brotherhood. A whole race has been thrown out of the range of human existence, their immortality disregarded, their dignity as children of God scoffed at, their brotherhood with Christ treated as a fable, and all the law and public sentiment and practice with regard to them such as could be justified only on supposition that they were a race of inferior animals.
It is because the negro is considered an inferior animal, and not worthy of any better treatment, that the system which relates to him and the treatment which falls to him are considered humane.
Take any class of white men, however uneducated, and place them under the same system of laws, and make their civil condition in all respects like that of the negro, and would it not be considered the most outrageous cruelty?
Suppose the slave-law were enacted with regard to all the Irish in our country, and they were parcelled off as the property of any man who had money enough to buy them. Suppose their right to vote, their right to bring suit in any case, their right to bear testimony in courts of justice, their right to contract a legal marriage, their right to hold property or to make contracts of any sort, were all by, one stroke of law blotted out. Furthermore, suppose it was forbidden to teach them to read and write, and that their children to all ages were "doomed to live without knowledge." Suppose that, in judicial proceedings, it were solemnly declared, with regard to them, that the mere beating of an Irishman, "apart from any circumstances of cruelty, or any attempt to kill," was no offence against the peace of the state. Suppose that it were declared that, for the better preservation of subjection among them, the law would protect the master in any kind of punishment inflicted, even if it should appear to be malicious, cruel and excessive; and suppose that monsters like Souther, in availing themselves of this permission, should occasionally torture Irishmen to death, but still this circumstance should not be deemed of sufficient importance to call for any restriction on the part of the master. Suppose it should be coolly said, "O yes, Irishmen are occasionally tortured to death, we know; but it is not by any means a general occurrence; in fact, no men of position in society would do it; and when cases of the kind do occur, they are indignantly frowned upon."
Suppose it should be stated that the reason that the law restraining the power of the master cannot be made any more stringent is, that the general system cannot be maintained without allowing this extent of power to the master.
Suppose that, having got all the Irishmen in the country down into this condition, they should maintain that such was the public sentiment of humanity with regard to them as abundantly to supply the want of all legal rights, and to make their condition, on the whole, happier than if they were free. Should we not say that a public sentiment which saw no cruelty in thus depriving a whole race of every right dear to manhood could see no cruelty in anything, and had proved itself wholly unfit to judge upon the subject? What man would not rather see his children in the grave than see them slaves? What man, who, should he wake to-morrow morning in the condition of an American slave, would not wish himself in the grave? And yet all the defenders of slavery start from the point that this legal condition is not of itself a cruelty! They would hold it the last excess of cruelty with regard to themselves, or any white man; why do they call it no cruelty at all with regard to the negro?
The writer in defence of slavery in Fraser's Magazine justifies this depriving of a whole class of any legal rights, by urging that "the good there is in human nature will supply the deficiencies of human legislation." This remark is one most significant, powerful index of the state of public sentiment, produced even in a generous mind, by the slave system. This writer thinks the good there is in human nature will supply the absence of all legal rights to thousands and millions of human beings. He thinks it right to risk their bodies and their souls on the good there is in human nature; yet this very man would not send a fifty-dollar bill through the post-office, in an unsealed letter, trusting to "the good there is in human nature."
Would this man dare to place his children in the position of slaves, and trust them to "the good in human nature"?
Would he buy an estate from the most honorable man of his acquaintance, and have no legal record of the deed, trusting to "the good in human nature"? And if "the good in human nature" will not, suffice for him and his children, how will it suffice for his brother and his brother's children? Is his happiness of any more importance in God's sight than his brother's happiness, that his must be secured by legal bolts, and
