power and law developed industry and the arts. These enabled multitudes to take care of themselves, who were before dependent on individuals for protection. For the power of the individual was substituted the power of government, representing society, and men became personally free, masters of themselves, and governed, not by individual will, but by law, which, whether made by themselves or not, was the law for all. Such has been the progress of society from the family to the tribe, to the nation, to established government, and from the arts of war to the arts of peace. During the whole of this progress, force of mind and force of character have always conferred power. The weak have ever been the servants of

the strong, under the name of slaves, serfs, or vassals, because dependent on the strong; and servitude is another name for dependence. Not until society became stronger than any individual could men become free. And their freedom consisted in this, that, in return for protection, they gave service, duty, fealty, and obedience, not to a master or lord, for his own benefit, but to a king, magistrate, or ruling class; in short, to government, for the benefit of all, because it represents all.

Servitude, therefore, or the subjection of man to man, does not contradict the laws of nature. It represents the relation of weakness to strength. It has existed in all ages, and in all nations at some period of their growth. The condition of its presence is the existence of a class unfit to enjoy personal liberty, or the want of power in government to protect the rights of individuals; for personal liberty is a right, for those who can use it without injury to themselves or others. In the former case, personal liberty may be denied or restricted by law, and according to the necessity for that law, its humanity and justice, will the government that makes it be judged. It must not be a selfish law, intended exclusively for the benefit of the governing party, for power is eternally coupled with duty and responsibility. The ability to do good implies the obligation to do good, and he who has control over the happiness of another is a tyrant and a criminal, if in exercising that control he seeks only his own interest. The laws of the most enlightened nations give power to husbands over wives, to parents over children, to masters over apprentices. But

the power is intended for the benefit of both parties, and it is therefore carefully guarded and restricted so as to secure that benefit.

These are plain and simple principles, which, though often violated by human selfishness and passion, have always been vindicated and established more firmly by the consequences of such violation. No philosopher or moralist, whose name has become eminent, and held its place through the centuries as a spiritual guide and teacher, has ever advocated selfishness as a virtue, or denied the doctrine that all power, whether of an individual or of government, is trust-power, to be exercised for the well-being of both the governing and the governed party; that a king ought to be the father of his people; that a ruling class ought to rule for the benefit of all classes; that the lord is bound to his vassal in mutual and reciprocal obligation, the master to his servant.

But the world has never been governed by philosophers, and history is a terrible record of disobedience to these precepts by those who have governed it, whether one or many, princes or parliaments, lords or masters. It is a record, too, of the punishment that waits on crime. An unjust and oppressive government cannot prosper, cannot endure. Sooner or later it is destroyed by the moral force of mankind, either from within or from without, by a domestic or a foreign power.

We have in this country four millions of negroes. They are of a race inferior to ours. They are, therefore, it is said, unfit to enjoy political liberty, or to exercise power over government. If this be so, they are rightfully deprived of that power, both for their own good and ours, and we of the superior race may govern them politically for the good of both. We are told, also, that they are unfit to enjoy personal liberty, to exercise power individually over themselves, to be governed each by his own will under the law. Is this true? Let us grant it. What, then, is the duty of the superior race which has power over the negro? Does not the possession of this power, by every principle of justice and humanity, make it a trustee for the negro? What is meant when it is said that the negro is unfit for personal liberty? Is it not that he is unable to take care of himself, that he

requires a care-taker, a guide, a support, as a child does? Are not those, therefore, who have power over him, who claim and take that power, bound to furnish the guardianship he needs, for his benefit, and, since his conduct and condition affect their interests, for their own also?

How have we of the white race performed this duty?

This question is answered by the Constitution of the United States, which permitted the slave-trade for twenty years, and slavery forever, slaves being regarded by both as articles of merchandise, existing wholly for the benefit of their owners. It is answered by the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott, in which the Chief Justice declares, that the public opinion of the civilized world at the time the Constitution was made, and which it was intended to express, and which is therefore binding on us, regarded negroes "as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his " (the white man's) "benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it." Mr. Justice Daniel, in the same case, declares that a slave, under our law, "is strictly property, to be used in subserviency to the interests, the convenience, or the will of his owner."

The question is also answered by the laws of the Southern States, all of which proclaim that a slave is in all respects a chattel personal, and by the opinion of Judge Ruffin of North Carolina, quoted by our author (pp. 27, 28): "The question before the court has been assimilated at the bar to the other domestic relations, and arguments drawn from the well-established principles which confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed upon us. The court does not recognize their application. There is no likeness between the cases. They are in opposition to each other, and there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater cannot be imagined. In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the

youth, born to equal rights with that governor on whom the duty devolves of training the young to usefulness in a station which he is afterwards to assume among freemen. To such an end, and with such a subject, moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural means. Moderate force is superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions and the ultimate correction of the law, than allow it to be immoderately inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge, without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits." To the same effect is the decision of Judge Field of Virginia, in 1851, in the case of Souther vs. The Commonwealth, 7 Grattan, 673: "It is the policy of the law, in respect to the relation of master and slave, and for the sake of securing proper obedience on the part of the slave, to protect the master from prosecution, even if the whipping and punishment be malicious, cruel, and excessive."

These principles deny the obligation of the superior race to regard the happiness or improvement of the inferior, whilst they assert absolute dominion over it; they degrade the slave from his rank as a man, and convert him into a thing; they expose him without protection to the irresponsible control of his owner, and to the operations of two passions that have ever been the scourges of humanity, the lust of money and the lust of power. He is denied every right of humanity,— liberty, personal security, mental improvement, moral elevation, property, wife, and child. He can acquire nothing by his labor, he can hold no relations to his fellow-men, he can make no contracts. So far as it can, the law reduces him from the position of a man to that of a brute. And why is this done? Because those who make the law have the power to do it. Though four millions strong, the negro has not force of mind and will or fitting opportunity to resist them. His weakness, his capacity for moral and intellectual improvement, for enjoying a higher destiny, for domestic happiness and affection, appeal in vain to the superior race, which is stronger than himself, and

because it is stronger devotes him and all his hopes and all his future to itself, as an instrument and a possession.

The gigantic selfishness of this system is less surprising than the bold and shameless avowal of it here, in republican America, and in the high noon of the nineteenth century. Servitude, or

the dependence and consequent subordination of the weak to the strong, of the ignorant to the intelligent, of the poor to the rich, in some form, has existed in all ages, and must exist, so long as superior ability of mind and body creates disparity of condition and social inequality. The character of that servitude must necessarily vary with the progress of a people in civilization. The modern European laborer is the successor of the feudal serf, as the latter was of the Gothic slave before the Northern hordes overturned the Roman empire, and crystallized into nations One characteristic of Christian civilization has been, that the law, representing advancing society, has more and more interfered to protect the weak and helpless from the selfish passions of the powerful, to extend the sphere both of personal and political liberty, to give man more and more to himself, and to yield government constantly to the influence of larger numbers of the people. The violation of the truth of nature, as well as of justice and humanity, by the degradation of man to the condition of a chattel, has been the work of nations either pagan or barbarous, except in the case of modern African slavery. The Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans held men as chattels, at every period of their history, from the rudest to the most refined. They made no distinction of race, but enslaved and made property of all alike, whenever they had the power. The slave-trade, domestic and foreign, flourished among them, and their laws were identical in spirit, frequently in positive provisions, with those of our Southern States. To this universal law and practice among ancient nations, the laws of Moses and the custom of the Jews were the only exception.

All law and government resolve themselves into custom, and are thus products and outward manifestations of the mental, moral, and material condition of a people. Laws change with that condition, and therefore change slowly. A new law is made to satisfy a new want caused by the gradual growth