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Thornwell makes a most ill-founded complaint of the people of the non-slaveholding States, in "that they should not be content with thinking their own thoughts themselves."

His position is equally false in morals. The relation which the people of the North sustain to slavery politically, makes its moral status of necessity one of just concern to them. If it is an evil in any sense, if a sin in itself, or if all its evils are merely incidental to the relation, still the inevitable connection of the whole people with it, through the structure of the common Government, fixes upon them the responsibility in no small degree of its moral status and relations, whatever they may be. It is utterly erroneous to say that the people of the non-slaveholding States "have nothing to do with the justice or injustice" of the institution, or even "of the laws themselves" by which it is regulated. If they are concerned with it at all, if they are obliged to return fugitives that escape from slavery to the jurisdiction of the laws from which they have fled, or if they have any other duty to discharge under that instrument which gives the institution any national status whatever, then they have a right to inquire into any thing and every thing which gives it character; and especially into its moral status, for they and the slaves themselves are moral beings. The whole people of the non-slaveholding States may consider every moral element and bearing of the institution, and may approve or condemn, in whole or in part, according to their best judgment, and act as righteousness demands. Nor can any past settlement of principles concerning it, or any opinion entertained of it, by the fathers, or by anybody else, preclude their right thus to do; for they must act on their own responsibility before God.

But most especially,-if, indeed, there can be any differ

A SUBJECT FOR ALL MANKIND.

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ence, is it their privilege not only, but their right and solemn duty, to compass the whole subject, when the South, well nigh or quite universally, abandoning the opinions concerning it held substantially by the whole country in the early days of the Republic,-by statesmen and divines,-have latterly taught that slavery is right and a "blessing," is an "Ordinance of God" and a "school of virtue," "* and is vindicated throughout the whole Scriptures. What the people of the North have claimed, is, to examine these pretensions, to see whether the Fathers both of the Church and of the State in this country were right or wrong, and having formed a judgment to act accordingly; and this is the whole they have claimed.

A SUBJECT FOR ALL MANKIND.

Nor is this all. The moment the claim is made that Southern slavery is sanctioned and sanctified by the Word of God, and is on a par with the conjugal and parental relations, the whole subject is thrown open to the discussion of all people in this country not only, but to the entire Christian world to whom the Scriptures are given. Under the modern claims for Southern negro slavery, it is the idlest of all possible objections to say of Christians of even any foreign nation, that "they have nothing to do with. the justice or injustice" of the institution. If it is a perfectly Scriptural system, as is claimed, they may inquire into it, as they may into any social system claiming such a sanction; as into polygamy in Utah, or into any of the

"Strange as it may sound to those who are not familiar with the system, Slavery is a school of virtue, and no class of men have furnished sublimer instances of heroic devotion than slaves in their loyalty and love to their masters. We have seen them rejoice at the cradle of the infant, and weep at the bier of the dead; and there are few amongst us, perhaps, who have not drawn their nourishment from their generous breasts."-(Fast-Day Sermon.) Some naturalists tell us that there are certain "irrational animals" who give the same illustrations of "virtue."

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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?

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:

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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

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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 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.-Fust-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 bonas of brotherhood; an.id 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:"

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