number of the race in slavery enjoy the consolations of religion than the efforts of the combined Christian world have been able to convert to Christianity out of all the millions of their countrymen who remained in their native land." capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of society. In the Old World this state of things has long since passed away, and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has long since ceased. There the compensation of unskilled labor, which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. The rate of increase is scarcely one per cent. per annum, and even at that rate, population, until recently, was considered a curse; in short, capital has become the master of labor, with all the benefits, without the nat-ley's report to the British Parliment shows ural burdens of the relation. In this division of the earnings of labor between it and capital, the southern slave has a marked advantage over the English laborer, and is often equal to the free laborer of the North. Here again we are furnished with authentic data from which to reason. The census of 1850 shows that, on the cotton estates of the South, which is the chief branch of our agricultural industry, one-half of the arable lands are annually put under food crops. This half is usually wholly consumed on the farm by the laborers and necessary animals; out of the other half must be paid all the necessary expenses of production, often including additional supplies of food beyond the produce of the land, which usually equals one-third of the residue, leaving but onethird for net rent. The average rent of land in the older non-slaveholding states is equal to one-third of the gross product, and it not unfrequently amounts to onehalf of it (in England it is sometimes even greater), the tenant, from his portion, paying all expenses of production and the expenses of himself and family. From this statement it is apparent that the farm laborers of the South receive always as much, and frequently a greater portion of the produce of the land, than the laborer in the New or Old England. Besides, here the portion due the slave is a charge upon the whole product of capital and the capital itself; it is neither dependent upon seasons nor subject to accidents, and survives his own capacity for labor, and even the ruin of his master. The immoralities of the slaves, and of those connected with slavery, are constant themes of abolition denunciation. They are lamentably great; but it remains to be shown that they are greater than with the laboring poor of England, or any other country. And it is shown that our slaves are without the additional stimulant of want to drive them to crime-we have at least removed from them the temptation and excuse of hunger. Poor human nature is here at least spared the wretched fate of the utter prostration of its moral nature at the feet of its physical wants. Lord Ash that in the capital of that empire, perhaps within the hearing of Stafford House and Exeter Hall, hunger alone daily drives its thousands of men and women into the abyss of crime. It is also objected that our slaves are debarred the benefits of education. This objection is also well taken, and is not without force. And for this evil the slaves are greatly indebted to the abolitionists. Formerly in none of the slaveholding states was it forbidden to teach slaves to read and write; but the character of the literature sought to be furnished them by the abolitionists caused these states to take counsel rather of their passions than their reason, and to lay the axe at the root of the evil; better counsels will in time prevail, and this will be remedied. It is true that the slave, from his protected position, has less need of education than the free laborer, who has to struggle for himself in the warfare of society; yet it is both useful to him, his master, and society. The want of legal protection to the marriage relation is also a fruitful source of agitation among the opponents of slavery. The complaint is not without foundation. This is an evil not yet removed by law; but marriage is not inconsistent with the institution of slavery as it exists among us, and the objection, therefore, lies rather to an incident than to the essence of the system. But in the truth and fact marriage does exist to a very great extent among slaves, and is encouraged and protected by their owners; and it will be found, upon careful investigation, that fewer children are born out of wedlock among slaves than in the capitals of two of the most civilized countries of Europe But it is objected that religious instruction is denied the slave-while it is true that religious instruction and privileges are not enjoined by law in all of the states, Austria and France; in the former, onethe number of slaves who are in connec- half of the children are thus born; in the tion with the different churches abundantly latter, more than one-fourth. But even proves the universality of their enjoyment in this we have deprived the slave of no of those privileges. And a much larger pre-existing right. We found the race without any knowledge of or regard for the institution of marriage, and we are reproached with not having as yet secured to it that, with all other blessings of civilization. To protect that and other domestic ties by laws forbidding, under proper regulations, the separation of families, would be wise, proper, and humane; and some of the slave-holding states have already adopted partial legislation for the removal of these evils. But the objection is far more formidable in theory than in practice. The accidents and necessities of life, the desire to better one's condition, produce infinitely a greater amount of separation in families of the white than ever happens to the colored race. This is true even in the United States, where the general condition of the people is prosperous. But it is still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism of England towards Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families, and sundered more domestic ties within the last ten years, than African slavery has effected since its introduction into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in the United States are witnesses of the dispersive injustice of the Old World. The general happiness, cheerfulness, and contentment of slaves attest both the mildness and humanity of the system and their natural adaptation to their condition. They require no standing armies to enforce their obedience; while the evidence of discontent, and the appliances of force to repress it, are everywhere visible among the toiling millions of the earth; even in the northern states of this Union, strikes and mobs, unions and combinations against employers, attest at once the misery and discontent of labor among them. England keeps one hundred thousand soldiers in time of peace, a large navy, and an innumerable police, to secure obedience to her social institutions; and physical force is the sole guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her gigantic empire. I have briefly traced the condition of the African race through all ages and all countries, and described it fairly and truly under American slavery, and I submit that the proposition is fully proven, that his position in slavery among us is superior to any which he has ever attained in any age or country. The picture is not without shade as well as light; evils and imperfections cling to man and all of his works, and this is not exempt from them. Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recog nized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the north is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capitol for renewal was $40,000,000. I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave owner when his property is also found outside of the limits of the state in which he lives. Without this protection what would be the condition of the northern inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his property, "render me up my property, or pay me value for its use." The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of this Vermont inventor, "Sir, if you want protection for your property go to your own state; property is governed by the laws of the state within whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits of your state; you cannot go an inch beyond it." Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled? Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: "Now, you see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you this special clause in your constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere." Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has a perfect right to do-declare that hereafter, within the state of Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a horse; and where will your horse owner be then? Just where the English poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute law of the land where it is found. William Lloyd Garrison Upon the Slavery Question. every citizen a slave-hunter and slave catcher. To say that this covenant with death' shall not be annulled-that this agreement with hell' shall continue to stand-that this refuge of lies shall not be swept away-is to hurl defiance at the eternal throne, and to give the lie to Him that sits thereon. It is an attempt, alike monstrous and impracticable, to blend the light of heaven with the darkness of the bottomless pit, to unite the living with the dead, to associate the Son of God with the Prince of Evil. Accursed be the American Union, as a stupendous, republican imposture!" I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have been unable to find a soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother-what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud-what is he? They who prohibit the circulation of the Biblewhat are they? They who compel three millions of men and women to herd together like brute beasts-what are they? "Tyrants! confident of its overthrow, They who sell mothers by the pound, and proclaim not to your vassals, that the children in lots to suit purchasers-what American Union is an experiment of free- are they? I care not what terms are apdom, which, if it fails, will forever demon-plied to them, provided they do apply. If strate the necessity of whips for the backs, they are not thieves, if they are not and chains for limbs of people. Know tyrants, if they are not men stealers, I that its subversion is essential to the should like to know what is their true triumph of justice, the deliverance of the character, and by what names they may oppressed, the vindication of the brother- be called. It is as mild an epithet to say hood of the race. It was conceived in sin, that a thief is a thief, as to say that a spade and brought forth in iniquity; and its is a spade. Words are but the signs of career has been marked by unparalleled ideas. A rose by any other name would hypocrisy, by high-handed tyranny, by a smell as sweet.' Language may be misapbold defiance of the omniscience and plied, and so be absurd or unjust; as for omnipotence of God. Freedom indignantly example, to say that an abolitionist is a disowns it, and calls for its extinction; for fanatic, or that a slave-holder is an honest within its borders are three millions of man. But to call things by their right slaves, whose blood constitutes its cement, names is to use neither hard nor improper whose flesh forms a large and flourishing language. Epithets may be rightly apbranch of its commerce, and who are plied, it is true, and yet be uttered in a ranked with four-footed beasts and creep- hard spirit, or with a malicious design. ing things. To secure the adoption of the What then? Shall we discard all terms constitution of the United States, first, that which are descriptive of crime, because the African slave trade till that time a they are not always used with fairness and feeble, isolated, colonial traffic-should, propriety? He who, when he sees oppresfor at least twenty years, be prosecuted as sion, cries out against it-who, when he a national interest, under the American beholds his equal brother trodden under flag, and protected by the national arm; foot by the iron hoof of despotism, rushes secondly, that slavery holding oligarchy, to his rescue-who, when he sees the weak created by allowing three-fifths of the overborne by the strong, takes his side slave-holding population to be represented with the former, at the imminent peril of by their taskmasters, should be allowed a his own safety-such a man needs no permanent seat in congress; thirdly, that certificate to the excellence of his temper, the slave system should be secured against or the sincerity of his heart, or the disininternal revolt and external invasion, by terestedness of his conduct. Or is the the united physical force of the country; apologist of slavery, he who can see the fourthly, that not a foot of national terri- victim of thieves lying bleeding and helptory should be granted, on which the pant-less on the cold earth, and yet turn aside, ing fugitive from slavery might stand, and like the callous-hearted priest or Levite, be safe from his pursuers, thus making who needs absolution. Let us call tyrants, tyrants; not to do so is to misuse language, | fed my courtiers and my courtesans. Wicked to deal treacherously with freedom, to con- men were my cabinet counselors, the flatsent to the enslavement of mankind. It is neither amiable nor virtuous, but a foolish and pernicious thing, not to call things by their right names. Woe unto them,' says one of the world's great prophets, 'that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." terer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondsmen wet the soil with tears and blood. Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo, here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfall as you see! Go back and tell the new-born child who sitteth on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, a crown of thirty stars upon his youthful brow-tell him that there are rights which states must keep, or they shall suffer wrongs! Tell him there is a God who keeps the black man and the white, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks his just, eternal law! Warn the young empire, that he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb! Tell him that justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. Bid him know it, keep it, and be safe." disquiet, and bring up the greatest monsters of the human race! Tremble not, women! They cannot harm you now! Fear the living, not the dead!" "Come with me, my friends, a moment more, pass over this golgotha of human history, treading reverent as you go, for our feet are on our mother's graves, and our shoes defile our father's hallowed bones. Let us not talk of them; go farther on, look and pass by. Come with me into the inferno of the nations, with such The same speaker protests against the relurn of Simms. poor guidance as my lamp can lend. Let "Where shall I find a parallel with men us disquiet and bring up the awful shad- who will do such a deed-do it in Boston? ows of empires buried long ago, and learn a I will open the tombs and bring up most lesson from the tomb. Come, old Assyria, hideous tyrants from the dead. Come, brood with the Ninevitish dove upon thy emerald of monsters, let me bring up from the deep crown! what laid thee low? 'I fell by my damnation of the graves wherein your own injustice. Thereby Nineveh and hated memories continue for all time their Babylon came with me also to the ground." never-ending rot. Come, birds of evil "Oh, queenly Persia, flame of the nations, omen! come, ravens, vultures, carrion wherefore art thou so fallen, who troddest crows, and see the spectacle! come, see the the people under thee, bridgest the Helles-mecting of congenial souls! I will disturb, pont with ships, and pouredst thy templewasting millions on the world? Because I trod the people under me, and bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western world, I fell by my own misdeeds." "Thou muselike Grecian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, enchanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in art and most seductive song, why liest thou there, with beauteous yet dishonored brow, reposing on thy broken harp? I scorned the law of God; banished and poisoned wisest, justest men; I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured that in more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, the loveliness of love, I trod them down to earth! Lo, therefore have I become as those barbarian statesas one of them!'" "Oh, manly and majestic Rome, thy seven-fold mural crown all broken at thy feet, why art thou here? It was not injustice brought thee low; for thy great book of law is prefaced with these words-justice is the unchanged, everlasting will to give each man his right! 'It was not the saint's ideal; it was the hypocrite's pretense.' I made iniquity my law. I trod the nations under me. Their wealth gilded my palaces-where thou mayest see the fox and hear the owl-it Come hither, Herod, the wicked. Thou that didst seek after that young_child's life, and destroyed the innocents! Let me look on thy face! No, go! Thou wert a heathen! Go, lie with the innocents thou hast massacred. Thou art too good for this company! Come, Nero; thou awful Roman emperor, come up! No, thou wast drunk with power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou hadst, besides, the example of thy fancied gods. Go, wait another day. I will seek a worse man. "Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Tor quemada; fathers of the Inquisition! merciless monsters, seek your equal here. No; pass by. You are no companion for such men as these. You were the servants of the atheistic popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have work for you-now, lie there, and persevere to rot. You are not yet quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get you gone, lest the sun goes back at sight of ye! "Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries! thy hands deep purple with the blood of thy fellow-men. Ah! I men. * * know thee, awful and accursed shade! "Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had Two hundred years after thy death men laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and hate thee still, not without cause. Look the blood were coursing less freely than its me upon thee! I know thy history. wont through my veins, when I endeavor Pause, and be still, while I tell to these to suppose that such a compromise has Come, shade of judicial been effected, and my utterance forever is butcher. Two hundred years, thy name arrested upon all the great questions, social, has been pillowed in face of the world, moral, and political, arising out of a suband thy memory gibbeted before mankind. ject so important, and yet so incomprehenLet us see how thou wilt compare with sible. What am I to receive in this comthose who kidnap men in Boston. Go, promise? Freedom in California. It is seek companionship with them. Go, claim well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth thy kindred if such they be. Go, tell a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an them that the memory of the wicked shall equivalent? A recognition of a claim to rot; that there is a God; an eternity; ay, perpetuate slavery in the District of Coand a judgment, too, where the slave may lumbia; forbearance towards more strinappeal against him that made him a slave, gent laws concerning the arrest of persons to Him that made him a man. suspected of being slaves found in the free States; forbearance from the PROVISO of freedom in the charter of new territories. None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all these conditions. The equivalent then is, some portion of liberty, some portion of human rights in one region for liberty in another." "What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back! These not thy kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London street? Forgive me, that I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship with such—with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again, I say, pardon me for sending thee Is to keep company with such men! Thou only struckest at men accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada, in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffries, underneath the altar of the church' which seeks, with Christian charity to hide your hated bones!" "It is true indeed that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary power over anything, whether acquired by law or seized by usurpation. The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to welfare and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purpose. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the William H. Seward's Speech on the Higher universe. We are his stewards, and must Law. In the U. S. Senate, March 11, 1850. "But it is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended by a COMPROMISE of questions which have arisen out of SLAVERY! I AM OPPOSED TO ANY SUCH COMPROMISE IN ANY AND ALL THE FORMS IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN PROPOSED. Because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises radically wrong, and essentially vicious. They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and the conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining the truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decision of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated. And they are a usurpation as to future questions of the providence of future legislators. so discharge our trust, as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. This is a State, and we are deliberating for it, just as our fathers deliberated in establishing the institutions we enjoy. Whatever superiority there is in our condition and hopes over those of any other 'kingdom' or 'estate,' is due to the fortunate circumstance that our ancestors did not leave things to take their chances' but that they added amplitude and greatness' to our commonwealth by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs as were wise.' We in our turn have succeeded to the same responsibilities, and we cannot approach the duty before us wisely or justly, except we raise ourselves to the great consideration of how we can most certainly 'sow greatness to our posterity and successors.' "And now the simple, bold, and awful question which presents itself to us is this: shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions |