263 ABOLITIONIST. We never denied that time was required for the establishment of truth; but we insist, that if Christian feelings prevail, flagrant tyranny must terminate. Let reli gion make progress among the slaves, and among their masters, who so much need it; and the odious institution will soon decay. -Wilberforce's Appeal. Enlighten the minds of the slaves; and when they comprehend the irreligion and profligacy of their masters, they will at once throw off the ignominious yoke of servitude. ---Third Anti-Slavery Report. Your argument is a contradiction in itself. The very ground you choose, proves the instability of your position. Were you sincere in your plausible desire for instruction, would you not have your properties cultivated by moral agents, that is, free men; and not by mere machines, impelled only by brute force? But, no: you oppress, because you have the power---you cling to tyranny, be it only in virtue of your white skin.--- Edinburgh Review, No. 82. Speech of Mr. Brougham at Afric. Inst. Unparalleled effrontery! Would any person of character assert, that a man, stimulated by hope in his labors, enjoying the fruits of his own exertion, privileged to choose his own employer, deriving additional emolument from extra exertion, possessing legal rights, and claiming redress of injuries---in a word, a freeman, is not likely to be a more efficient laborer than a slave, driven to his loathed task by violence, forced to work solely by the terror of the impending lash, set up for sale like a beast of burden, and liable, at the caprice of an inhuman task-maker, to be scourged and branded? ---Wilberforce's Appeal. -Stephen's England Enslaved, &c. No inducement is required by a freeman beyond that of security to his earnings. In WEST INDIAN. Christianity?---Speech of Viscount Dudley and Ward, March 7, 1826. When we assert that Christianity should not, of itself, prompt men in this country to desire the abolition of slavery, we do not mean to interpose a barrier to its influence in amending the character of the Negro. spirit of religion prompting you violently There is a vast distinction between the to enforce the change, and that same spirit operating upon the slaves themselves, and preparing them for the enjoyment of freedom.---M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. viii. Without condescending to feel angry at your charge, we refer to the reports of both the Bishops lately sent out, which affirm, that the utmost liberality and zeal were manifested by the Colonists to promote religious instruction. These reports prove two facts---1st, That our moral character is not so bad as you represent it. 2dly, That such is our treatment of our people, that we are anxious for their enlightment, that they may appreciate its humanity.---Lord Bathurst's Speech, March 7, 1826. The having our properties cultivated by slaves, is no proof either of our insincerity, or that we are opposed abstractedly to a free state of Society. Were our properties not cultivated by slaves, they would cease to be cultivated at all.---See M'Donnell's Considerations, p. 58. Major Moody's Second Report, passim. Your picture is a strange compound of It betrays exaggeration to put forward exexaggeration, common place, and ignorance. treme and solitary cases of cruelty as a general rule, when the simple term coercion would suffice. That a freeman will work more than a slave, is a common place truism; but amazing ignorance is displayed, if you omit to consider the circumstances which induce free men to work, and whether or not those circumstances exist in the West Indies. chap. iv. ---M'Donnell's Considerations, pref. and Men work that they may enjoy, or obtain the means of enjoyment. The object ABOLITIONIST. some barbarous States the people do not labor---but why? Because, they have no assurance of enjoying the fruits of industry. But announce to a man living under a civilized Government, "Your earnings belong "inviolably to yourself and your heirs for "ever;" and such is the desire to better our own condition, and that of our offspring, that that man becomes at once stimulated to exertion.---Vide Adam Smith, vol. i. 109. vol. ii. 161.---Locke's Essays. The eminent authorities on our side attest, that wherever labor is required, that labor will always be better performed by freemen than by slaves. The artificial habits of a people rise according as the latter are rewarded; and since there is so very active a demand for labor in the West Indies, why should not the same stimulus act there as in this country? The Negro is not irreclaimably indolent--give him a motive for voluntary exertion, and he will act like other men.---Stephen's Slavery, as it exists according to law; Introduction. The same motive exists as with all laboring men---a moral duty. As men become civilized and instructed, a hatred of sloth arises; and their own consciences prompt them to exertion.---Stephen's Slavery, &c. WEST INDIAN. is, to purchase something in return for their labor. You are correct in saying that men wish to enjoy but if you stop here, you halt at the threshold. The question substantially is, at what point does the irksomeness of the pursuit of future enjoyment preponderate against the wish to attain it. A man by working ten hours a day, is enabled to compass a dinner of beef and plum pudding, which he eats off a wooden platter--by working three hours longer, he may afford to eat it off of china. Will he voluntarily toil three additional hours for this, or will he remain content to eat his dinner off the trencher?-M'Donnell's Considerations, p. 63. Our answer is two-fold. First, your allusion to eminent authorities subjects you to the charge of superficiality. The subject is only treated of incidentally by those writers; and in their conclusions, so far as they go, we cordially agree---namely, that free men, when they do work, will work more than slaves. Secondly, when you talk of a "motive," let us know what it is. We deny broadly, and without qualification, that any motive exists in the West Indies.---M'Donnell, chap. iv. Then we boldly tell you, your views are theoretically erroneous, and that they are falsified by the history of every nation that has arisen in the world. Man does never, morally speaking, work through a love of working. It is to purchase in exchange something that will gratify his wants. When he has accomplished this end, his next coveted gratification is the PRIVILEGE OF BEING IDLE. All wants are relative: they consist in the articles of food, clothing, and lodging. In the West Indies, food is procurable by the most trivial exertion---the other wants are little known. There is, therefore, no motive for continued labor, and your idea of a free peasantry is futile and preposterous.--- M'Donnell's Considerations, chap. iv.--- Major Moody's Second Report. Here commences the important question of Free Labor, the pros and cons of which will form a second communication. According as is the decision upon that point, will be, I think, the decision upon the West India Question. If, from the conflict of opinions already exhibited, the disinterested reader should find it difficult to pronounce an unqualified opinion, he should, at least, withhold his suffrage from the appeal of vulgar clamor, and conform to the character of Nov. 1, 1826. ARISTIDES. REMONSTRANCE OF TRUE LOVE, TO L. E. L. Turn, lady, from the faithless flame Their fate from him they love receive, No fears their tranquil thoughts molest, Not Death himself can take from me Since only those inspire my glow A****H. LOVE UNDER THE ROSE. Hidden underneath this flower Not to mar such loveliness A***. HAYDN THE COMPOSER. The poet Carpani once asked his friend Haydn, "How it happened that his church music was almost always of an animating, "cheerful, and even gay description?" To this Haydn's answer was, "I cannot make it otherwise: I write according to the thoughts "which I feel when I think upon God, my heart is so full of joy, "that the notes dance and leap as it were from my pen; and since "God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be easily forgiven me "that I serve him with a cheerful spirit." REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE. Alemanni, who died in the year 1556, thus addresses the Republic of Venice:-" If thou dost not become of another mind, thy "freedom, which is already on the wing, will not survive a century "after a thousand years from its birth." It will be found on examination, that the era of Venetian liberty may be dated from the year 697, when the first Doge was elected. The literal meaning of the poet's prophecy is, "thy liberty will not "survive above 1100 years;" which time, computed from the first Doge's election, would expire in 1797. Every one is aware that Venice lost her freedom in the 5th year of the French Republic, or in 1796; so that it is scarcely possible to find on record a prophecy more defined in expression, or more literally accomplished. ROYAL AMUSEMENTS. Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, showed as pretty a disposition to rascality as ever adorned the accomplished tyrants of Rome or Hindostan. His cook having, upon one occasion, spoiled his dinner, he had him impaled upon the spit, and roasted before his kitchen fire. Another time, he commanded the executioner of the metropolis to come to him, and told him he wished to know how men felt who were going to be beheaded. He, therefore, bared his neck, blinded his eyes, knelt down, and commanded his " father," as he used to call the executioner, to strike off his head. The poor man resisted for a long time, and at length urged by reiterated menaces, gently touched the monarch's neck with the axe. The king immediately rose, made the executioner kneel in his turn, and with one blow severed his head from his body. Hunting in a forest, he met a monk, whom he immediately pierced with his hunting spear, and shouted out to his attendants that he had slain a wild beast. The astonished guards replied, that it was not a wild beast, but a monk, whom he had slain: "You are wrong," replied the king, "for monks belong to the cloisters, and not to the "woods." An indignant citizen wrote opposite his palace walls: "Wenceslaus alter Nero." "In Wenceslaus another Nero see." To which Wenceslaus added with his own hands: "Si non sum adhuc ero." "If not a Nero yet, I soon will be." LATEST INTELLIGENCE FROM THE MOON. BY DANIEL O'ROURKE.* "By heaven methinks it were an easie leap, "To pluck bright honor from the pale fac'd moon." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. For breaking the head of an exciseman, emptying a thimble-full of whiskey, or handling a shillelagh, go from Lough Swilly to Cape Clear, and you would not meet with a likelier lad than Daniel O'Rourke. Not a christening, wake, or wedding, but what bore witness to Dan's prowess in all these indispensable qualifications of a polite Irishman; and woe to the head or barrel (no matter which) of him who disputed either. Dan was, indeed, a prince of a fellow, or, as the girls swore," a jontleman every inch of him;" but it is a melancholy fact, that human nature and perfection are far from being synonimous, and that the wisest and best of us have our faults (even the priest of Ballymaclaughnan is not without his), and Dan had a trifling one. The fact was, that Dan, if the truth must be known, loved a drop of mountain-dew to his life; a bottle of whiskey, and every thing to him has the same meaning. He drank it in the morning to keep the wind out of his stomach, at noon to make him drunk, and going to bed to make him sober. In the winter he "took to the kratur" to make him warm, and in the summer he found it equally efficacious in keeping him cool. In the hour of woe, it was his bodily and spiritual comforter, and heightened the enjoyment of his festive moments; in a word, it was his panacea. We must not omit to mention, that Dan was a "nate one" at shaking a loose leg at a neighbour's wedding, and there was none like him at brown paper and vinegar in binding up the sconce of a fallen comrade; for Dan, in the true spirit of Irish friendship, would split his last drop with you one minute, and, "all for love," as he would consolingly tell you, split your head in the next. The tenor of a man of Cork's life, in general, runs smooth enough. Eating, drinking, fighting, and kissing, are its component parts, and as long as he leaves the Orangemen and White Boys alone, he has a safe chance of keeping sorrow at a respectful distance. Dan had very few troubles of his own; but, as he would occasionally feelingly observe, he had a wife to compensate him for their loss; and sometimes he would feel rather pensive at the sight of the bottom of his cask, but his only care was how to get it filled again, and at whose expense. To be sure, when he had been indulging too freely, Mrs. O'Rourke was apt to remind him of it, in a way rather unpleasant to his Daniel O'Rourke's flight to the moon has been the subject of various legends and tales: that of Mr. Croker's, in his " Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland," appears to be the greatest favorite; and to which, the author of the above bagatelle is indebted for his information of Dan's introduction to the eagle in the earlier part of the narrative. |