It is not on the former part of this work, much as there is in it to approve, that we feel ourselves called upon to pronounce judgment. It is the last chapter-a chapter by far the most important, and for which the other parts were obviously intended to prepare the reader, that we feel called upon specially to notice. Though the last in order, it was clearly the first in the view of the writer; and was the anticipated ordeal through which the reasonings and arguments of the former part would be required to pass. The subject of this chapter is the application of human responsibility to the slavery question-that delicate question on the lips of an American, which opens all the folds of his suspicion, and braces him to a moral hardihood unfelt on any other theme.

It has long been matter of interesting inquiry with us, what must be the precise feeling and position of the better part of the American clergy in reference to the slavery question. Religion has made more rapid advances in the United States than in any other portion of the globe; and yet the fact is,-strange and unaccountable as it must appear-that while the sinews of the system are relaxing everywhere else, they are here retained, as with a giant's grasp. How is this? How are we to account for the fact, that ministers of the gospel, the students of God's holy word, preaching and exhorting every Sabbath-day on the relative duties of man to man, and the responsibility of all men to God, should be open to the following cutting rebuke by a late intelligent traveller. Seeing what I have seen, I can come to no other conclusion than that the most guilty class of the community in regard to the slavery question at present is, not the slaveholding, nor even the mercantile, but the clerical.' How, we ask again, is this? By what show of argument, by what course of reasoning, by what silent stupefying process can the energies and sensibilities of the Christian ministry be so paralyzed and blunted as to afford the least point and verity to such a rebuke? The reply to this inquiry is in a great measure furnished in the chapter before us; and in saying this, we are fully aware that we are uttering a censure of no slight amount. It appears, according to the judgment of Professor Wayland, President of Brown University, and author of Elements of Moral Science, &c., &c., that the Christian church is not responsible. Slavery is an affair of civil society. The respective States of the union are governed each by their own laws: no one local legislature has the least authority beyond its own boundary; and, therefore, the citizen has no power to act; and where there is no power, there is no responsibility. But on so serious a subject, justice requires that the author should speak for himself; and that justice may to the fullest extent be awarded, we shall make the extract copious and complete.

The right or wrong, the innocence or guilt of slavery, is not the question here to be discussed. Waiving this, and granting it to be a violation of the law which God has ordained between man and man, and granting, also, that it is our duty to labor for its removal, I design merely to inquire what are the limits, within which our efforts, for the accomplishment of this purpose, are to be restricted.

"Our duty on this subject must, I think, be either as citizens of the United States, or as human beings, under the law to God.

1. I think it evident, that, as citizens of the United States, we have no power whatever either to abolish slavery in the southern States, or to do any thing, of which the direct intention is to abolish Whatever power we possess, as citizens of the United States, is conferred upon us by the constitution. This power is not conferred upon us by that instrument, and therefore it does not exist.

it.

But this instrument has not merely a positive, it has also a negative power. It not only grants certain powers, but it expressly declares that those not enumerated are not granted. Thus it enacts, that all The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it, to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' Now, the abolition of slavery being a power not conferred, it is, by this article, expressly withheld. Whatever power we may therefore have over slavery, as citizens of the several States, within our own limits respectively, we have none, as citizens of the United States. The majority of the people in the United States have, in this respect, no power over the minority; for the minority has never conceded to them this power. Should all the States in the Union but one, and that one the very smallest, abolish slavery; should the majority of one hundred to one, of the people of the United States, be in favor of its abolition, still it would not alter the case. That one State would be free to abolish it or not to abolish it, as it is now. This is a question which has never been submitted to the majority of the citizens of these United States, and, therefore, the citizens of the United States, as citizens, have nothing to do with it.'

—pp. 183—186. 'As we have, therefore, as citizens, no power over this subject, we have, as citizens, no responsibility. The guilt, if guilt exists, will not rest upon us as citizens of the United States. Whoever supposes himself guilty because Congress does not pass a law abolishing slavery in the United States? But this is the only manner in which, as citizens of the United States, we have any power to act in this, or in any other case. If, then, we are not responsible, we have, as citizens, no obligation to discharge in the premises. Whether slavery be bad or good, we wash our hands of it, inasmuch as it is a matter which the providence of God has never placed within our jurisdiction.

But this is not quite all. As citizens of the United States; we have solemnly promised to let it alone. We have declared that we leave to the States respectively, and to the people of the States, whatever powers they have not conceded to us. This is, by universal consent, acknowledged to be one of the powers thus left. We have, therefore, promised as citizens of the United States, to let this alone 3 C

VOL. VII.

The concession has been made by both parties, and we hold the other party to it. Should the majority in Congress undertake to establisk slavery, in one of the free States, we should plead this very article, as a bar to their usurpation. But the slave-holding States have precisely the same right to plead it against us, should we attempt any legislation in the case. Both parties have pledged themselves to abstain, and

neither can interfere in the matter without the violation of a solemn compact. In this respect, therefore, the providence of God, and our own solemn obligations to each other, have precluded any action what

ever.

But I go still further. I hold that a compact is binding in its spirit as well as in its letter. The spirit of the compact, I suppose, imposes upon me the obligation not to do any thing for the purpose of changing the relation of master and slave, except with the consent of the master. I have no right to declare the abolition of slavery in another State; I have conceded that this is to be left to the free choice of the citizens of that State. I have no right to do any thing to interfere with that free choice. I have, therefore, no right to excite such a state of feeling among slaves, that the master shall be obliged, from physical necessity, to liberate his slaves, whether he believes it to be right and wise, or whether he believes the contrary. This is as much a violation of the spirit of the compact, as an arbitrary act of legislation.'

But it may be said, granting all this, yet abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. responsible, and of course, under obligation. calmly examine this question.

―pp. 188—191. Congress has a right to Here we are, therefore, Let us proceed, and

I grant that the unrestricted legislative control over the District of Columbia has been ceded to the United States. I grant that Congress has the same power over the District, as the Legislatures of the several States have over their own States respectively. They have, therefore, the power to abolish slavery within that District.....

But it is always to be remembered, that it is one thing to say that a man has a right to do a particular act, and a very different thing to say that it is right and just for him to do that particular act. The right to do the act may be absolute, but the fitness, and propriety, and justice of exercising that right may be conditional....

It is manifest, then, that, granting a right to exist, in the signification above given, the question still remains, is it a right, fit and proper and just to be exercised? In other words, although we have the right to do it, yet would it be right and just for us to do it? This is really the point on which it seems to me the whole question hinges.

'I ask, then, in the first place, what is the object of the act of abolition ? Is it ultimate within itself? Is it merely because, as citizens of the United States, we are opposed to slavery in any territory over which we exercise jurisdiction? Or, is it for the sake of something ulterior, that is, for the sake of creating such a state of things in the slave-holding States, that the citizens of those States will be obliged, whether they approve of it or not, to abolish slavery? In so far as this latter is the object, I think it unconstitutional; because we have

by the spirit of the compact, bound ourselves to leave it to their own free will. That free will we have no right, either by ourselves or by others, to control; and we have no right to use our power, either of one kind or another, for this purpose. I think, therefore, we have no right to exercise the power which we possess for the accomplishment of this object.

'I ask, in the next place, was the power over the District of Columbia ceded to Congress for this purpose? Did Maryland and Virginia ever anticipate that, without their consent, this use would be made of it?' 'If I make a contract with my neighbour, and by the letter of that contract, obtain a power to do some act, which power he never intended to convey, I cannot, as an honorable man, avail myself of it. To do so is an act of knavery, and every man of sound principles would so consider it.'-pp. 191-196.

The above extracts, we believe, give an honest view of what our author conceives to be the duty of his countrymen as citizens of the United States. The following will show what he thinks is their duty in respect to slavery from their relations as men.

We are bound, I apprehend, in all our efforts on this subject, most scrupulously to avoid all measures which could justly be construed into an attempt to infringe the rights of the South. We have a right to attempt to change southern opinions on this question, and to show the master, by argument, that it is for his interest, and that it is his duty, to liberate his slave. But we have no right to take any measures of which the natural tendency is to excite the slaves to insubordination and civil war. We have a right to change the purpose of the master by argument, but we have no right either to oblige him by our own physical force to change it, or to excite another person thus to oblige him. I here only speak of the question of right to do the act, and not at all of the practical result of the act. It is my firm belief, that a general insurrection at the South would end in the almost entire annihilation of the colored people.

Nor, again, can I perceive the utility of a system of societies, affiliated, not for the sake of circulating truth at the South, but for the sake of exciting and agitating the people at the North. The only advantage which can be expected to result from this measure, is the increase of abolition votes. But this is a matter, as we have attempted to show, with which votes have nothing to do, inasmuch as it is a question over which, as citizens, we have no control. In the mean time, the very attempt to multiply votes, on this question, cannot but beget in the minds of the South, the suspicion that we intend to interfere in this very manner; that is, in a manner at variance with our constitutional obligations. The least suspicion of this nature must, from the necessity of this case, render all our argument useless, and make our very appeal to men's understandings and consciences, a positive annoyance. And in so far as I have been able to discover, such has been the effect of the system of affiliated abolition societies. They have

already become the tools of third rate politicians. They have raised a violent agitation, without presenting any definite means of constitutionally accomplishing their object. In the mean time, as combination on the one side, always produces combinations on the other, they have embittered the feelings of the South. They have, for the present at least, rendered any open and calm discussion on this subject in the slave-holding States utterly impossible. They have rivetted, indefinitely, the bonds of the slave, in those very States in which they were, a few years since, falling off; and everywhere throughout the South, they have rendered the servitude of the enslaved vastly more rigorous than it ever was before.'-pp. 206–208.

On this extract we must make a few remarks.

In the first place, there is throughout it an entire misstatement of the objects and measures of the American Anti-Slavery movement. It is not by any overt act that they seek to "abolish slavery in the Southern States; it is, not their aim to excite the 'slaves to insubordination and civil war ;' or 'to oblige the master by physical force:' all this is gratuitous assumption, warranted neither by the laws of the association, nor by the acts of its accredited agents. Their aim is not to induce the people to break the laws, be they as bad as they may, but to persuade those who made bad laws to amend them. They know that there is a higher tribunal than earthly legislation; and that when human laws contravene and oppose inherent rights, the fact only requires to be brought fairly out into the light, to make the necessity for its prompt and thorough correction to be clearly

seen.

There is, moreover, an entire confusion between moral and political rights. The right which a man has to himself, is anterior to all political regulations, is what he never relinquishes when he enters into the social compact; and to wrest it from any man, unless forfeited by misconduct, is tyranny and oppression, by whomsoever practised, or by whatever name it may be called. Were any one man to take this liberty with his fellow man, he would be treated with universal execration; and if a nation does it, the immorality of the act is precisely the same. It may have the power, and it may exercise the power; but it has not, and never can have the right. Indeed, no man has a right even to dispose of himself by this summary process, since it interferes with the claim which God, as his Maker, Preserver, and Judge, reserves to himself, who will hold all his creatures responsible for their actions, which they cannot be while held in involuntary servility to a fellow man.

Allied to this, as there is an entire misapprehension of the limits of human legislation, there is also a most gross misrepresentation of its foundation and authority. One would be led to sup