Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

RELIGION AND LEGISLATION.

The legislation of a nation will rise just as high on any question, as the majority of the religionists of that nation see fit to put it. If the professors of religion of this country, or a majority of the same, had declared slavery as it is, a sin against God, and a crime against man; that the slaveholder was to be ranked with the highest criminal; Congress would, under its power to regulate commerce between the States, have said that man could not be an article of commerce, and that he could not be bought and sold, and whoever did sell or use a man as an article of property or merchandise should be punished with death, or in the State Prison for life; slavery would have been brought to an end notwithstanding the power of State institutions, as the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made under it, are paramount to the constitution of the States, or their legislation under them. Are not the leading denominations, the Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Congregationalists (the last two considered as one) equal to two millions of members, who would influence, directly, at least eight millions more, to which add the two millions of professors, making ten millions of the Republic: a large majority of the whole are thus brought under a salutary restraint, and a correct moral opinion. Look

at the principle I seek to establish. What do the clergy, and professors of religion say, in relation, to murder, robbery, stealing, false swearing, fraud, swindling? The good man, in the pulpit or out, utters the condemnation of these crimes, and legislation follows and prescribes.

The clergy all speak against the desecration of the Sabbath day, and profane swearing; legislation followed to pass penal acts to punish those offences.

Duelling in all the northern States has been the frequent theme of pulpit remarks and condemnation; laws of a high

and severe character now do honor to the northern statute book; and the offence is now unknown. The clergy and religious men thundered their denunciations against lotteries; and legislation came and obeyed the public will, and lotteries are unknown in the North.

Legislation rises and goes forward in all countries, whatever the form of religion; whether Roman Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindostanee, Pagan, Jew, or Christian, exactly as high on all questions of morality, prejudice, superstition or true Christianity, as the public sentiment of the general religion of the country will carry it.

This being an admitted truth, what a tremendous responsibility rests on the majority of the professors of religion in this country? Slavery would long since have ceased to have covered this land with misery, wretchedness, crime and heathenism, had the Christian public bodies and individuals expressed their detestation of the crime, and its criminals. That black cloud surcharged with artillery of the upper world, would not have been ready to descend on this doomed land; it would have passed away before the Christian rebuke of this nation; but no, the poor slave has not had the Christian's pity, nor his enemies the Christian's censure. Had Christians performed their duty, and expressed their abhorrence of slavery in their united and individual capacity, we should not have seen our young and noble Constitution disgraced by a shameful violation of the important right of petition, for three successive winters. Nor should we have witnessed official perjury in members of Congress, who were guilty in the face of their recorded oaths, in heaven and on earth, by meeting the petitioner at the portal of his country's audience chamber, and denying him admission and shutting that door in his face, by the command of the dark spirit of slavery.

Nor should we have seen eight new slave States admitted to the privileges of this confederacy, nor should we have seen

500,000 slaves increase to three millions, unchecked, nor should we have seen Presidential candidates, on their prostrate knees, licking up the saliva of the monster, and see and hear the candidates saying to the monster, "your froth, your whips, tears, blood, murder, are the beauties and sweets of civilized life." You would not have seen the priest of the country bowing before this horrid boaconstrictor, praising the beauty of his folds, the grandeur of his coils, and the richness of his spots; and as if that was not enough, tell him that he is of Bible origin, and that he is a lineal descendant of the famous anaconda who held the dialogue with Eve in the Garden of Eden.

THE SLAVE'S CONDITION HERE AND HEREAFTER.

We act for him, who is the most helpless creature in the universe of God, the most despised, the most scorned--the slave. This is the poor prisoner; he is sick, he is naked, he is hungry, he is in prison; let us feed him, let us clothe him, let us visit him; and we are promised, that, in so doing, we do thereby visit, clothe, and feed the Saviour of the world, whose representative the slave is, sanctified by the Holy Ghost. Who are so much to be loved and pitied, as one of those followers of the great Redeemer, who by slavery has suffered the loss of all things-of property, of wife, of children, not dead, yet torn from him, himself a slave, subject to mockings and scourgings, who is unpitied and unrequited by the being for whom he toils the live-long day; nay, he is cursed, abused, whipped-called hard names, eats the mouldy crust under the wall, sleeps on the straw; his unrested limbs are called to renew their painful work before the glories of the rising sun have quenched the light of the last star, and through the day he broils in a sultry sun till the beaming stars of heaven burst through the mantle of evening, and so day follows day to the last of his existence. Child of sorrow, child of want, destitute of all things esteemed, but rich in a celestial expectancy,

standing on the lowest stair of human existence, yet the owner of a heavenly mansion, furnished by a Saviour's love; though a prisoner here, he is a freed man of the upper world; though covered with stripes here, he has a garment pure and white, washed in the Saviour's blood; though he mourns and weeps here, he shall have a new song put in his mouth there; though he is faint and hungry here, he will soon be fed on the nectar of immortality; though imprisoned here, he will soon range the illimitable paradise of God; though sick here, he will soon revel in eternal health; though friendless and unbeloved here, he will soon join that innumerable army of friends, who will love him with everlasting love; though a powerless slave here, he will soon be a prince crowned with glory and immortality.

Shall we despise the son of the King of Glory, in exile, soon to be brought home, with the shouts of the redeemed? No, God forbid. Let us do all in our power to lift up our brother from the dark and noisome dungeon, into the sunlight of equality, liberty, religion and law.

SPEECH, REVIEWING THAT OF MR. CLAY,

[ocr errors]

ON PRESENTING A PETITION TO CONGRESS,

FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1839.

THE voice of the slaveholder can be heard for the hour together, without interruption, or those hyena cries of Order, Order!" so often uttered by the meanness of despotism, to drown the cry of throttled humanity. How often has liberty tried to speak, when she has been howled down? As liberty shrieked in Congress, the fist of the slaveholder was thrust into her mouth. I say shrieked, for liberty has never been allowed to articulate a sentence, lest the secrets of the prison-house and the crime of the ravisher should be published to an avenging world. Only broken sentences, cries of smothered murder, crying "ho! help!" are all which has yet escaped, in snatches, in whispers and screams, from that windy bastile, an American Congress, where liberty is brought to the table or block and beheaded fifty times in a morning, to show the blasphemous contempt the representatives of the American people have for their Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Yes, the Congress of the United States, the most astonishing absurdity, the unrivalled despiser of the institutions which gave it existence. A temple dedicated to the profanation of every principle in practice, which the nation professes to adore, in the abstract.

Liberty in the abstract is slavery in the concrete. American constitutional justice and liberty on parchment, mean atheism and despotism when two and a half millions of the people ask

« PředchozíPokračovat »