obvious that every one of these rights is inherent in human nature, and that their existence and their protection lie at the foundation of human society, which could not exist for a day, under any form, if these rights were universally abolished. Moreover, they are all of divine authority; and as the State itself—that is, human society-is ordained of God, we have one of God's institutions abolishing, as to immense numbers of His rational creatures, the very foundations on which He has erected that institution, and rendered possible the social state He ordained for those creatures. This is a condition of things for whose increase there can be no justification; and whose everlasting continuance can be defended only upon grounds which subvert the order of nature, the ordinations of heaven, and the foundations of the social state. * * * Our divine religion has been invoked against us. God, the creator of man, and his infinite benefactor, it is constantly alleged, is the great Author of the institution by which man has the most effectually defaced God's image in man. Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of sinners, meant, we are told, by His great law of love, that man should enslave his fellow-man; by His sublime revelation of the universal bond of human brotherhood, to teach us that we might afflict and crush all around us; by His royal law of doing to others as we wish them to do to us, to give us a rule by which to limit and restrict our bowels of compassion within rational bounds! These are great expositions; and the more to be cordially received, as they are uttered by those having no sort of interest or motive in perverting the word of God; and as they accord so precisely with the whole sentiments of God's people throughout all ages! Look around you, my countrymen. On which side of these questions is the great body of the disciples of Jesus Christ? On which side are to be found the most of those who seem to you to understand, to practise, and to love God's law? Why do you hear in popular addresses, and read in resolutions of popular assemblies, such denunciations of the Ministers of the Gospel, whose abuse is a staple theme, in a large portion of the slavery party? Ask your hearts, is not all this natural-is it not all just what might have been expected? Ask the fiercest of those who denounce us, whether, in their calm moments, they think Christian people and Christian ministers had better plead for or against the suffering and the oppressed-for or against the liberties of mankind? What is happening around us, has happened everywhere. What men have blushed to advocate upon their own respon. sibility, they have endeavored to justify in the name of the adorable God, and then traduced His servants for bearing testimony against HON. GARRETT DAVIS ON SLAVERY IN 1849. 449 them. But has that arrested the arm of the Lord? Follow His glorious word across the track of ages, and make with it the circuit of the world. Where was this institution of hereditary slavery ever abolished, where a divine revelation had not come? Where, on the other hand, has hereditary slavery held its ground unshaken, in the midst of the light of this Heaven-descended truth? Surely God's people know, if anybody knows, what is God's mind. Surely God's word, by means of His word, is a reliable exposition of what He designed that word to accomplish. The record which is thus made by the Emancipation party in Kentucky, in 1849, is one, in our judgment, of which the persons concerned will never have cause to be ashamed. They took their noble stand in a great popular movement on the side of right; and though defeated, they were not dishonored. It is no doubt quite as clear now, -and perhaps far more palpable, as seen in the perils that are now upon the State and the Nation, growing out of slavery, to all the surviving actors who favored emancipation in 1849, as well as to those who opposed them, that it would have been infinitely better for the State, had the people at large concurred in the system then sought to be inaugurated. HON. GARRETT DAVIS ON SLAVERY IN 1849. Mr. Davis, now in the United States Senate from Kentucky, was a member of the Constitutional Convention held in 1849. In a discussion on slavery in that body, he is reported as saying: But it appears to me that any intelligent and carefully reflecting mind must come to the conclusion that slavery is to have but a transitory existence in Kentucky. The general sentiment of the world is against it, before which, in fifty years, it has receded vastly; and this sentiment is deeply and widely formed in our limits, and among our own people. * The history of slavery, as we have it, proves in all ages the past that it is progressing to its end. That consummation * * is in the course of events, and when men throw themselves in the current of events to hasten, or to retard, they are but straws. Let all straws be kept out of that section of this resistless current which flows through Kentucky, and let it roll on in its undisturbed power. We have said that those who took bold and decided ground for emancipation then, made up an enduring and honorable record. This is especially true of the Presbyterian clergy. Their posterity will not be ashamed of them. A GLORIOUS RECORD TARNISHED. On which But where do we find some of them now? side are they battling about slavery now,—not as the institution was then, reposing in peace, but-when it has risen up in its treasonable rage and is filling the land with carnage and wailing; when it is carrying fire and sword to the homes of Kentucky; and when all this is undertaken and prosecuted for the sole purpose of perpetuating for ever the system which in 1849 the Presbyterians of Kentucky wished, unanimously, to remove from among them? The Rev. Mr. Robinson, of Frankfort," so" conspicuous for his zeal in behalf of emancipation" in 1849, is Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Toronto, Canada, now editor of The True Presbyterian, issued in Louisville, Kentucky. That paper, as we have proved in a previous chapter, is filled with treason against the Government, and is aiding the rebellion as far as it dare go in that direction. It of course advocates the system of slavery out of which the rebellion has arisen. Number after number of that paper has been mainly devoted to a vindication of slavery from the extremest proslavery position taken by the leaders of the rebellion in the South. In 1849, his "zeal” was spicuous" in maintaining the principles of the Emancipation State Convention of Kentucky, which declared slavery "con A GLORIOUS RECORD TARNISHED. 451 to be "contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and injurious to a pure state of morals." In 1862, '63, 64, when the nation is struggling for its life, against the foulest rebellion the earth ever saw,—a rebellion begun in the name of slavery, urged on for the sake of slavery, fighting for slavery, living for slavery, worshipping slavery, dooming a whole generation of its young men to a cruel death for slavery, and aiming to supplant universal liberty for slavery, Dr. Robinson's "zeal" is made "conspicuous" in using all his power, through his paper, to convince the "Presbyterians" of Kentucky, hitherto opposed to slavery, that the system among them which they formerly denounced is "divine," an "ordinance of God," justified by law and by Gospel, the best condition for the negro race, in accordance with the law of nature, and all the other fine things which Southern rebels say of it; while, to dissent from this, to speak of slavery as did the Emancipation Convention of Kentucky in whose behalf his "zeal" was once "conspicuous," is "infidelity" in any man, and for the Church to do this is incurable "apostasy." This is his former record; and this is his present one. We wish it could be said with truth that other Presbyterian ministers and members stand where they were all reported as standing fifteen years ago. But it is unquestionably true that many of them, judging from the editorials, correspondents, and support given to The True Presbyterian, have repudiated their former record, and now stand for the twin-powers, slavery and rebellion. 20* CHAPTER XII. MODERN SOUTHERN VIEWS OF SLAVERY. We have shown at some length, in previous chapters, the opinions entertained of slavery as an institution, both at the North and in the South, by the Church, by statesmen, and by the people, from before the establishment of the National Government down to a period within some thirty years; and they exhibit, with rare exceptions, a concurrent testimony against the system, on grounds both of principle and policy. Divines and statesmen, during the earlier period, as well in those States where it was established as elsewhere, regarded it as an evil to be tolerated rather than justified, and many of them hoped for its ultimate removal from the country, and aided schemes of emancipation with that end in view. During the later period, a total revolution in opinion has obtained in the States in rebellion, embracing the Church and the world together, which has been for many years practically universal. It now approves what it once condemned, applauds what it once lamented, justifies what it once tolerated, blesses what it once denounced, and places under the divine sanction what it formerly consigned to God's withering curse. As this change in Southern opinion is the fruitful germ which has brought forth this monstrous rebellion, we propose in this chapter to give some examples of the present status of this opinion, confining ourselves as before chiefly to the Church, as seen in the views of leading divines and ecclesiastical bodies. There is nothing in this aspect of |