cause, than between the fire at Cheraw or Charleston and slavery. These calamities are included, we apprehend, in that vast system of means by which the government of Jehovah is to be maintained, and the good of his universe secured. They are designed to have that moral effect on communities which sickness is adapted to exert over individuals, or death over surviving relatives. They are calculated, as with a giant grasp, to arrest the public mind, and hold it fixed in solemn, salutary reflection. They are needed, or men will rush madly along the high road of prosperity to eternal destruction. God must sometimes preach in loudest accents, by his providence, or men will not heed the proffers of his Gospel. When God permits us to enjoy uninterrupted prosperity, and leaves us to its necessary and fatal effects, then, let us know, that He is dealing with us in angry judgment. In the light of the recent conflagration, however, we saw the evidences of that beneficent intention which would wean us from earth, and form us for the skies. As a community, we had forgotten God and the end of our being. But whose eyes were not then opened to behold, in characters of fire, the lessons of man's littleness, and the world's vanity! Who felt not that there was no refuge but in God! Whose thoughts were not carried above this empty, perishing state, to an incorruptible inheritance; or borne along towards the final scene of this world's history: "Above, around, beneath, amazement all, But the lessons which should be learned from this providence, have been fully and faithfully exhibited in the several discourses to which we have alluded. We trust they have been read and pondered. Mercy of Heaven! forbid that lessons so solemn should soon be forgotten! ART. IX. REVIEW OF CHANNING ON SLAVERY. By ENOCH POND, D. D., Profes. in Theol. Sem., Bangor, Me. Slavery. By William E. Channing, Boston. Monroe & Co. 1835. In this popular work of Dr. Channing, we see much to approve and admire. We admire the high moral bearing which he every where gives to the subject of slavery. The question of right is, with him, the great and absorbing question; believing that it can never be expedient for an individual, or a nation, to do what is morally wrong. We admire his confidence in the ultimate triumph of principle and truth; his sympathy for the suffering and the oppressed; and his impartial regard for the feelings and interests of all parties concerned in the question under consideration, whether at the south or the north, whether master or slave. We admire the moral courage displayed in the work before us, and the manifest good motives in which it originated. To the most inattentive reader, if free from prejudice, there is a love of country, and a love of liberty, and an equal regard for the rights of man, apparent throughout. We admire the high and consistent ground taken by Dr. C., in regard to the supremacy of the laws, and the danger to be apprehended from their infraction, by the rude hand of lawless violence and force. We hardly need say that we admire the style of Dr. Channing-his sweet-sounding words, his nicely turned periods, his clear and polished sentences, presenting, as in a beautiful mirror, the images of his glowing thoughts and sentiments. If we are not greatly deceived, the style of the work before us is decidedly superiour to that of the author's theological publications. There is less redundancy, and less that is misty, transcendental, and obscure -clear evidence that truth has higher and better inspirations for a gifted mind, than any form of errour, however sincerely or ardently indulged. Dr. Channing commences with saying, "The first question to be proposed by a rational being is, not what is profitable, but what is right? Duty must be primary, prominent, most conspicuous, among the objects of human thought and pursuit. If we cast it down from its supremacy, if we inquire first for our interests, and then for our duties, we shall certainly err." All this is very true, and truth important to be uttered, particularly in discussing the subject of slavery; a subject in relation to which, worldly interest and duty appear, to many, to be quite at variance. Still we should have been glad for the sake of some, who, in their remarks about expediency and duty, have seemed to us to be more flippant than wise, if our author had pursued the subject a little more in detail, and shown us by what means, in all cases, the path of duty is to be discovered; or whether, in many cases, it can be discovered but by taking into consideration circumstances of expediency. Wherever the question of duty is clear, the conscientious man will wish to ask no farther question. He will walk up to the last inch of plain duty, though it lead him to the scaffold or the stake. But what is he to do, in cases where he has no positive command, or settled principle for his guide, and where the path of duty is not obvious? It runs somewhere, and runs straight; and he would walk in it, if he could discover it. But how is this to be done, but by a careful weighing of arguments, a balancing of considerations, and these involving often the question of expediency? A conscientious young man is desirous to know to what profession or employment he shall devote himself. Shall he be a mechanic or merchant, a physician or lawyer, or preacher of the Gospel? Another who has acquired his profession, desires to know in what part of his country, or of the world, he shall establish himself. A third, who has become established in business, is desirous to know in what way his capital ought to be invested. Shall it be in merchandise, or stocks, or real estate? There is no end to questions such as these questions of duty, which can be decided only by considering what is, in the largest sense, expedient; or what, on the whole, is for the best. And in cases where we have no surer guide, this is a very safe mode of determining questions of duty. For, since it is always expedient to do what is right, if we can determine, in the widest sense, what is expedient, we determine, of course, what is right, and what our obligations bind us to perform. We repeat it; the question between a seeming expedi ency and plain duty is, to the upright man, no question at all; but probably no upright man ever lived in this world a 1836.] ON SLAVERY. single day, without being under the necessity of resorting to considerations of expediency, in order to determine questions of duty. In his first chapter, Dr. C. considers the slaveholder's claim of property in his slave; and this he annuls at once and entirely. "The claim of property in a human being is The first duty of the altogether false and groundless." slaveholder is," solemnly to disclaim the right of property in human beings." To the general sentiment intended to be conveyed by these propositions (if, from a comparison of the connected passages, we understand the author) we ⚫ accede; and have only to regret that, in the outset, this sentiment was not more cautiously and accurately expressed. Property does not appear to us to be that absolute thing, which these propositions of Dr. Channing, and the most of his arguments, would seem to imply. It is the creature of laws, either human or Divine, and is subject to limitations such as the laws impose. We have a property in ourselves our lives, limbs, and faculties; but even this is not absolute. We have no right to destroy our lives, or to maim or mutilate our bodies, or to debase the faculties of our souls. We have a property in our children; but this, too, is limited. We may employ them in our service, or bind them out to service for a limited period; but we may not sell them, or abuse, or destroy them. By the laws of some of the states, the master has a property in his slave; but this is not absolute property. It is possessed with limitations, and with more limitations than some other species of the master's property. He may kill and eat his domestic animals, but he may not do either of these to his slave; and this, by the way, shows that it is not quite fair to represent slavery as placing human beings on a level with the brutes. Our slave laws are bad enough; but still, they do afford a degree of protection and privilege to the slave, which they do not to the brute creation. They impose limitations in regard to slave property, which they do not in relation to property in domestic animals. If Dr. Channing had proposed farther legal restrictions upon the authority of the master, and farther legal protection for the slave-the same, for substance, which, in another connexion, he does propose, to all this we could have yielded our most cordial assent. But when he says, in so many words, that "the claim of property in a human being is altogether false and groundless," and ought at once to be "solemnly disclaimed," he says more than we believe, and more, we are sure, than he really intends. For has the parent no property in his children? Has the master no property in his apprentice; or the guardian in his ward? And besides, on this ground, what is to become of Dr. Channing's proposition of guardianship for the slave? The slave, he tells us, should "by no means be immediately set free from all his present restraints." He should not "be allowed to wander, at will, beyond the plantation on which he toils. And if he cannot be induced to work by rational and natural motives, he should be obliged to labour," p. 120. And now we ask whether, under these circumstances, the master, for whom the slave was "obliged to labour," might not be strictly said to have some property in him? Might he not speak of him, in a limited sense, as his? But we will not dwell longer on this topic here. We have designed merely to except to what we conceive to be an incautious statement, and not to what, from the connected passages, appears to be the real sentiment of the author.* Dr. Channing's second chapter is on the subject of "Rights;" and most that he here says is unexceptionable. He shows clearly that men have rights, which they cannot surrender, and which, under no specious regard for the public good, can be wrested from them. He shows, too, that the system of slavery, as involving a general prostration of these rights, is a system of oppression and wrong. Still, there is one position taken in this chapter with which we do not feel altogether satisfied. Dr. C. seems to regard all our rights as inalienable, and denies that, in entering the social state, or in constituting a civil community, any portion of those rights is surrendered. But this obviously is a mistake. A portion of our rights is inalienable by ourselves, and cannot be lawfully taken from us by others; but this is not true of them all. We all have rights in a state of nature, or should have if we were in a state of nature, which we cannot have when associated in communities. There are personal rights which we may and do surrender on entering the body politic, or on consenting to continue in such a body; The incautious manner in which Dr. C. has expressed himself on the subject of property, furnishes the only colorable ground for "a citizen of Massachusetts" to charge him with "the doctrine of insurrection." See Remarks, &c. p. 15. |