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systems of heathenism; and the same if it is not sustained by Scripture; and to determine whether it is or not thus sanctioned, they must examine it, for there is no other way of arriving at the truth.

And beyond this, we may say that the principle of selfdefence and self-preservation,-"the first law of life,”impels to this course. We have seen that it was a part of the scheme of the rebel leaders to make the whole North slaveholding, and to people its lands with slaves fresh from Africa. The same men think that Europe would be better off with slavery. If, then, such a change has taken place in this country as to lead men to applaud it where it was once only tolerated, and to declare it in every sense a blessing," where once it was pronounced a "curse” to all concerned, who can tell but like transformations may occur elsewhere, and among other nations?

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FREE SOCIETY PITIED AND LAMENTED.

Is it not well known that eminent Southern writers, not content to enjoy the blessings of slavery alone, have expressed their pity for the social condition of the North; have lamented "the failure of free society;" have become eloquent upon the organization of labor;" have predicted that the North would be obliged to resort to their system to prevent anarchy and ruin; and upon these convictions. have recommended themselves to imitation by all the nations of the earth? Dr. Thornwell says:

We confidently anticipate the time when the nations that now revile us would gladly change places with us. In its last analysis, slavery is nothing but an organization of labor. * * *Society is divided between princes and beggars. If labor is left free, how is this condition of things to be obviated? The Government must either make provision to support people in idleness, or it must arrest the law of population and keep them from being born, or it must organize labor. * * * On what principle shall labor be organized so as to make it certain that the

SLAVERY THE CONDITION FOR ALL LABORERS. 101

laborer shall never be without employment, and employment adequate for his support? The only way in which it can be done, as a permanent arrangement, is by converting the laborer into capital; that is, by giving the employer a right of property in the labor employed; in other words, BY SLAVERY. * * * That non-slaveholding States will eventually have to organize labor, and to introduce something so like slavery that it will be impossible to discriminate between them, or to suffer from the most i violent and disastrous insurrections against the system which creates and perpetuates their misery, seems to be as certain as the tendencies in the laws of capital and population to produce the extremes of poverty and wealth. We do not envy them their social condition. *** We desire to see no such state of things among ourselves, and we accept as a good and merciful constitution the organization of labor which Providence has given us in slavery.-Fast-Day Sermon.

SLAVERY THE PROPER CONDITION FOR ALL LABORERS.

The plain English of the foregoing is, that Dr. Thornwell would have all the laborers in every nation reduced to slavery. He would not merely go to Africa for laborers, but would reduce every white man who is compelled to labor, from freedom to slavery. Dr. Palmer joins his lamentation over freedom to the laborer, and over the perils of free society, as follows:

The so-called Free States are working out the social problem under conditions peculiar to themselves. These conditions are sufficiently hard, and their success is too uncertain to excite in us the least jealousy of their lot. With a teeming population, which the soil cannot supportwith their wealth depending upon arts, created by artificial wants-with an eternal friction between the grades of their society-with their labor and their capital grinding each other like the upper and nether millstones -with labor cheapened and displaced by new mechanical inventions, bursting more asunder the bonds of brotherhood; amid these intricate perils we have ever given them our sympathy and our prayers, and have never sought to weaken the foundations of their social order. God grant them complete success in the solution of all their perplexities!— Thanksgiving Discourse.

We sincerely thank the kind man for his "sympathy and

prayers" concerning a state of things of which he knows so little; but we do not think the greatest sufferers in "the so-called Free States" are quite willing to say they are ready to be reduced to that "system of organized labor" which is here marked out for them.

The mild and amiable Dr. Armstrong, of Norfolk, Virginia, does not leave it to inevitable inference, but states it in terms, that the white laborers of Europe are the proper subjects of whom to make slaves. This is his view of the matter:

It may be that such a slavery, regulating the relations of capital and labor, though implying some deprivation of personal liberty, will prove a better defence of the poor against the oppression of the rich, than the too great freedom in which capital is placed in many of the Free States of Europe at the present day. Something of this kind is what the masses of free laborers in France are clamoring for under the name of the "right to labor." It may be that Christian slavery [the author's italics] is God's solution of the problem about which the wisest statesmen of Europe confess themselves "at fault."-Christian Doctrine of Slavery.

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These Christian Doctors of Divinity, so eloquent and earnest upon "Christian Slavery;" so tearful and prayerful over the condition of society at the North; so anxious to have all laborers, white and black, blonde and brunette, in America and Europe, reduced to slavery, the only distinetion being that the "rich" shall be the masters and the "poor" their slaves,-and who would, upon this principle alone, illustrate "the organization of labor" in every nation upon earth, allowing masters only to carry a pocket dictionary from a Southern press (if the South ever printed one) to define "poor" and "rich,"-are of course supported in all this by the politicians and economists of the South. In De Bow's Review for November, 1857, one of them discourseth as follows, on "Southern Thought:"

SLAVERY THE CONDITION FOR ALL LABORERS. 103

We'must teach that slavery is necessary in all societies, as well to protect, as to govern the weak, poor, and ignorant. This is the opposite doctrine to that of the political economists. We should show that slave society, which is a series of subordinations, is consistent with Christian morality for fathers, masters, husbands, wives, children, and slaves, not being equals, rivals, competitors, and antagonists, best promote each other's selfish interests when they do most for those above or beneath them. Within the precincts of the family, including slaves, the golden rule is a practical and wise guide of conduct. But in free society, where selfishness, rivalry, and competition, are necessary to success, and almost to existence, this rule cannot be adopted in practice. It would reverse the whole action of such society, and make men martyrs to their virtues. *** We, of the South, can build up an ethical code founded on the morality of the Bible, because human interests with us do not generally clash, but coincide. Without the family circle, it is True, competition and clashing interests exist, but slavery leaves few without the family, and the little competition that is left is among the rich and skilful, and serves to keep society progressive. It is enough chat slavery will relieve common laborers of the evils of competition, and the exactions of skill and capital. * * * Southern thought will teach that protection and slavery must go hand in hand, for we cannot efficiently protect those whose conduct we cannot control.

It is the duty of society to protect all its members, and it can only do so by subjecting each to that degree of government constraint, or slavery, which will best advance the good of each and of the whole. Thus ambition, or the love of power, properly directed, becomes the noblest of virtues, because power alone can enable us to be safely benevolent to the weak, poor, or criminal. To protect the weak, WE MUST FIRST ENSLAVE THEM, and this slavery must be either political and legal, or social. * Slavery is necessary as an educational institution, and is worth ten times all the common schools of the North. Such common schools teach only uncommonly bad morals, and prepare their inmates to gradute in the penitentiary, as the statistics of crime at the North abundantly prove. * We, of the South, assume that man has all along instinctively understood and practised that social and political government best suited to his nature, and that domestic slavery is, in the general, a natural and necessary part of that government, and that its absence is owing to a decaying diseased state of society, or to something exceptional in local circumstances, as in desert, or mountainous, or new countries, where competition is no evil, because capital has no mastery over labor.

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WHO, NOW, IS RESPONSIBLE?

The reader is no doubt willing to rest here; these lessons in political economy are sufficient for his present reflection. The divines and the economists whose views are now given, are among the foremost leaders of the rebellion; were those who, at the earliest moment, urged it on, and those whose teachings for twenty years past had helped to prepare the Southern people for the work in which they are to-day engaged, on a hundred fields of carnage and blood, where lie the bleaching bones of the flower of a generation of young men; and they are those who have, during every step in the progress of the war, by prayers and counsels, and active aid in the armies of treason, given all their might to bring forth these legitimate fruits of the seed they have sown. This is their work; for it they are responsible.

The laborers and mechanics of the North,-all the "poor," indeed, of every class,-may see the feast which was elaborately prepared for them, and the destiny which inevitably awaited them, could the South have had their way in the unlimited and unchecked control of the Government; and they may learn, in this, the real character of that rebellion, to put down which the Government has called the people to arms.

All may see, in the light of these sentiments, the real nature of that system, and the real character of its supporters, that have found apologists and extenuators in the North for these many years past, in the "adroitest debaters" and most "distinguished defenders of slavery and the South," in Church and State. While these men were sowing broadcast these seeds through every means in their power, it was deemed a labor of love to prepare for them the soil, While they could teach their doctrines at will, and pity

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