SHAKSPEARE-JOHNSON-MILTON.

189

he night be better protected in the possession of his rights. In both cases, therefore, it was manifestly unjust, that a man should be made to labor during the whole of his life, and yet have no benefit from his labor. Hence the slave-trade and the colonial slavery were a violation of the very principle, upon which all law for the protection of property was founded. Whatever benefit was derived from that trade to an individual, it was derived from dishonor and dishonesty. He forced from the unhappy victim of it that, which the latter did not wish to give him; and he gave to the same victim that, which he in vain attempted to show, was an equivalent to the thing he took, it being a thing for which there was no equivalent, and which, if he had not obtained by force, he would not have possessed at all. The injustice complained of was not confined to the bare circumstance of robbing them of the right to their own labor. It was conspicuous throughout the system. They, who bought them, became guilty of all the crimes which had been committed in procuring them; and, when they possessed them, of all the crimes which belonged to their inhuman treatment. The injustice in the latter case amounted frequently to murder. For what was it but murder to pursue a practice, which produced untimely death to thousands of innocent and helpless beings? It was a duty which their lordships owed to their Creator, if they hoped for mercy, to do away this monstrous oppression."

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,*

Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them:-shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? you will answer,
The slaves are ours:-so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it;
If you deny me, fie upon your law!

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

* This argument, considered as used to the particular persons, seems conclusive. I see not how Venitians or Englishmen, while they practice the purchase and sale of slaves, can much enforce or demand the law of doing to others as we would that they should do to us.

JOHN MILTON.

O execrable son, so to aspire

Above his brethren, he himself assuming
Authority usurped from God, not given.
-Man over men

He made not lord; such title to Himself
Reserving, human left from human free.

In all things that have beauty, there is nothing to man more comely than liberty. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, above all liberties.

190

ALEXANDER POPE-JOSEPH ADDISON-ROBERT BURNS.

ALEXANDER POPE.

Some safer world in depths of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

Essay on Man.

God fix'd it certain, that, whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
Homer's Odyssey.

reason.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

O Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eas'd of her load, subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.

Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less rectified or swayed by When one hears of negroes, who, upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it sometimes happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner? What might not that savage greatness of soul, which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what color of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospects of happiness in another world as well as in this; and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it? Spectator, and Murray's English Reader.

ROBERT BURNS.

If I'm designed yon lordling's slave,
By Nature's law design'd,

Why was an independent wish

Ere planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to

His cruelty or scorn?

Or why has man the will and power
To make his fellow mourn?

WILLIAM COWPER.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it shall for a' that,

That sense and worth o'er all the earth
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet, for a' that;

When man to man, the warld all o'er,
Shall brothers be, an' a' that.

Here's Freedom to them that would read,

Here's Freedom to them that would write,

There's none ever feared that the truth should be heard,
But they whom the truth would indict.

May Liberty meet with success,

May Prudence protect it from evil,

May tyrants and tyranny tine in their mist,

And wander their way to the devil.

WILLIAM COWPER.

Man finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and having pow'r
T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No! dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

The tender ties of parent, husband, friend,
All bonds of Nature, in that moment end.
O most degrading of all ills that wait
On man, (a mourner in his best estate!)

All other sorrows virtue may endure,
And find submission more than half a cure;

But SLAVERY!! Virtue dreads it as her grave,

Patience itself is meanness in a slave.
Wait, then, the dawning of a brighter day,
And snap the chain the moment when you may.

Nature imprints upon whate'er we see

That has a heart and life in it, "BE FREE!"

Why did all-creating Nature

Make the plant for which we toil?

191

Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there one, who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,

Speaking from his throne the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted Scourges,
Fetters, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means which duty urges,
Agents of His will to use?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same.
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,

All sustain'd by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;

Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard, and stronger,
Than the color of our kind.
Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,

Prove that you have human feelings,

Ere you proudly question ours.

The Negro's Complaint.

WILLIAM ROSCOE.

Offspring of love divine, Humanity!

To whom, his eldest born, th' Eternal gave
Dominion o'er the heart; and taught to touch
Its varied stops in sweetest unison;

And strike the string that from a kindred breast
Responsive vibrates! from the noisy haunts
Of mercantile confusion, where thy voice
Is heard not; from the meretricious glare
Of crowded theatres, where in thy place
Sits Sensibility, with wat❜ry eye,

Dropping o'er fancied woes her useless tear ;-
Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills;
And execrate the wrongs that Afric's sons,
Torn from their natal shore, and doom'd to bear
The yoke of servitude in foreign climes,
Sustain. Nor vainly let our sorrows flow,
Nor let the strong emotion rise in vain ;
But may the kind contagion widely spread,
Till in its flame the unrelenting heart
Of avarice melt in softest sympathy--
And one bright blaze of universal love
In grateful incense rises up to Heaven!

Form'd with the same capacity of pain,
The same desire of pleasure and of ease,
Why feels not man for man! When nature shrinks
From the slight puncture of an insect's sting,

HANNAH MORE-JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Faints, if not screen'd from sultry suns, and pines
Beneath the hardship of an hour's delay
Of needful nutriment;-when Liberty
Is priz'd so dearly, that the slightest breath
That ruffles but her mantle, can awake
To arms unwarlike nations, and can rouse
Confed'rate states to vindicate her claims:-
How shall the suff'rer man his fellow doom
To ills he mourns or spurns at; tear with stripes
His quiv'ring flesh; with hunger and with thirst
Waste his emaciate frame; in ceaseless toils
Exhaust his vital powers; and bind his limbs
In galling chains! Shall he, whose fragile form
Demands continual blessings to support
Its complicated texture, air, and food,
Raiment, alternate rest, and kindly skies,
And healthful seasons, dare with impious voice
To ask those mercies, whilst his selfish aim
Arrests the general freedom of their course;
And, gratified beyond his utmost wish,
Debars another from the bounteous store!

Wrongs of Africa.

193

HANNAH MORE.

See the dire victim torn from social life,
The shrieking babe, the agonizing wife!

She! wretch forlorn, is dragg'd by hostile hands
To distant tyrants, sold to distant lands,
Transmitted miseries and successive chains,
The sole sad heritage her child obtains!
E'en this last wretched boon their foes deny,
To live together, or together die.

By felon hands, by one relentless stroke,
See the fond links of feeling nature broke!

The fibres twisting round a parent's heart,

Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part.

What wrongs, what injuries does Oppression plead,
To smooth the crime and sanctify the deed?
What strange offence, what aggravated sin?
They stand convicted-of a darker skin!

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Lives there a reptile baser than the slave?
Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave.
See the dull creole, at his pompous board,
Attendant vassals cringing round their lord;
Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain,
Delirious slumbers rack his maudlin brain;
He starts with horror from bewildering dreams,
His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams,
He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds,
The negro trembles, and the lash resounds,
And cries of anguish shrilling through the air,
To distant fields his dread approach declare.