| | | | | Both the Messrs. Chambers have gained a reputation of a | peculiar but very effective-description. They approach | more nearly to the French litterateurs | than any other prominent writers of the present day. | They are not investigators, or discoverers, or even deep | thinkers. They have not the gift of showy writing; but they | have what is very much more useful ~~ a style of sparkling | clearness, and a singular facility in working up the raw | materials of more prosy labourers into a shape fit for the | consumption of our lazy-minded public. They furnish | wings to ponderous statistics and closely-wrought | calculations, which, but for their aid, would never travel | beyond the students of a public library. The book before us | is a sample of their handiwork. It is exceedingly pleasant | reading, and by no means lengthy; yet it furnishes a perfect | handbook of the Northern side of the slavery controversy. | It is a mine of argument for those who hate slavery simply | because their neighbours hate it, and would be very glad of | a decent show of reasons to back their opinions; and it is | well stored with the piquant anecdotes and sharp numerical | antitheses which form so large a part of modern | argumentation. Of the anecdotes we need give no | specimens. Use has made us only too familiar with them | ~~ perhaps callous to them. They are of the kind with | which anti-slavery books have teemed, from Miss | Martineau to Mrs. Stowe ~~ for the stream of them is ever | flowing. A system which habitually tears wife from | husband, and child from mother, which rules by cruelty and | spreads by prostitution, can never be barren in anecdotes to | illustrate its horrors. Miss Martineau tells a story of two | daughters of a planter, by a | | mulatto woman, who (being all but white) were brought up | by him in the greatest refinement, and with the most | religious education. They were discovered on his death to | be, in consequence of some legal flaw, still unemancipated; | and they were sold by his executors by public auction into | another planter's seraglio. This has always seemed to us so | completely to sum up, in one horrible instance, the worst | iniquities of slavery, that after it all other stories have | seemed superfluous and weak. | But the figures are sufficiently novel to be worth noticing | more specially. The upshot of what they prove is that | slavery is not only a crime but a blunder. It is eminently | wasteful and inefficient ~~ and that for the simple reason | that though you can flog men into moving their muscles | according to your bidding, you cannot flog them into | ingenuity, or care, or diligence. Fear-service is necessarily | eye-service; and therefore, until overseers acquire the | attribute of ubiquity, slavery will remain the most worthless | of all kinds of labour. But this is not the only cause of | economical stagnation in the Slave States. The slaves have | taken a revenge upon their masters not very unlike that | which ancient Greece was said to have taken on her Roman | conquerors. They have made labour shameful and lust easy; | and the luxurious apathy of absolute power, and the free | scope given to unbridled sensuality, have eaten out the | native energy of the Anglo-Saxon slave-owners, and have | left them as stagnant as Spanish grandees. Mr. Chambers | proves this by comparing the opportunities and the | achievements of the Northern and the Southern sections of | the Union. The value of real and personal property in the | North is just three times as much per acre as it is in the | South. Massachusetts could more than bur up Virginia, the | two Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Texas; and yet those | States are collectively upwards of sixty times as large as | Massachusetts, and their population is four times as great. | The tonnage of vessels is five times as great in the North | ~~ small as is its seaboard. Its manufacturing products are | nearly ten times as abundant as those of the South. As a | climax, the North outstrips the South on the South's own | chosen ground: ~~ | | In everything the contrast is the same ~~ in schools, books, | newspapers, churches, railways, canals. In everything the | North advances, the South lags behind. The South does not | even contrive to pay its own postage; and the deficiency | has to be made up by the superior epistolary energies of the | North. | Some ten or twelve years ago, Sir C. Lyell, who painted the | state of affairs in America with a very friendly hand, was so | impressed with the failure of slavery in an economical | point of view, that he indulged in a belief that it would die | out of itself. Mr. Chambers entertains no such hopes. The | demoralization wrought by slavery on the slave-owners | disables them for the energetic efforts which a transition | from slave to free labour would require. Moreover, the | possession of slaves, however injurious to the community | at large, is of course an abundant source of wealth to | individuals; and these men exercise a control over public | opinion as despotic as that of the inquisition. The writer | before us gives instances of men driven out of the Slave | States under peril of their lives ~~ one for voting for | Fremont, and the other for saying, in a private letter, that he | and others should be glad to do so if they dared. As long as | his tyranny is maintained, there is no more chance of a | healthy public opinion being formed on the subject of | slavery, than there was of an opinion being formed in | favour of Lutheranism three hundred years ago in Spain. | And those whose special office it is to correct the errors of | human feeling and opinion, instead of rebuking the evil, | sanction it. The clergy of almost every denomination are as | much tainted with slavery doctrines as their flocks. The | mediaeval Church, much as she is accused of undue | compliance with the spirit of her age, never ceased to urge | the enfranchisement of serfs; and that villenage has almost | disappeared from Western Europe is, in great part, her | work. But the American denominations, with all the | enlightenment of Protestantism to guide them, only rack | their ingenuity to invent pleas for slavery. One imaginative | apostle sees in it a mighty instrument for the evangelization | of the blacks, and solemnly points out the danger of | preferring their temporal to their spiritual welfare. We | should have thought that the facts that Virginia visits with | imprisonment any man or woman who teaches even a free | black child to read, and that Tennessee, only last December, | forbad any black to go to church for the space of one year, | might modify these sanguine views. Another reverend | gentleman, with humble-minded blasphemy, does not | venture to inquire into the religious objects of the

| "institution,"

but complacently lays it on the broad | shoulders of Providence. . According to this | doctrine we must presume that the existence of such | persons as this apologist to bring infamy on the Christian | name, is

"no moral evil, but the Lord's doing."

It | is unquestionably very marvelous in our eyes. | The fact is, that these preachers hold their positions | , and depend for their very sustenance on the good | pleasure of their congregation. Now men rather like to be | lectured severely on vices which only affect their spiritual | welfare ~~ the passing sting is a pleasing excitement, and is | moreover accepted by the conscience as full discharge and | satisfaction for all penitential liabilities; but woe to the | luckless wight who shall venture to reprove a community | for any vice the renunciation of which involves a temporal | loss. In England, the wrath of an indignant flock is | commonly confined to measureless abuse; but in America it | is unfortunately able to point that abuse by a summary | dismissal. It is melancholy spectacle for us, before whose | eyes the links that unite State and Church are snapping year | by year, to see the most thoroughly

"voluntary"

| community of Christians the world has beheld since the | time of Constantine brought face to face with a huge | national iniquity, and instead of rebuking, cowed into | approving it. The only religious body which seems never | to have wavered in reprobating it is the Church of Rome; | and even her conduct is susceptible of the ill-natured | explanation, that she derives her support mainly from | Europe. | But if the Southern clergy are faithless to their trust, and the | Southern people either bribed by self-interest or overawed | by menace, at least it may be said there is hope that the | energetic North, the home of Abolitionism, stanch in the | cause of Freedom, will eventually prevail. Unhappily, the | North is not stanch in the cause of Freedom. It values | philanthropy much, but the almighty dollar more. The | South gives Protectionist to the back-bone in its convictions, | cannot bring itself to relinquish this support. This may | very possibly not be an enduring obstacle, for a change of | opinion, similar to that which has taken place in England, | may take away all its value from the bribe. But a much | more serious hindrance to any hearty action against slavery | on the part of the North is the ineradicable prejudice against | colour. Mr. Chambers gives a great many instances which | betray a state of public feeling scarcely conceivable to us in | England. The rudest and the most enlightened districts, | with the exception of Massachusetts, share it alike. It | seems to be felt with equal keenness by clergymen and | laymen, by the pious and the profane ~~ nay, even intense | Abolitionist opinions do not seem to secure a man from this | moral contagion. No accomplishments, no moral or | intellectual qualities, can save from virtual | excommunication the unhappy possessors of any | proportion of negro blood. They are secluded in special | galleries in church, banished to special schools, hunted out | of public conveyances; and in hotels, the common table | d'hote is taboo to them. A Pariah in India, or even a leper | among the children of Israel, was scarcely more an object | of commiseration than a free negro is in the free Northern | States of America. A curious illustration of this state of | feeling occurred in New York. A curious illustration of | this state of feeling occurred in New York. A certain | college in that State had the courage to appoint a quadroon | to one of the professor's chairs. This professor, not | satisfied with this unparalleled favour, had the audacity to | fall in love with a white young lady, who was weak enough | to accept him. But she had a brother, a very pious | clergyman, and distinguished for the fervour with which he | testified against the atrocities of slavery. He never seems | to have contemplated a personal application of the | doctrines of equality and fraternity. He was willing enough | to look on the negro as a man and a brother, but he strongly | objected to looking on him as a man and a brother-in-law. | Accordingly, with a ready Yankee instinct, he appealed to | the mob of the neighbourhood, who, nothing loth, | assembled one Sunday afternoon after Church, , | and all the other apparatus of patriotic vengeance complete, | in order to tar and feather the aspiring professor. He | escaped out of their clutches, and fled, first to New York, | where he married his hard won bride, and then to England. | But a luckless schoolmaster who had given him shelter, | was summarily dismissed from his situation. This story | reads like a tale of some of the worst periods of the most | exclusive German aristocracies ~~ except that some more | gentle form of death would probably have been substituted | for the

"empty barrel spiked with shingle nails."

| It seems to be the hard fate of the American constitution to | revive within its own pale all the evils against which it was | designed to protest, without any of the mitigating adjuncts | which made them tolerable in the older societies. It has | persecution without the self-devoted faith which almost | hallowed it ~~ despotism untempered by the patriarchal | feeling ~~ and an aristocracy of caste, impassably fenced | off, and unsoftened by the halo of chivalrous traditions. | As long as it is under the dominion of feelings such as these, | it is quite clear that the North, notwithstanding such | indications as have recently been given by the legislatures | of New York and one or two other States, can never be | really in earnest in the cause of Abolition. But were it ever | so much in earnest, it is bound hand and foot by the | provisions of the Federal Constitution. The Fugitive Slave | Law is, as is well known, a portion of that Constitution. It | now appears, by the decision of the Supreme Court, that it | does not lie within the powers of Congress to limit the | extension of slavery in any direction. Mexico, Central | America, Cuba, even Brazil, may be ultimately swallowed | up in the vortex. The curse of slavery may be perpetuated | over half a continent ~~ the Senate may be swamped by the | votes of fifty new Slave States ~~ and yet the North will be | powerless to interfere. The Constitution cannot be altered | except with the consent of three-fourths of the States, | involving therefore a considerable number of Slave States; | and in consequence of the strange provision | | that five slaves votes shall be equal to three free votes, the | slave-owners are and must remain masters of the Slave | States. The entanglement is inextricable ~~ the South is | thoroughly master of the situation. As long as the Union is | maintained, slavery must endure; and the North has hitherto | resolutely declined even to contemplate the dissolution of | the Union. The remedy would be a certain one, though | attended with terrible risk: ~~ | | And yet the prospect of sitting still is terrible enough. The | slaves are now four millions, and in ten years they will be | five millions. A war with some powerful European State is | always a possible contingency. Suppose the Federal forces | to be engaged in defending the Union on some other point | ~~ a black regiment or two, raised in Hayti, might march | through the Southern States, and the great slavery difficulty | would be solved by a universal massacre.