
+when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.
+The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for
+refreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.
+To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the
+patience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this
+little volume most heartily and earnestly."
+
+
+_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in
+Edinburgh, some two years ago.  I was at once impressed by its
+extraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone
+of meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--
+philosophy warm and glowing with love.  It will, perhaps, be less the
+fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to
+eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle
+metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to
+express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,
+many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague
+possibilities of the highest life.  All may not be able to find in some
+of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent
+to her own mind.  She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of
+familiar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual
+intuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well.  If the
+rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration
+and comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,
+that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike
+true in themselves considered.  "When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'
+and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not
+rather as both, if both be true?"
+
+Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain
+Scriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way
+and the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays,
+withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
+They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
+weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
+imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
+some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
+infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
+to perplex and mislead His children.  The sun does not shine the less
+because one side of our planet is in darkness.  To borrow the words of
+Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made.  Thou alone art
+near to those even who remove far from thee.  Let them turn and seek
+thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
+creation."  It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
+and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
+the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
+dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
+dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
+miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
+mystified by it to their eternal loss.
+
+I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and
+writer, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and
+hesitancy over some of these pages.  But it is impossible for me to make
+one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a
+Scriptural rendering.  On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,
+I have little to say in the way of controversy.  I would listen, rather
+than criticise.  The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me
+often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet
+not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight
+bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest.  Who has not felt at
+times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to
+edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:
+"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.  Let not Moses nor the prophets
+speak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener
+of all.  I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all
+teachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou
+alone to me."
+
+The writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication,
+announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful
+Christians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven.  She has
+recently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge
+as Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_,
+thus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--
+
+"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed
+_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through
+such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still
+deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be
+surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a
+poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own
+Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless
+speculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all
+but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander
+through eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful
+little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of
+true poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.
+There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and
+privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these
+remarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own.  With no
+effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost
+thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as
+gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the
+central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel.  The waters are
+copious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and
+unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes
+sad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of
+the deep sea.
+
+"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts
+from the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems.  In
+reading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not
+only of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble,--a likeness of the spirit, not
+of the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her
+mind, it is Wordsworth,--the greatest of all our century's poets, both in
+himself and in his power of making poets."
+
+In the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will be
+sufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and
+read over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical
+writings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces
+and extracts from the longer poems.
+
+Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--
+
+
+                                ASCENDING.
+
+They who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon
+The wide, illimitable heavens have said,
+That, still receding as they climbed, outspread,
+The blue vault deepens over them, and, one
+By one drawn further back, each starry sun
+Shoots down a feebler splendor overhead
+So, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led
+Along Faith's living way to Thee, have won
+A nearer access, up the difficult track
+Still pressing, on that rarer atmosphere,
+When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack,
+We see Thee drawn within a widening sphere
+Of glory, from us further, further back,--
+Yet is it then because we are more near.
+
+
+                              LIFE TAPESTRY.
+
+Top long have I, methought, with tearful eye
+Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused
+Above each stitch awry and thread confused;
+Now will I think on what in years gone by
+I heard of them that weave rare tapestry
+At royal looms, and hew they constant use
+To work on the rough side, and still peruse
+The pictured pattern set above them high;
+So will I set my copy high above,
+And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows
+Its gracious impress; till some line of love,
+Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;
+Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide
+He whom I work for sees their fairer side!
+
+
+                                  HOPE.
+
+When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
+Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
+Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
+Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
+And red, ripe lips for kisses: even now
+Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,
+Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
+And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
+That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread
+Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him
+Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;
+But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
+Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
+Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there
+
+
+There is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--
+
+
+                                  GONE.
+
+Alone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware
+Of Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;
+
+A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies
+So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;
+
+And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware
+Of Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;
+
+As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest
+Both hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast,
+
+In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray,
+For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;
+
+"A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair
+That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there
+
+"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,
+(So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name
+
+"She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--
+One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way.
+
+"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the
+Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;
+
+"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,
+holy,' so that now I know not if she prays;
+
+"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone
+From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"
+
+
+The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-
+playful strain of moralizing:--
+
+
+                                 SEEKING.
+
+"And where, and among what pleasant places,
+Have ye been, that ye come again
+With your laps so full of flowers, and your faces
+Like buds blown fresh after rain?"
+
+"We have been," said the children, speaking
+In their gladness, as the birds chime,
+All together,--"we have been seeking
+For the Fairies of olden time;
+For we thought, they are only hidden,--
+They would never surely go
+From this green earth all unbidden,
+And the children that love them so.
+Though they come not around us leaping,
+As they did when they and the world
+Were young, we shall find them sleeping
+Within some broad leaf curled;
+For the lily its white doors closes
+But only over the bee,
+And we looked through the summer roses,
+Leaf by leaf, so carefully.
+
+But we thought, rolled up we shall find them
+Among mosses old and dry;
+From gossamer threads that bind them,
+They will start like the butterfly,
+All winged: so we went forth seeking,
+Yet still they have kept unseen;
+Though we think our feet have been keeping
+The track where they have been,
+For we saw where their dance went flying
+O'er the pastures,--snowy white."
+
+Their seats and their tables lying,
+O'erthrown in their sudden flight.
+And they, too, have had their losses,
+For we found the goblets white
+And red in the old spiked mosses,
+That they drank from over-night;
+And in the pale horn of the woodbine
+Was some wine left, clear and bright;
+"But we found," said the children, speaking
+More quickly, "so many things,
+That we soon forgot we were seeking,--
+Forgot all the Fairy rings,
+Forgot all the stories olden
+That we hear round the fire at night,
+Of their gifts and their favors golden,--
+The sunshine was so bright;
+And the flowers,--we found so many
+That it almost made us grieve
+To think there were some, sweet as any,
+That we were forced to leave;
+As we left, by the brook-side lying,
+The balls of drifted foam,
+And brought (after all our trying)
+These Guelder-roses home."
+
+"Then, oh!" I heard one speaking
+Beside me soft and low,
+"I have been, like the blessed children, seeking,
+Still seeking, to and fro;
+Yet not, like them, for the Fairies,--
+They might pass unmourned away
+For me, that had looked on angels,--
+On angels that would not stay;
+No!  not though in haste before them
+I spread all my heart's best cheer,
+And made love my banner o'er them,
+If it might but keep them here;
+They stayed but a while to rest them;
+Long, long before its close,
+From my feast, though I mourned and prest them
+The radiant guests arose;
+And their flitting wings struck sadness
+And silence; never more
+Hath my soul won back the gladness,
+That was its own before.
+No; I mourned not for the Fairies
+When I had seen hopes decay,
+That were sweet unto my spirit
+So long; I said, 'If they,
+That through shade and sunny weather
+Have twined about my heart,
+Should fade, we must go together,
+For we can never part!'
+But my care was not availing;
+I found their sweetness gone;
+I saw their bright tints paling;--
+They died; yet I lived on.
+
+"Yet seeking, ever seeking,
+Like the children, I have won
+A guerdon all undreamt of
+
+When first my quest begun,
+And my thoughts come back like wanderers,
+Out-wearied, to my breast;
+What they sought for long they found not,
+Yet was the Unsought best.
+For I sought not out for crosses,
+I did not seek for pain;
+Yet I find the heart's sore losses
+Were the spirit's surest gain."
+
+
+In _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence,
+upon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--
+
+                  "But is there prayer
+Within your quiet homes, and is there care
+For those ye leave behind?  I would address
+My spirit to this theme in humbleness
+No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known
+This mystery, and thus I do but guess
+At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;
+Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?
+Ye may not quit your sweetness; in the Vine
+More firmly rooted than of old, your wine
+Hath freer flow!  ye have not changed, but grown
+To fuller stature; though the shock was keen
+That severed you from us, how oft below
+Hath sorest parting smitten but to show
+True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow
+The closer for that anguish,--friend to friend
+Revealed more clear,--and what is Death to rend
+The ties of life and love, when He must fade
+In light of very Life, when He must bend
+To love, that, loving, loveth to the end?
+
+              "I do not deem ye look
+Upon us now, for be it that your eyes
+Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies
+Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook
+Our troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt
+Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt
+As now we feel, to bid you recognize
+Our claim of kindred cherished though unseen;
+And Love that is to you for eye and ear
+Hath ways unknown to us to bring you near,--
+To keep you near for all that comes between;
+As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer,
+As distant friends, that see not, and yet share
+(I speak of what I know) each other's care,
+So may your spirits blend with ours!
+Above Ye know not haply of our state, yet
+Love Acquaints you with our need, and through a way
+More sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!
+
+               "And even thus we meet,
+And even thus we commune!  spirits freed
+And spirits fettered mingle, nor have need
+To seek a common atmosphere, the air
+Is meet for either in this olden, sweet,
+Primeval breathing of Man's spirit,--Prayer!"
+
+
+I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems,
+_The Reconciler_:--
+
+                  "Our dreams are reconciled,
+Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;
+The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth
+Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild;
+And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still
+At once make clear these visions and fulfil;
+
+Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme,
+Each mythic tale sublime
+Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,
+Each morning dream the few,
+Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.
+
+           . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+                   "Thou, O Friend
+From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,
+Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--
+Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
+Each yearning deep and wide,
+Each claim, is justified;
+Our young illusions fail not, though they die
+Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
+To happy death, like early clouds that lie
+About the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist
+Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.
+
+               "The World that puts Thee by,
+That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,
+That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,
+'We will not have Thee over us to reign,'
+Itself Both testify through searchings vain
+Of Thee and of its need, and for the good
+It will not, of some base similitude
+Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood,
+Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear
+Its own illusions grown too thin and bare
+To wrap it longer; for within the gate
+Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,
+A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,
+And he who answers not its questions dies,--
+Still changing form and speech, but with the same
+Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame
+Upon the nations that with eager cry
+Hail each new solver of the mystery;
+Yet he, of these the best,
+Bold guesser, hath but prest
+Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;
+True Champion, that hast wrought
+Our help of old, and brought
+Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.
+
+                     "O Bearer of the key
+That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet
+Its turning in the wards is melody,
+All things we move among are incomplete
+And vain until we fashion them in Thee!
+We labor in the fire,
+Thick smoke is round about us; through the din
+Of words that darken counsel clamors dire
+Ring from thought's beaten anvil, where within
+Two Giants toil, that even from their birth
+With travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth,
+And wearied out her children with their keen
+Upbraidings of the other, till between
+Thou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrong
+Each other?--ye are Brethren.' Then these twain
+Will own their kindred, and in Thee retain
+Their claims in peace, because Thy land is wide
+As it is goodly!  here they pasture free,
+This lion and this leopard, side by side,
+A little child doth lead them with a song;
+Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more
+Doth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore,
+For one did ask a Brother, one a King,
+So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--
+Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest,
+Thou, Brother of our own from bonds released
+A Law of Liberty,
+A Service making free,
+A Commonweal where each has all in Thee.
+
+                  "And not alone these wide,
+Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry
+Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;
+But all our instincts waking suddenly
+Within the soul, like infants from their sleep
+That stretch their arms into the dark and weep,
+Thy voice can still.  The stricken heart bereft
+Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left
+'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest
+With snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast
+Doth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creeps
+Unto Thy side for shelter, finding there
+The wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps
+Calm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead Care
+Hath looked until its thorns, no longer bare,
+Put forth pale roses.  Pain on Thee doth press
+Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness,
+The want that keep their silence, till from Thee
+They hear the gracious summons, none beside
+Hath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me,'
+Tell forth their heavy secrets.
+
+                  "Thou dost hide
+These in Thy bosom, and not these alone,
+But all our heart's fond treasure that had grown
+A burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighed
+To Thee in plenteous measure!  none hath shown
+That Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely made
+All joy of ours Thine own.
+
+                 "Thou madest us for Thine;
+We seek amiss, we wander to and fro;
+Yet are we ever on the track Divine;
+The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow
+To lean on aught but that which it may see;
+So hath it crowded up these Courts below
+With dark and broken images of Thee;
+Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show
+Thy goodly patterns, whence these things of old
+By Thee were fashioned; One though manifold.
+Glass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul,
+Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole!"
+
+
+No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal
+quotations.  Apart from their literary merit, they have a special
+interest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully
+illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.
+
+It has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that an
+objection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all
+books of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual
+from his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personal
+solicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not take
+sufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of
+the neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His life
+and teachings.  This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one.  For, of
+a truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that
+afforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about
+him, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, in
+the very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his
+neighbors starve for lack of bread.  But surely the benevolent unrest,
+the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering of
+others, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing to
+fear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation
+to the Divine will.  "The more piety, the more compassion," says Isaac
+Taylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred
+asceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widow
+and the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world,--which
+deals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God.  Self-
+scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to
+the reformer and philanthropist.  The spiritual warrior, like the young
+candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory
+ordeal of watching all night by his armor.
+
+Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the
+most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of
+Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.
+They did not separate the two great commandments.  Tauler strove with
+equal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare
+of men.  In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold
+horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and
+mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence.  Woolman's whole life
+was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic
+piety which bears the name.
+
+How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of
+those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the
+poor?  How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid
+laborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches
+blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the
+dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;
+with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;
+and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil!  What a significance
+there was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared before
+him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings
+in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,
+and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate
+being"!  His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have
+thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most
+miserable sinner to whom his compassion extended.  As he did not
+live, so neither did he die to himself.  His prayer upon his death-bed
+was for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple
+trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden
+streets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching
+concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the
+paternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance
+in ever-memorable words.
+
+In view of the troubled state of the country and the intense
+preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering
+this volume to its publishers.  But, on further reflection, it has seemed
+to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the
+chaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over the
+land, the contemplation of "things unseen which are eternal" might not be
+unwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, and
+the trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voice
+calling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and the
+spiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternal
+quietness which God giveth.  I cannot but believe that, in the heat and
+glare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain to
+the calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wings
+of the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something of
+consolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary.  For surely
+never was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuary
+of prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divine
+goodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice and
+renunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts not
+its proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for "peace in its day" at
+the expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemn
+words of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to that
+of the degenerate Jew,--"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy
+backsliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, and
+bitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not in
+thee,"--when "His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness,"
+and the hand heavy upon us which shall "turn and overturn until he whose
+right it is shall reign,"--until, not without rending agony, the evil
+plant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound
+themselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like the
+tree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression,
+rebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyed
+forever.
+
+AMESBURY, 1st 6th mo., 1862.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
+
+The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review
+in Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and
+practice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have
+since more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.
+
+
+I.
+
+                         AMESBURY, 2d mo., 1870.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW.
+
+ESTEEMED FRIEND,--If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an
+indifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious
+Society.  Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous
+concerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we
+may let go of old things too precious to be lost.  Hence I have been
+pleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting
+articles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_.
+
+The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures
+and opinions, of impatience of all slow results.  The world about us
+moves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we have
+enjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of our
+opinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded.  Our very right to
+exist as a distinct society is questioned.  Our old literature--the
+precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--is
+comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications.  We
+bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent
+meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will
+and option.  There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas
+and expedients and practices of other sects.  I speak only of admitted
+facts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint.  No one has less
+right than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor
+differences of opinion.  If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not
+find it a hard task to bear with them.
+
+But for myself I prefer the old ways.  With the broadest possible
+tolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of
+Friends.  My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other
+sects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like
+quarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with
+me, side by side, at the rope of Reform.  A very large proportion of my
+dearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned
+with John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions."
+But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own
+Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;
+and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--
+the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity.  I
+cheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of
+those who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer
+types of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and
+still know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the
+doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends.  I am not
+blind to the shortcomings of Friends.  I know how much we have lost by
+narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external
+observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as
+conscience-keepers for others.  We have not, as a society, been active
+enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-
+creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never
+out of place.  Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been
+spared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion."  It is in the decline of
+practical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each
+other for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance
+and spirit.  Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing
+good among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the
+Divine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in
+the true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do
+for ourselves.  There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an
+eye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;
+the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;
+the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this
+world of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant
+thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!
+Peace on earth and good-will to men!"
+
+It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in
+which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness
+among us.  I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects.  But, if we
+look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the
+central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in
+an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great
+law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the
+highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy.  If we did
+but realize it, we are "set in a large place."
+
+"We may do all we will save wickedness."
+
+"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
+
+Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is "exceeding
+broad."  As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and
+catholic of faiths.  If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are
+not up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and
+love of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of
+the truths of science and philosophy,--in a word, if we are not full-
+grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in
+ourselves.  We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to
+adjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects.  By so doing we make at
+the best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful,
+it is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith.  If, for
+instance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a written
+creed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I should
+prefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher,
+the like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, and
+intellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century of
+theological manipulation in a Quaker "school of the prophets."  If I must
+go into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the best
+article on sale, without regard to the label attached to it.
+
+I am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society.
+I feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member.  And I
+bear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends,
+who, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us,
+seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the
+practices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects.  The great
+apparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly
+with our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire
+whether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical
+Christianity than is found in our select gatherings.  I think I
+understand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them.
+But it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not in
+going back to the "beggarly elements" from which our worthy ancestors
+called the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not in
+setting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol,
+and oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they were
+intended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speaking
+and noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the "plain
+language" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but in
+heeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ not
+merely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity,
+but in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love for
+Him manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;
+and in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:
+"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit
+the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+In conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of my
+opinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I have
+neither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whose
+doctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whose
+history is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whose
+usefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fully
+assured.
+
+
+II.
+
+Having received several letters from dear friends in various sections
+suggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time or
+health to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way to
+acknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible of
+the Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether in
+commendation or dissent, they manifest?  I think I may say in truth that
+my letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply to
+express a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was nevertheless
+real.  I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations and
+so-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate and
+disunite.  We have had too many divisions already.  I intended no censure
+of dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy,
+notwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects.  The
+domain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems the
+part of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varying
+experiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as for
+that youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often been
+instrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religious
+profession.  It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entire
+uniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;
+and we should be careful that a rightful concern for "the form of sound
+words" does not become what William Penn calls "verbal orthodoxy."  We
+must consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differently
+from different points of vision.  Knowing our own weaknesses and
+limitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations,
+expositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint and
+feeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God.
+
+         "They are but broken lights of Thee,
+          And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
+
+Differing, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeed
+have the "mind of Christ," we shall rejoice in whatever of good is really
+accomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than those
+which we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lord
+rebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring them
+that they that were not against Him were for Him.
+
+It would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindly
+expressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhat
+overestimated the tendencies of things in our Society.  I have no pride
+of opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness my
+error of judgment.  In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeat
+my deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, for
+our own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures,
+without laying aside the principles and practice of our religious
+Society.  I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as our
+privilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for the
+performance of any duty which may be required of us.  When truly called
+to contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us,
+like the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowhere
+broken.
+
+I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and
+a standard.  I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most
+thoughtful members of other Christian sects.  I know that any serious
+departure from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to
+many who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our
+testimonies.  They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not
+see that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy
+and the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence
+will not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the
+Light of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own
+souls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward
+experience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation
+shall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the
+Holy Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall
+be recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of
+restless inquiry.  In this belief my letter was written.  I am sorry it
+did not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no
+consideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may
+lessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.
+
+AMESBURY, 3d mo., 1870.
+
+
+P. S.  I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal of
+the Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia,
+where, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, I
+find much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate a
+providential opening for good.  I confess to a lively and tender sympathy
+with my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who "went
+about doing good," go forth into the highways and byways to gather up the
+lost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick and
+suffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, at
+times, their zeal goes beyond "reasonable service," and although the
+importance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and love
+lose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on his
+armor boast like him who layeth it off.  Any movement, however irregular,
+which indicates life, is better than the quiet of death.  In the
+overruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way for
+healing.  Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other,
+and this shaking of the balance may adjust it.
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
+
+Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.
+
+To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult
+of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by
+obscure and uneventful lives.  Some great reform which lifts the world to
+a higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in
+anxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace
+it back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in
+the chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the
+divine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood
+by his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself.  The little one
+has become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon.  "The
+kingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of the
+mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality
+Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the
+human one.
+
+The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout
+the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.
+A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil
+work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to
+the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose
+very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his
+religious society.
+
+It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and
+ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to
+which they are manifestly entitled.  In one of my last interviews with
+William Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they
+were so little known.  He had himself just read the book for the first
+time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he
+pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in
+the language.  He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes
+of readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.
+Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard
+Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his
+letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation.  Edward
+Irving pronounced it a godsend.  Some idea of the lively interest which
+the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the
+beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of
+Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and
+varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
+In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a
+sermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than
+promote belief:
+
+"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at
+the same time!  A perfect gem!  His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful
+soul.  An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite
+purity and grace.  His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.
+Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better
+book; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which
+he was a great actor.  His religion was love.  His whole existence and
+all his passions were love.  If one could venture to impute to his creed,
+and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he
+exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert.  His Christianity is
+most inviting, it is fascinating!  One of the leading British reviews a
+few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man
+who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to
+the Divine pattern.  The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority
+in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's
+gift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural
+heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,
+even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow.  Every now and then, in
+the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of
+Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth
+that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over
+the whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of
+Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His
+creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,
+and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him.  In this pure,
+universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that
+comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts.  Its springs are deep
+and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very
+overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'"
+
+After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
+of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
+estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
+Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
+events in which he was an actor.  A desire to supply in some sort this
+deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
+paper.
+
+It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of
+individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to
+watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the
+command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as
+its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to
+the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its
+hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it
+moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening
+our present humanity.  To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as
+possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of
+slave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of
+that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout
+the world.
+
+At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it
+emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.
+The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.
+consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,
+temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a
+blessing.  Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some
+of the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily
+described their condition:--
+
+What shall we do but sing His praise
+Who led us through the watery maze,
+Unto an isle so long unknown,
+And yet far kinder than our own?
+He lands us on a grassy stage,
+Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;
+He gives us this eternal spring,
+Which here enamels everything,
+And sends the fowls to us in care,
+On daily visits through the air.
+He hangs in shades the orange bright,
+Like golden lamps, in a green night,
+And doth in the pomegranate close
+Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
+
+       . . . . . . . . .
+
+And in these rocks for us did frame
+A temple where to sound His name.
+Oh!  let our voice His praise exalt,
+Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
+Which then, perhaps rebounding, may
+Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
+
+"So sang they in the English boat,
+A holy and a cheerful note;
+And all the way, to guide their chime,
+With falling oars they kept the time."
+
+Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the
+colonists around them.  No positive condemnation of the evil system had
+then been heard in the British islands.  Neither English prelates nor
+expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it.  Few
+colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and
+conduct.  Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its
+practice.  Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the
+pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing
+ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's
+exhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited
+upon by negro slaves.  Everywhere men were contending with each other
+upon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,
+denying the ethics of Christianity itself.
+
+Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
+He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
+of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
+and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
+purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
+Wisdom.  He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
+intuitive sense of right condemned it.  He solemnly admonished those who
+held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
+in the fear of God.  "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
+their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
+cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
+after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
+
+In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
+Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
+slaves.  He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
+the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge.  It was
+probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
+in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves.  It is one of
+the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
+slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
+of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
+
+Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
+emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
+addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
+Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies.  That
+meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
+in the case.  In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
+any more negroes."  In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
+expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
+selling slaves."  The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
+and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
+adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
+
+The Society gave these memorials a cold reception.  The love of gain and
+power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
+and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
+Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline.  The utmost that could
+be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
+the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
+much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
+in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
+caution, and not censure."
+
+In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
+question.  Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
+became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
+foreign traffic.  In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
+Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
+slaves and keep them during their term of life."  Nothing was done in the
+Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
+negroes was censured.  That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
+for many years afterwards, is certain.  In 1758, a rule was adopted
+prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
+engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
+
+In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
+the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
+Society of Friends.  A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
+member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
+his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
+
+     [Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
+     narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
+     the Delaware.  In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
+     settlement of Friends.  A very few of the old houses with their
+     quaint stoops or porches are left.  That occupied by John Woolman
+     was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
+     story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
+     trees he planted and loved to cultivate.  The house was not painted,
+     but whitewashed.  The name of the place is derived from the highest
+     hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
+     commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
+     woodlands.  Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
+     shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
+     great themes of life and duty.
+
+     When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
+     years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
+     the house of Woolman, then standing.  He describes it as a very
+     "humble abode."  But one person was then living in the town who had
+     ever seen its venerated owner.  This aged man stated that he was at
+     Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
+     among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers.  John
+     Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
+     as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
+     smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
+     when a single blow terminated its existence.  Nothing was more
+     remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
+     well-being and comfort of the brute creation.  "What is religion?"
+     asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman.  "Tenderness toward
+     all creatures."  Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
+     is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
+     to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
+     that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
+     intends for them under our government."]
+
+On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in
+his mind.  The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
+fellow-creatures oppressed him.  God's voice against the desecration of
+His image spoke in the soul.  He yielded to the will of his employer,
+but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to
+the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
+with the Christian religion.  This young man was John Woolman.  The
+circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony
+against slavery.  In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
+North Carolina.  He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery.  It
+appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the
+land."  On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was
+published in 1754.  Three years after, he made a second visit to the
+Southern meetings of Friends.  Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he
+was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who
+were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could
+not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift
+food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression.  He was a
+poor man, but he loved truth more than money.  He therefore either placed
+the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
+for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had
+opportunity.  Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
+in the mischief of slavery.  Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
+and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
+He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
+same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
+been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
+Baptist preachers for the same purpose.  He found the meetings generally
+in a low and evil state.  The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
+and the fine gold changed.  The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
+and had wrought an inward desolation.  Instead of meekness, gentleness,
+and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
+dominion."
+
+     [The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
+     journeys among slaveholders.  Brissot, in his New Travels in
+     America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
+     distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
+     minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
+     imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
+     more useful to poor people and the blacks.  He hated slavery so much
+     that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves."  That
+     this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
+     following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
+     friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
+     should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
+     money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
+     desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
+     their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
+     at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
+     clearest to me.  Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
+     small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
+     appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them.  But
+     the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
+     easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
+     at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
+     them."]
+
+In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to
+convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy
+for the enslaved.
+
+At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took
+up his residence in Pennsylvania.  He was by birthright a member of the
+Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some
+extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West
+Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.
+His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the
+anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island.  He came
+to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same
+evil existing there.  He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his
+abode in the country, a few miles distant.  His dwelling was a natural
+cave, with some slight addition of his own making.  His drink was the
+spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone.  He
+persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the
+expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave
+labor.  Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance
+to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for
+worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their
+disgust and indignation.  On one occasion he entered the Market Street
+Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out.  A
+burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
+thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
+street.  There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
+that he did not feel free to rise himself.  "Let those who cast me here
+raise me up.  It is their business, not mine."
+
+His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
+life.  A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with
+projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
+huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes
+and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
+semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
+old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold.  Such was the irrepressible
+prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like
+a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
+like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
+
+On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
+N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
+unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
+was seen passing up the aisle.  Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You
+slaveholders!  Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
+and show yourselves as you are?"  Casting off as he spoke his outer
+garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
+underneath and a sword dangling at his heels.  Holding in one hand a
+large book, he drew his sword with the other.  "In the sight of God," he
+cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
+I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
+bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which
+he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood
+those who sat near him.  John Woolman makes no mention of this
+circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it
+must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit.  The violence
+and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with
+the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except
+the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.
+
+     [Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.
+     Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
+     all mankind to Christianity.  This was to be done by three
+     witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
+     Franklin.  But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
+     three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
+     doctrine, and separated in ill-humor.  The philosopher, who had been
+     an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
+     of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
+     other.]
+
+Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony
+Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and
+speak against slavery.  How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the
+example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found
+in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the
+slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren.  The Marquis de
+Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a
+small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in
+works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.
+Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.
+The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova
+Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and
+religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and
+sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their
+fellow-exiles in other colonies.
+
+The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must
+ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in
+the history of the Christian church.  The labors of Woolman and his few
+but earnest associates had not been in vain.  A deep and tender interest
+had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied
+feelings of solicitude by all parties.  All felt that the time had come
+for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
+the Valley of Decision.  John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man
+humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed
+homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of
+the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-
+stocked plantations of the country.  Bowed down by the weight of his
+concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the
+Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were
+under discussion.  "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with
+inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and
+drink, day and night.'  The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor
+did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before
+the meeting."  When the important subject came up for consideration, many
+faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness.  No one openly
+justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the
+meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many
+members of the Society.  It was also urged that Friends should wait
+patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the
+deliverance of the slave.  This was replied to by John Woolman.  "My
+mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and
+the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with
+awfulness.  I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not
+been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most
+lamentable.  Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries
+have entered into the ears of the Most High.  Such are the purity and
+certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor.  In
+infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one
+time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a
+time for delay.  Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and
+through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a
+regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable
+foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still
+waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,
+God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."
+
+This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
+in a spirit of sympathy and unity.  Some of the slave-holding members
+expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
+adopted against dealing in slaves for the future.  To this it was
+answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
+until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
+such as held slaves.  At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
+over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
+that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
+that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
+them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
+Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
+were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
+slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
+
+This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed.  In that
+meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the
+"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of
+their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good."  In the city of
+Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found
+occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a
+watchful guard over their feelings.  In his Journal for this important
+period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services.  How
+arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood.  The number of
+slaves held by members of the Society was very large.  Isaac Jackson, in
+his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly
+Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred
+slaves.  From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the
+difficulties which presented themselves.  One elderly man says he has
+well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain
+him."  Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his
+tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal.  A
+third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear
+out of it.  "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision."  A
+fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings."  "Old Jos. Richison has
+forty, and is determined to keep them."  Another man has fifty, and
+"means to keep them."  Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his
+wife and daughters hold back."  Another "owns it is wrong, but says he
+will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives."  The far
+greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take
+measures for freeing their slaves.
+
+     [An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which
+     impressed him deeply.  On the last evening, just as he was about to
+     turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had
+     not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.
+     It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care
+     of itself.  Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind
+     quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more
+     exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host
+     eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.
+     The proposal was gladly accepted.  On introducing the object of
+     their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness
+     should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form
+     of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no
+     difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.
+     At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before
+     them.  His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on
+     his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,
+     restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on
+     his master.  At length he was informed of what had been done; that
+     he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past
+     services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived.  The old
+     man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on
+     his breast.  After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then
+     spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently
+     exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on
+     his knees.  Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the
+     solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too
+     much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a
+     slave, and now I shall die a free man!"
+
+     It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are
+     sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to
+     duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived
+     in the mind of Isaac Jackson.  At that supreme moment, when all
+     other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of
+     solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted
+     him as with the blessing of God.]
+
+An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
+the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
+in which he accomplished it:--
+
+"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
+John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves.  Some,
+whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
+our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult.  I often saw
+the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
+proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
+before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
+under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
+in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
+world."
+
+"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
+active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
+John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
+city.  We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
+families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
+such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
+the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
+influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
+this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
+found peace."
+
+These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and
+oppressed.  Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
+held slaves set them at liberty.  But many members still continuing the
+practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly
+Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were
+directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding
+their fellow-men as property.
+
+A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
+emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
+that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
+services rendered while in the condition of slavery.  The following is an
+extract from an epistle on this subject:
+
+"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
+have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
+slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
+clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
+view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
+entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
+and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
+openings of duty.
+
+"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many
+who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously
+considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people
+have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring
+is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious
+and deep attention."
+
+Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly
+appointed in the various Monthly Meetings.  Many former owners of slaves
+faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award
+and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.
+So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of
+Friends!
+
+John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
+before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
+negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
+years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
+had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
+the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
+executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
+four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
+
+The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself
+especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman.  At
+the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
+activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
+and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among
+the foundations of society.  Yet he seems never to have doubted for a
+moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated
+as to his own duty in regard to it.  There was no groping like Samson in
+the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of
+the temple of Dagon.  "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his
+path lay clear and unmistakable before him.  He believed in the goodness
+of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness
+for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom
+and every barrier of pride and selfishness.  No one could have a more
+humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy
+he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had
+known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which
+the Lord speaks."  The event justified his confidence; wherever he went
+hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion
+gave way before his testimony of love.
+
+The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
+Rhode Island.  In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
+religious visit to New England, attended that meeting.  He saw the
+horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
+of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
+thronging the market-place.  The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
+after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
+trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
+Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
+convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
+shame and wickedness.  "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
+slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
+by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
+and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
+trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
+the day of trouble.'  I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
+He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
+signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
+the importation of slaves.  His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
+have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church.  The London
+Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,
+and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and
+the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate
+meetings:--
+
+"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;
+and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or
+otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"
+
+At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
+of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
+house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
+the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
+or holding them as property.  His tender exhortations were not lost upon
+his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
+spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
+
+In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the
+Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,
+and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were
+implicated in the practice.  The next year this committee reported that
+they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to
+be kindly accepted.  Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at
+liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of
+such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to
+comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take
+it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them
+in continued bondage."
+
+It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,
+that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others
+"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not
+complying with the advice of this meeting."
+
+In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that
+truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise
+the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,
+among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,
+that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the
+brutes that perish."
+
+In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly
+Meeting.  The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to
+appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the
+manumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services.  In
+1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder
+who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after
+due care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society.  This was
+effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction
+of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.
+
+In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the
+middle of the last century.  In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from
+the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those
+who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation.  In
+1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon
+any condition.  In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of
+the meeting.  In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate
+meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past
+services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their
+masters in all save three cases.
+
+In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold.  Its
+members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
+necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation.  I have
+already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
+and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them.  In 1757
+the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade.  In 1764
+it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,
+of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
+Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing
+any more slaves.  In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate
+manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached
+eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age.  At the same time it was
+advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of
+instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and
+religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
+
+I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
+meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
+
+"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
+are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
+offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
+towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
+disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
+many among us are enjoying."
+
+In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
+held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
+the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
+offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
+proceed to disown them.  We have no means of ascertaining the precise
+number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
+Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small.  In almost
+all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
+the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
+offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
+the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
+truth.
+
+So ended slavery in the Society of Friends.  For three quarters of a
+century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated
+intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony
+against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a
+slave is concerned.  Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there
+is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,
+urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the
+way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,
+entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied
+with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.
+
+The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
+confined to the religious society of which he was a member.  It may be
+traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
+this country or in Europe.  During the war of the Revolution many of the
+noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
+journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
+and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
+sentiment.  Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
+thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
+Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
+whole after life.  He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
+and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery.  To
+his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
+the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
+uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
+government.  The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
+his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
+the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
+himself and his amiable helpmate.  It was in a degree, at least, the
+influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
+the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
+had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
+importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
+accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
+left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
+Alexander II.  In the history of emancipation in our own country
+evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting.  In
+1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
+before the first Congress of the United States.  Not content with
+clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
+active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
+New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  Jacob Lindley, Elisha
+Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
+known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom.  One of
+the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
+Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
+Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
+so faithfully and nobly devoted.  Looking back to the humble workshop at
+Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
+Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
+
+The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of
+slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the
+many to support the luxury of the few.  The argument running through them
+is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love
+for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all.  They aim to
+convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and
+passion.  To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the
+voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day.  One feels,
+in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from
+all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,
+and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by
+drawing men nearer to God, and to each other.  The style is that of a man
+unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,
+the purity of whose heart enters into his language.  There is no attempt
+at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple
+unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have
+been wholly unknown.  He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual
+prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that
+his work was done in the clear radiance of
+
+          "The light which never was on land or sea."
+
+It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
+expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
+pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence."  Very
+wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
+world.  They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
+competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
+parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
+
+                               "The haunt
+          Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
+          The wild to love tranquillity,"--
+
+a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
+pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
+or activity conflicts with that of another.  Beauty they certainly have,
+but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
+indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
+sweetness as of violets.  "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
+Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
+his words."
+
+Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
+rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
+epigram and antithesis.  He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
+Task-master's eye."  With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
+had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
+spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
+bear rule."
+
+I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
+entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
+they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
+longer a question at issue.  I content myself with throwing together a
+few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
+
+"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
+from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
+unrighteousness."
+
+"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
+the whole."
+
+"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
+part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
+true happiness."
+
+"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
+of men.  He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
+are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
+desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
+little suffices."
+
+"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
+clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
+beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
+of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
+of His benefits."
+
+"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,
+instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the
+outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we
+should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure
+reason."
+
+"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more
+refined appearances remains to be oppression.  To labor for a perfect
+redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole
+family of Jesus Christ in this world."
+
+"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being `hid
+with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
+but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
+of life and stumbled on the dark mountains.  That purity of life which
+proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
+state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
+bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
+retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
+from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
+have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
+
+"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
+different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,
+and proceeds from God.  It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of
+religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
+sincerity.  In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
+brethren."
+
+"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind.  In
+true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,
+save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in
+outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to
+us.  In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a
+perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all
+things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light
+shines into the soul.  Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this
+world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of
+truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,
+the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised
+therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in
+the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at
+times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that
+forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do
+something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.
+
+"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our
+wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and
+acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us.  But when our minds
+entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the
+opening of the last of the seals.  In this silence we learn to abide in
+the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except
+that alone in which the light of life directs us."
+
+Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense
+interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate
+elevation, as in the following extract:--
+
+"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
+by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
+laying their sufferings to heart.  In procuring slaves on the coast of
+Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
+negroes, but all is at a great distance.  Many groans arise from dying
+men which we hear not.  Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
+children which reach not our ears.  Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
+faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not.  Cruel tyranny is
+encouraged.  The hands of robbers are strengthened.
+
+"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
+passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
+sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
+heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
+to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
+ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
+were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
+deeply affected with sorrow!"
+
+"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of
+heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the
+hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to
+think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in
+fixing all my demands?  Have I no desire to support myself in expensive
+customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?
+
+"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own
+conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might
+be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were
+he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to
+be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find
+the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.'  Divine Love imposeth no
+rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit
+of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is
+necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.
+
+"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
+tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
+our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
+desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
+afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation.  Here we have a
+prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
+that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
+the business of our lives."
+
+His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
+are manifest in the following passages:--
+
+"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
+support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
+who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
+to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
+education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
+it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them.  The
+knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
+understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
+circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
+Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
+is so.  Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
+known to be due only to the true God.
+
+"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
+Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
+friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
+faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
+the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
+in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
+be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
+
+Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
+the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
+these essays.  His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
+are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
+of luxury and oppression:--
+
+"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
+Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
+
+"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate
+labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at
+present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to
+evil purposes when we are gone.  To labor hard, or cause others to do so,
+that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer
+discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,
+is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."
+
+"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
+no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
+bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
+universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
+their proceedings.  As He who first founded the earth was then the true
+proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
+children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
+from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
+His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
+possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
+which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
+justly chargeable with usurpation."
+
+It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
+the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
+written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism.  They might
+have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
+they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
+in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology.  The
+underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
+soul.  "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
+kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
+In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
+intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
+that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties.  One may
+easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
+the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
+still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
+attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
+who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
+Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
+attributes, dignities, and offices.  Every instinct of his tenderly
+sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
+His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
+wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
+the Lord of the harvest.  John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
+manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
+of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
+The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
+upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
+enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
+creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
+
+However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
+present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
+questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it.  Shall we regret that
+he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
+walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
+faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
+form of words, however sound?  A true life is at once interpreter and
+proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
+of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
+perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved.  Shall we venture
+to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
+sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
+gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
+deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
+allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
+threatening?  Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
+manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
+revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
+after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
+under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land?  And, looking at the
+purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
+in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
+mistaken one?  Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
+that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God.  "Without
+the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
+soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
+good.  We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
+hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
+Christ.  The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
+efficacious word within would be but an empty sound."  "Thou Lord," says
+Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
+teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
+sounds."
+
+     "However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within
+     us, and that is the Spirit of God.  Whoever feels not the warm gale
+     and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for
+     truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any
+     light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's
+     Religio Medici.
+
+Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
+and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
+is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
+down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
+
+It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
+testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
+its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
+sin.  Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
+Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
+Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
+and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
+network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
+upon it in the underworld of causation.  Hence the wrong and discord
+which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation.  The first
+inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience.  How far
+am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this?  Have none of my
+fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
+Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
+in a way free from all unrighteousness?  "Through abiding in the law of
+Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
+a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
+strengthening them in error."  He constantly recurs to the importance of
+a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
+and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
+If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
+"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
+righteousness."  His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
+departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
+evil had their underlying root in human selfishness.  He saw that every
+sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
+lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
+avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
+evil in another.  How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
+self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
+its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
+Pharisaical harshness!  In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
+Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
+possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
+of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
+Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
+all.  "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
+spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
+Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
+
+At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
+creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
+righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
+regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
+lasting impressions on my mind.  I have beheld how the desire to provide
+wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
+has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
+affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
+at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
+humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
+expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
+and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
+and made thin through hard dealing.
+
+"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that
+we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed
+which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven
+against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony
+restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will
+be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"
+
+It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must
+have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,
+anise, and cummin.  There must have been something awful in the presence
+of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and
+pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil
+hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the
+irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual
+discernment,
+
+          "Bearing a touchstone in his hand
+          And testing all things in the land
+          By his unerring spell.
+
+          "Quick births of transmutation smote
+          The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
+          Purple nor ermine did he spare,
+          Nor scorn the dusty coat."
+
+In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to
+me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the
+appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing
+to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual
+symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words.  I have
+been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit
+redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful
+for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him.  I leave
+the book with its readers.  They may possibly make large deductions from
+my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his
+self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and
+smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all
+agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.
+
+AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            HAVERFORD COLLEGE.
+
+                 Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.
+
+                         AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.
+
+THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of
+the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest.  It would give
+me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest
+heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a
+journey.
+
+It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small
+beginnings."  The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more
+than fulfilled.  It has grown to be a great and well-established
+institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training
+has been widely felt.  If the high educational standard presented in the
+scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has
+been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of
+Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious
+testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone
+back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for
+leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at
+least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.
+
+Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored
+to maintain the Great Testimony.  The spirit of its culture has not been
+a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic
+principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of
+Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were
+masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable
+to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances
+anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.
+
+It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
+Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
+wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
+Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
+of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
+only mean vast spaces of time.
+
+May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
+in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
+to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
+stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ."  Holding
+fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
+Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
+quarrel of religion with science.  Against the sublime faith which shall
+yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power.  No possible
+investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
+tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
+
+That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
+an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
+which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
+universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
+is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
+the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
+Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                CRITICISM
+
+                                EVANGELINE
+
+                    A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem.
+
+EUREKA!  Here, then, we have it at last,--an American poem, with the lack
+of which British reviewers have so long reproached us.  Selecting the
+subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,--the expulsion of
+the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around
+the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in the
+history of the Colonies of the North,--the author has succeeded in
+presenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiar
+features of life and nature in the New World.  The range of these
+delineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs of
+the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south.
+Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, the
+Indian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio and
+Mississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, the
+mocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, and
+the wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks of
+the Nebraska.  The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of a
+prosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptive
+and narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story of
+Evangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had it
+been told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion.
+
+In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fears
+that the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment might
+prove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading us
+over weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, nor
+fields of offering.
+
+Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universal
+character.  It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbs
+warmly through it.  The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old
+notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow
+with life.  The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is
+a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.
+
+The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative
+review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we
+are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to the
+minds of other readers:--
+
+"We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper
+indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English
+and Colonial persecutors than he has done.  He should have put far bolder
+and deeper tints in the picture of suffering.  One great, if not the
+greatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice.  The poet should mete
+out their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy to
+whom infamy, is due.
+
+"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered
+upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that
+pollutes its own nest.  We deny the applicability of the rather musty
+proverb.  All the worse.  Of not a more contemptible vice is what is
+called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-
+laudation.  If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too
+small for the business.  It seems that no period of our history has been
+exempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-
+reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of that
+sort.  Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps it
+would now be otherwise.  National self-flattery and concealment of faults
+must of course have their natural results."
+
+We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with something
+of the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright.  The natural
+and honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the first
+time that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the French
+neutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longed
+to find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet.
+We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description of
+the sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted the
+authors of that suffering to escape without censure.  The outburst of the
+stout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge,
+a great relief to us.  But, before reaching the close of the volume, we
+were quite reconciled to the author's forbearance.  The design of the
+poem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" and
+indignant denunciation of wrong.  It is a simple story of quiet pastoral
+happiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the endurance
+of a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and down
+the wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retaining
+faith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest.  It was no part of
+the writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issue
+between the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors.  Looking at the
+materials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arranged
+them to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to some
+future historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in the
+atrocious outrage which furnished them.  With this we are content.  The
+poem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed by
+attempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts.  It is a psalm of
+love and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and
+forbearance breathe through it.  Not a word of censure is directly
+applied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describes
+just as it would a calamity from the elements,--a visitation of God.  The
+reader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers.  The
+unresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation of
+the cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers.  Even in the
+language of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit to
+the strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel the
+magnitude of the crime to be forgiven:--
+
+     "Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!
+     See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy     compassion!
+     Hark!  how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive
+     them!
+     Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us;
+     Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!"
+
+How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deep
+damnation of their taking off!"
+
+The true history of the Puritans of New England is yet to be written.
+Somewhere midway between the caricatures of the Church party and the
+self-laudations of their own writers the point may doubtless be found
+from whence an impartial estimate of their character may be formed.  They
+had noble qualities: the firmness and energy which they displayed in the
+colonization of New England must always command admiration.  We would not
+rob them, were it in our power to do so, of one jot or tittle of their
+rightful honor.  But, with all the lights which we at present possess, we
+cannot allow their claim of saintship without some degree of
+qualification.  How they seemed to their Dutch neighbors at New
+Netherlands, and their French ones at Nova Scotia, and to the poor
+Indians, hunted from their fisheries and game-grounds, we can very well
+conjecture.  It may be safely taken for granted that their gospel claim
+to the inheritance of the earth was not a little questionable to the
+Catholic fleeing for his life from their jurisdiction, to the banished
+Baptist shaking off the dust of his feet against them, and to the
+martyred Quaker denouncing woe and judgment upon them from the steps of
+the gallows.  Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; but
+we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the
+livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where
+church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame
+before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or
+ambitious aspirants.  Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes,
+bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness
+under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere
+exterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whipped
+Quakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of their
+Catholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses of
+Rimmon."  It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal against
+heathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love of
+land and plunder.  Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of the
+French colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints to
+the wars of the Lord.  At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before the
+onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the
+Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French
+churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and
+chaplain,--a "drum ecclesiastic," as Hudibras has it.
+
+At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the
+orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of
+intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded
+in fact.  The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passed
+over in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one of
+the invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of the
+regular toasts was a compliment to the Pope.  The expulsion of Roger
+Williams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-
+cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the
+only effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, as
+Mather calls them.  The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur
+Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters,
+foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the
+crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast,
+named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into
+his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch
+breeches "in singing time,"--a circumstance, by the way, which took place
+in Old England,--as a justification of the atrocious laws of the
+Massachusetts Colony.  We have not the slightest disposition to deny the
+fanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and had
+the Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom he
+found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned
+them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man
+could have blamed them.  Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its
+time of persecution, has had its fanatics.  The early Christians, if we
+may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest
+credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from
+reproach and scandal in this respect.  Were the Puritans themselves the
+men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists?  Had they not, in the
+view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down
+with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct?  How
+look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages
+of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times
+of the second Charles?  With their own backs scored and their ears
+cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state
+in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing
+the same thing in Massachusetts?
+
+Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere
+admirers.  The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, of
+itself, a beautiful page in their history.  The physical daring and
+hardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid the
+foundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the
+wilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religious
+principles, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy and
+profitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under all
+circumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new
+rights and privileges from the reluctant home government,--justly entitle
+them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruits
+of their toils and sacrifices.  But, in expressing our gratitude to the
+founders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth and
+justice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of that
+religious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly all
+Christendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century,
+opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel and
+subversive of the inherent rights of man.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRTH AND MEDICINE
+
+               A review of Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
+
+IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) need
+amusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend
+them, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the
+wit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor's
+barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old
+Saxon.  We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificates
+of their efficacy.
+
+Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a
+physician could not be otherwise than melancholy.  A merry doctor!  Why,
+one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head,--the cachinnation of a
+monk's _memento mori_.  This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best
+estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"
+of the future or the past.  But it is the special vocation of the doctor
+to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and
+go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of
+wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity
+disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments,
+--weak, helpless, naked,--and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis
+from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined
+divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust.  Of what ghastly
+secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary!  There is woe
+before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by
+prescription,--the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to.
+He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the
+splenetic, the sick, and the dying.  He sits down to carve his turkey,
+and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort.  All
+the diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house dog
+his footsteps and pluck at his doorbell.  Hurrying from one place to
+another at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the
+"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights."  His wife, if he has one, has an
+undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board."  His
+ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his
+heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his
+luckless profession.  Woman as well as man is to him of the earth,
+earthy.  He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only
+delicacy.  A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek
+of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism,
+nervousness.  Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of
+the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the
+spear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of
+tightlacing, and slippers in winter.  Sheridan seems to have understood
+all this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St.
+Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate.  "Poor dear Dolly," says he.
+"I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage!  veins that
+seemed to invite the lancet!  Then her skin,--smooth and white as a
+gallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;
+and her teeth,--none of your sturdy fixtures,--ache as they would, it was
+only a small pull, and out they came.  I believe I have drawn half a
+score of her dear pearls.  [Weeps.] But what avails her beauty?  She has
+gone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!"
+
+So much for speculation and theory.  In practice it is not so bad after
+all.  The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests.  We have
+known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily at
+small provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great
+majority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight to
+perdition.  Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun?  Nay, is
+it not his duty to be merry, by main force if necessary?  Solomon, who,
+from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitioner
+for his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine;"
+and universal experience has confirmed the truth of his maxim.  Hence it
+is, doubtless, that we have so many anecdotes of facetious doctors,
+distributing their pills and jokes together, shaking at the same time the
+contents of their vials and the sides of their patients.  It is merely
+professional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; but
+sometimes it is a "natural gift," like that of the "bonesetters," and
+"scrofula strokers," and "cancer curers," who carry on a sort of guerilla
+war with human maladies.  Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes.
+He was born for the "laughter cure," as certainly as Priessnitz was for
+the "water cure," and has been quite as successful in his way, while his
+prescriptions are infinitely more agreeable.
+
+The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics
+contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the
+later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the
+brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were
+noteworthy.  His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhaps
+the best specimen of his powers.  Its general tone is playful and
+humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos.  Witness
+the following, from a description of the city churchgoers.  The whole
+compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and
+beauty.
+
+    "Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade,
+     What marks betray yon solitary maid?
+     The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air,
+     The Celtic blackness of her braided hair;
+     The gilded missal in her kerchief tied;
+     Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side!
+     Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,
+     That left their azure in her downcast eyes,
+     See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child,
+     Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild,
+     Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,
+     And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines;
+     Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold
+     The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold:
+     Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,
+     The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands.
+     Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
+     He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor."
+
+This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of
+moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy.  There is no straining
+for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and
+perfectly transparent language.
+
+_Terpsichore_, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
+Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire
+so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their
+neighbors.  Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:--
+
+    "Essays so dark, Champollion might despair
+     To guess what mummy of a thought was there,
+     Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a
+     zebra in a parson's chaise."
+
+Or this at our transcendental friends:--
+
+    "Deluded infants!  will they never know
+     Some doubts must darken o'er the world below
+     Though all the Platos of the nursery trail
+     Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail?"
+
+The lines _On Lending a Punch-Bowl_ are highly characteristic.  Nobody
+but Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection with
+such a matter.  Hear him:--
+
+"This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
+Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
+They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
+That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
+
+"A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;
+'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
+And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,
+He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
+
+"'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
+Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
+And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
+'T was filled with candle spiced and hot and handed smoking round.
+
+"But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
+Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,
+But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,
+He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps.
+
+"And then, of course, you know what's next,--it left the Dutchman's shore
+With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,--
+Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,--
+To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
+
+"'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
+When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
+The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
+And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
+
+"He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--
+He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
+And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--
+All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
+
+"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
+He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
+And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
+'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"
+
+
+In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invited
+to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by
+reading funny verses.  He submits it to the judgment and common sense of
+the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-
+making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as
+a medical professor.
+
+"Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ
+A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,
+And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
+As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?
+
+"It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile
+On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.
+That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,
+It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."
+
+
+There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,--
+a few failures in the line of humor.  The _Spectre Pig_, the _Dorchester
+Giant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might be
+omitted in the next edition without detriment.  They would do well enough
+for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the
+head of the profession.
+
+It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had
+not been a witty man, he would have been a great man."  Hood's humor and
+drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober
+productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a
+large class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Ballad
+of the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_.  Such lyrics as
+_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humor
+and pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touching
+the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as
+smiles.  Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old
+man in the last-mentioned poem?
+
+              "But now he walks the streets,
+               And he looks at all he meets
+               Sad and wan,
+               And he shakes his feeble head,
+               That it seems as if he said,
+               'They are gone.'
+
+              "The mossy marbles rest
+               On the lips that he has prest
+               In their bloom,
+               And the names he loved to hear
+               Have been carved for many a year
+               On the tomb."
+
+Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common
+between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with
+grotesque drollery and humor.  Hood, under all his whims and oddities,
+conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer.  The iron of the world's
+wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his
+lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times
+betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung.  Holmes
+writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only
+with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good
+naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly
+which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule.  In this respect he
+differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit
+and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of
+Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the
+rank offences of church and state.  Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as
+earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-
+in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron.  His verse smacks of the
+old Puritan flavor.  Holmes has a gentler mission.  His careless, genial
+humor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horace
+in _London_.  Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-
+ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's
+declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."
+
+
+
+
+
+                             FAME AND GLORY.
+
+Notice of an Address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, by
+Charles Sumner.
+
+THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the
+above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country,
+who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social
+and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen,
+orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular
+impulses for evil far oftener than for good.  His first production, the
+_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of American
+Independence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly
+cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of
+a high morality,--the demand for practical Christianity in nations as
+well as individuals.  It burned no incense under the nostrils of an
+already inflated and vain people.  It gratified them by no rhetorical
+falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave."  It
+did not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over the
+plains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley of
+vision the dry bones thereof.  It uttered none of the precious scoundrel
+cant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon,
+about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the lands
+of all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the
+"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, the
+landstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared to
+be in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like the
+Scotch freebooter,--
+
+              "Pattering an Ave Mary
+               When he rode on a border forray,"--
+
+while trampling on the rights of a sister republic, and re-creating
+slavery where that republic had abolished it, talk piously of "the
+designs of Providence" and the Anglo-Saxon instrumentalities thereof in
+"extending the area of freedom."  On the contrary, the author portrayed
+the evils of war and proved its incompatibility with Christianity,--
+contrasting with its ghastly triumphs the mild victories of peace and
+love.  Our true mission, he taught, was not to act over in the New World
+the barbarous game which has desolated the Old; but to offer to the
+nations of the earth, warring and discordant, oppressed and oppressing,
+the beautiful example of a free and happy people studying the things
+which make for peace,--Democracy and Christianity walking hand in hand,
+blessing and being blessed.
+
+His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of his
+Alma Mater, was in the same vein.  He improved the occasion of the recent
+death of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate his
+beautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and the
+philanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men as
+Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing.  Here, also, he makes greatness
+to consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evil
+are surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament.  He looks
+hopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devour
+no longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and the
+peace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shall
+overspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poets
+alike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality.
+
+The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is more
+direct and practical.  We can scarcely conceive of a discourse better
+adapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiate
+retirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.  It
+treats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart,
+felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being,--a motive,
+although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lesson
+it would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be founded
+except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.  To use the
+language of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit by
+which He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generous
+practices."  The author presents the beautiful examples of St.  Pierre,
+Milton, Howard, and Clarkson,--men whose fame rests on the firm
+foundation of goodness,--for the study and imitation of the young
+candidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not for
+themselves, but for their race.  "Neither present fame, nor war, nor
+power, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to the
+true and noble Valhalla.  There shall be gathered only those who have
+toiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others."  "Justice and
+benevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodness
+that God is most truly known; so also is the great man.  When Moses said
+to the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all my
+goodness pass before thee."
+
+We copy the closing paragraph of the Address, the inspiring sentiment of
+which will find a response in all generous and hopeful hearts:--
+
+"Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages.  Men have
+thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden
+calves,--graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with
+Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods.  Let
+them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and
+in the beneficent labors of His children on earth.  Then farewell to the
+siren song of a worldly ambition!  Farewell to the vain desire of mere
+literary success or oratorical display!  Farewell to the distempered
+longings for office!  Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of
+martial renown!  Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the
+reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast,
+without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian
+truth,--love to God and love to man.  From the serene illumination of
+these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits
+at the dawn of day.  Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and
+the education of the ignorant have uncounted friends.  The cause of those
+who are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace other
+vindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of
+sympathy.  Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;
+ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever prompting
+to deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country,
+color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating the
+verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling human
+thought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we may
+attain to the heights of true glory.  Good works!  Such even now is the
+heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary
+humanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet."
+
+We know how easy it is to sneer at such anticipations of a better future
+as baseless and visionary.  The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the world
+laughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive than
+selfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board.  The
+man who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfish
+life upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity and
+weakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of the
+general amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness.  He
+counts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that the
+same human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, can
+confront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwind
+in the pursuit of gain,--which makes the strong elements its servants,
+taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its own
+purposes of self-aggrandizement,--must necessarily, and by an ordination
+of Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love and
+goodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faith
+in the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling man
+to the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournful
+necessity of laboring in vain.  We have been pained more than words can
+express to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires to
+consecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked and
+chilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemn
+rebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professes
+to love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visible
+children.  Visionary!  Were not the good St.  Pierre, and Fenelon, and
+Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also?
+
+What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable
+enthusiast?  What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as
+Dorothea Dix?  Who will not, in view of the labors of such
+philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things
+be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be
+evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?
+
+It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too
+general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid
+sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or
+imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the
+future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming
+of the other.  To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;
+no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is
+utterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which may
+be felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, and
+sorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become a
+vast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven.
+
+               "The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop;
+               Pure honey from the oak shall drop;
+               The fountain shall run milk;
+               The thistle shall the lily bear;
+               And every bramble roses wear,
+               And every worm make silk."
+
+                    [Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored.]
+
+There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who
+wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work
+out, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence on
+their dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoever
+their hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them.
+
+The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over the
+wounded Jew.  No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanity
+and bind up its unsightly gashes.  Sentimental lamentation over evil and
+suffering may be indulged in until it becomes a sort of melancholy
+luxury, like the "weeping for Thammuz" by the apostate daughters of
+Jerusalem.  Our faith in a better day for the race is strong; but we feel
+quite sure it will come in spite of such abstract reformers, and not by
+reason of them.  The evils which possess humanity are of a kind which go
+not out by their delicate appliances.
+
+The author of the Address under consideration is not of this class.  He
+has boldly, and at no small cost, grappled with the great social and
+political wrong of our country,--chattel slavery.  Looking, as we have
+seen, hopefully to the future, he is nevertheless one of those who can
+respond to the words of a true poet and true man:--
+
+              "He is a coward who would borrow
+               A charm against the present sorrow
+               From the vague future's promise of delight
+               As life's alarums nearer roll,
+               The ancestral buckler calls,
+               Self-clanging, from the walls
+               In the high temple of the soul!"
+
+                         [James Russell Lowell.]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               FANATICISM.
+
+THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revolting
+for publication.  The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pen
+trembles that records them.  Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedy
+in Edgecomb, in the State of Maine.  A respectable and thriving citizen
+and his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged in
+brooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations upon
+the personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on
+earth,--a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in
+Scripture as in reason.  Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they
+meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in
+the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should
+first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his
+own existence.  This was literally executed,--the miserable man striking
+off the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting his
+own throat.
+
+Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simple
+and clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pry
+into the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain and
+vague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts!  Simple,
+cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of His
+children as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is
+certainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparation
+for that to come.  Once possessed by the falsity that God's design is
+that man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest and
+happiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His
+creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for
+our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory
+revelations and arbitrary commands,--there is nothing to prevent one of a
+melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost
+to justify the old belief in demoniac obsession.
+
+Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet been
+sufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophical
+analysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness,
+obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions of
+Divinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland.  The hero of this strange
+and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental
+constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil
+because deep, fanaticism.  A demon in human form, perceiving his state of
+mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a
+fearful series of illusions of sight and sound.  Tricks of jugglery and
+ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eye
+and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural
+mystery in which he has long dwelt.  He believes that he is called upon
+to sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entire
+subjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divine
+will.  In the entire range of English literature there is no more
+thrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this baleful
+suggestion.  The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of the
+lights of heaven and hell,--soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tints
+of unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of an
+insane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder.  The masters
+of the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror of
+this scene from the American novelist.  The murderer confronted with his
+gentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for his
+health and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentings
+and natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terrible
+strength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts down
+the promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled to
+execute the mandate of an inexorable Being,--are described with an
+intensity which almost stops the heart of the reader.  When the deed is
+done a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be told
+in the words of the author:--
+
+"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed.  I gazed upon it
+with delight.  Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter.
+I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done!  My sacred duty is
+fulfilled!  To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, my
+wife!'
+
+"For a while I thus soared above frailty.  I imagined I had set myself
+forever beyond the reach of selfishness.  But my imaginations were false.
+This rapture quickly subsided.  I looked again at my wife.  My joyous
+ebullitions vanished.  I asked myself who it was whom I saw.  Methought
+it could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodged
+for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had borne
+in her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;
+whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness ever
+new and perpetually growing.  It could not be the same!
+
+"The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into
+mere man.  I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
+uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain.  Eternal fire
+and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
+bed of roses.
+
+"I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more to
+raise me aloft.  I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty,
+and was calm.  My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although this
+source of human consolation was closed, others were still open.  If the
+transports of the husband were no more, the feelings of
+the father had still scope for exercise.  When remembrance of their
+mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children and
+be comforted.
+
+"While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart.  I was
+wrong.  These feelings were the growth of selfishness.  Of this I was not
+aware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new light
+and a new mandate were necessary.
+
+"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into the
+room.  A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;
+but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be
+offered--they must perish with their mother!'"
+
+The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in their
+bloom and innocent beauty.  He is arrested, tried for murder, and
+acquitted as insane.  The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers
+the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full
+consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide.
+
+Wieland is not a pleasant book.  In one respect it resembles the modern
+tale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but no
+beauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral.  It
+is a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment upon
+its religious element.  As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots of
+all classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their present
+studies.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE POETRY OF THE NORTH.
+
+THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and
+spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears
+to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen
+saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.
+The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full
+of a rude, untamed energy.  It was inspired by exhibitions of power
+rather than of beauty.  Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and
+ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest
+tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very
+dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-
+eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers.  Significant of a
+religion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and which
+regarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, it
+delighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitiless
+slaughter.  The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of the
+carrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:--
+
+              "Unlike to human sounds it came;
+               Unmixed, unmelodized with breath;
+               But grinding through some scrannel frame,
+               Creaked from the bony lungs of Death."
+
+Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunken
+revelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors
+drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of
+desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could
+superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:
+volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,
+boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge
+jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,
+crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a
+region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery
+and courage in murder.
+
+What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the
+Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude,
+savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the
+Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility
+of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
+And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of
+that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart
+has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best
+illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is
+afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle
+centuries?  No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir
+George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful
+disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual
+cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a
+grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our
+race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst
+elements of human character.  In Iceland Christianity has performed its
+work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has
+caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into
+an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the
+introduction of the Gospel.  Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, and
+the penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from the
+statutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgrace
+those of Great Britain.  So entire has been the change wrought in the
+sanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelander
+can be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office of
+executioner.  The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skulls
+of their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at the
+feast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, like
+Thorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his beloved
+parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with
+the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm
+and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of
+a high civilization.
+
+But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to
+introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and
+vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and
+other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.
+
+
+          THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE.
+
+          BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+          The frosty fires of northern starlight
+          Gleamed on the glittering snow,
+          And through the forest's frozen branches
+          The shrieking winds did blow;
+          A floor of blue and icy marble
+          Kept Ocean's pulses still,
+          When, in the depths of dreary midnight,
+          Opened the burial hill.
+
+          Then, while the low and creeping shudder
+
+          Thrilled upward through the ground,
+          The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
+          In silence from his mound,--
+          He who was mourned in solemn sorrow
+          By many a swordsman bold,
+          And harps that wailed along the ocean,
+          Struck by the scalds of old.
+
+          Sudden a swift and silver shadow
+          Came up from out the gloom,--
+          A charger that, with hoof impatient,
+          Stamped noiseless by the tomb.
+          "Ha! Surtur,!* let me hear thy tramping,
+          My fiery Northern steed,
+          That, sounding through the stormy forest,
+          Bade the bold Viking heed!"
+
+          He mounted; like a northlight streaking
+          The sky with flaming bars,
+          They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
+          Shot up before the stars.
+          "Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
+          That streams against my breast?
+
+          [*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.]
+
+          Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight
+          Which Helva's hand caressed?
+          "No misty breathing strains thy nostril;
+          Thine eye shines blue and cold;
+          Yet mounting up our airy pathway
+          I see thy hoofs of gold.
+          Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
+          Walhalla's gods repair
+          Than we in sweeping journey over
+          The bending bridge of air.
+
+          "Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling
+          Amid the twilight space;
+          And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,
+          Has veiled her dusky face.
+          Are those the Normes that beckon onward
+          As if to Odin's board,
+          Where by the hands of warriors nightly
+          The sparkling mead is poured?
+
+          "'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory
+          That wraps the mighty soul,
+          When on its hinge of music opens
+          The gateway of the pole;
+          When Odin's warder leads the hero
+          To banquets never o'er,
+          And Freya's** glances fill the bosom
+          With sweetness evermore.
+
+          "On! on! the northern lights are streaming
+          In brightness like the morn,
+          And pealing far amid the vastness
+          I hear the gyallarhorn ***
+          The heart of starry space is throbbing
+          With songs of minstrels old;
+          And now on high Walhalla's portal
+          Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."
+
+* The Norne of the future.
+
+** Freya, the Northern goddess of love.
+
+*** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which
+the gods pass in Northern mythology.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, VOLUME VII., COMPLETE  ***
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