holding States are severally supreme within their own limits. The governments or legislatures of those States are composed of slave-owners, or appointed by them. Consequently, it is most evident that emancipation, if it is ever to take place, must be a voluntary act on the part of the owners. Now, again, we ask, is it in human nature to expect a sudden change and revolution in all the habits, feelings, and views of the many hundreds of thousands of persons of whom the slaveholders consist? If not, then, is it not plain, that emancipation, in the very nature of the case, must be a gradual thing?[1]
Moreover, it is by no means certain that a sudden change in the condition of so large a population (upwards of three millions) would be productive of real and lasting benefit. All great changes, to be truly beneficial, must be gradual: it is the law of Providence; it is the law of Divine order. And a violation of that law, even with the best intentions, must always calamity. The course of Divine Providence is and has always been, to bear patiently with evils, removing them gently and little by little, till they can be gradually superseded by something better: whereas the
- ↑ "The abolition of slavery," remarks the London Times, "is a problem which has puzzled every American statesman since the Declaration of Independence. The manumission of American slaves, and the realization of the right and equality of freemen, can be a work only of time. Slaves, by precipitate and ill-regulated emancipation, may be abandoned to still worse conditions of human existence, and the oath! and immediate abolition of slavery might often defeat its own end. All disinterested and enlightened persons in a Free State must be enemies of slavery, but the practicability of abolition is the question." — London Times: Review of "Stirling's Letters from the Slave States," April 10, 1858.
