religion have so far raised the standard of morality in Christian nations, that among them, the Slavery which they inherited from the ancient world has been extinguished; Nations, which do not adopt the Standard of Morality thus elevated, are chargeable with a voluntary preference of inhumanity and injustice to humanity and justice (455).

524. A very little progress in humanity, is sufficient to lead men to see the cruelty and immorality of making slaves, of men of our own race. Plato* notices it as a necessary result of an improved morality, that Greeks should not make slaves of Greeks. This injunction had already been given to the Jews†: If thy brother (which in this place and others means thy fellow-countrymen) be sold unto thee, thou shalt not make him serve as a bondman. No man can think it conformable to Justice and Humanity that he, or his Family, should be thrown into a state of slavery; and in considering his fellow-countrymen, he can readily sympathize with them, and identify his case with theirs; and thus, he acknowledges that to make them slaves, is inhuman and unjust. The Romans, as we have seen, extended this feeling to all the world; and their Jurists declared, that no man was a slave by nature. It is indeed plain that our Humanity, in order to be consistent, must extend to all men. To conceive slavery a cruel and unjust lot for our countrymen, but a reasonable and tolerable fate for foreigners, can arise only from dulness and narrowness of mind, and benevolence scantily cultivated. In the eye of Morality, all men are Brothers; and the crime of maintaining Slavery, is the crime of making or keeping a Brother a Slave.

There is one defense of negro slavery, which represents the negro as a being inferior to the white man in his faculties. He is asserted to approach in his nature. to the inferior animals; and hence it is inferred that he + Levit. xxv. 39.

*

Rep. v. 14.

may be possessed as a Thing, like the animals. But this defense is manifestly quite baseless. The same faculties of mind have appeared in the negro, as in the white, so far as the condition of negro nations and negro classes has afforded opportunities for their development. The negroes do not appear to be duller, ruder or coarser, in mind or habits, than many savage white nations; or than nations, now highly cultured, were, in their early condition. The negro has a moral nature, and is therefore included in the consequences which follow from the Principle, that all men have a common nature. The negro has the same affections and springs of action as we ourselves. He loves his wife, his children, his home, and any security and stability which is granted him. He can buy and sell, promise and perform. He has, as much as any race of men, moral sentiments. He can admire and love what is good; he can condemn and hate what is bad. He has the Sentiment of Rights and Wrongs also. Though the Law allows him no Rights, he can feel bitterly the monstrous Wrong of the Law. His Reason is the Universal Reason of men. He understands the general and abstract Forms in which Language presents the objects and rules, with which Reason deals. He recognizes, as we do, a Supreme Rule of Human action and Human being; for, like us, he can direct his thoughts and acts to what is absolutely right. In short, there is no phrase which can be used, describing the moral and rational nature of man, which may not be used of the negro, as of the white. The assertion that there is, between the white and the black race, any difference on which the one can found a Right to make slaves of the other, is utterly false.

526. If it be said, that the negro approaches in his external form to some kinds of monkeys; and if it be asked how we draw the line between man and such inferior animals; we reply, that all beings are men, who have a

moral and rational nature, such as we have described: but if some plain and simple criterion of the difference between man and brutes be required; we can point at such a character at once, in the use of Language. A being who can understand and apply the general terms of which language consists, can apprehend Rules of action, Means and Ends, and hence, the Supreme Rule. He is a rational, and consequently a moral being. He is our brother.

527. It is difficult to believe that those who, in defense of their own practice of slavery, allege the inferiority of the negro race, do really think their assertion true. To such persons, negro women are objects of sexual desire. Upon their asserted view, they are thus guilty of an offense which men have everywhere looked upon as bestial and horrible. Moreover, the Laws of Nature contradict their assertion; for the offspring of such mixtures are marked with the physical and moral characters of both parents, as in other human unions. And when the slave-owner treats his own child, thus produced, as a slave; and works him, tortures him, or sells him, as he would a brute animal; (which it is said slave-owners do;) he tears out of his heart those affections which are the roots of all Morality, and the absence of which makes lust entirely brutal.

528. Again, in States where negro Slaves are numerous, to teach them to write or to read is forbidden by Law, under the severest penalties. Such Laws suppose the capacity of negroes for intellectual culture; and are an implicit confession that it is necessary to degrade their minds, in order to keep their bodies in slavery. When such practices and such Laws prevail, to defend negro slavery by asserting the inferiority of the negro race, can hardly be free from the guilt of wilful blindness of conscience, persisted in, in order to uphold conscious wrong.

529. The Moralist, then, must pronounce Slavery

to be utterly inconsistent with Humanity; and with Principles, which, being derived from the universal nature of man, may be deemed fundamental Principles of Justice. Slavery is utterly abhorrent to the essence of Morality, and cannot be looked upon as a tolerable condition of Society, nor acquiesced in as what may allowably be. Whenever Slavery exists, its Abolition must be one of the great objects of every good man.

530. It will, of course, be understood, from what has already been said, that this Abolition is to be sought by legal and constitutional means only. When Slavery exists, its annihilation is an end which must be constantly kept in view; but to which we must sometimes be content to approach by degrees. It is an Idea to which we must endeavour to make the Fact conform; but the conformity may not be immediately brought to pass. The Laws of the State are to be observed, even when they enact Slavery; for the Moralist cannot authorize the citizen to choose what Laws he will obey, and what he will not. Natural Rights must yield to Civil Rights, in the hope that Civil Rights will be more and more made to harmonize with Natural Rights. Slavery is never to be acquiesced in, always to be condemned; but we may, and must, tolerate a gradual transition from Slavery to Emancipation, such as the conditions of Legislation and even the benefit of the slave, render inevitable. Still, on the other hand, we are to recollect, that delay is to be tolerated, only so far as it is inevitable: and that to quicken the course of Emancipation is no less humane and just, than it is to give Legislation this direction, and to prepare both slaves and masters for the change.

531. It may be hoped, by the Moralist, that the emancipation of the negro race will go on with accelerated rapidity; for every State in which free negroes live, as moral and rational beings, is a refutation of the solitary

argument in defense of negro slavery, drawn from the asserted unfitness of the negro for freedom. When the free negro population of cultured communities have, by the manifestation of their moral and rational nature, made themselves recognized as brethren by their white fellowcitizens, it cannot be that their black brethren will long be kept in slavery in neighbouring States professing a like reverence for freedom.

532. Slavery nowhere exists in Europe in a form so repugnant to Humanity as is negro slavery. But there are, in some parts, many vestiges of slavery, and classes intermediate betwen slaves and freemen. The Serfs, who have existed and still exist in different countries, may be considered as holding such an intermediate place; and in different countries in different degrees. In Russia, serfage is hardly distinguishable from slavery. The labourers are bound to the soil by the Law: they are prædial serfs (128). By the general custom of the country, they are bound to work on the demesnes of the landowner three days in the week; and have land allotted to them from which they extract their own subsistence. But the peasant is, with all his family and descendants, at the disposal of the lord. In some parts, the Serfs have been allowed the privilege of acquiring and transmitting personal property; and in some, they may even purchase or inherit land. In other parts of Europe, Serfage has assumed a less slavish character. In some parts of Germany, the peasant is no longer attached by the law to the soil: and his labour which he owes to his landlord is definite in kind and amount. Such peasants are called Leibeigener. In other parts this labour-rent is commuted for a corn-rent or a money-rent, though the tenant is still liable for some trifling services. Such tenants are called Meyer*.

* Jones On Rent.