The Sun.
London, England, 1839-02-14 00:00:00

" Non hmc in fcedera veni." This was not the
covenant to which we pledged our faith in the Declara-
tion of Independence. The total and irreversible abo-
lition of slavery was pledged in that compact by the
appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the
truth of its self-evident axioms. The time and mode
of emancipation were left to the conscience, the justice,
and humanity of the masters, but the breaking of the
oppressor's chain was a virtual and tacit stipulation of
that great charter of the race, binding upon every
signer of that instrument, and upon all whom they
represented, by obligations as indissoluble as that
of the common Union substituted for the dissolved
and discarded allegiance to a Sovereign beyond
the seas. Such was undoubtedly the construction
given by George Washington to the bond, and he
accordingly emancipated his slaves by his last will.
George Washington was thus, in the broadest and
most comprehensive sense of the word an Abolitionist.
So vies Thomas Jefferson—and if the threat of hang-
ing, openly uttered in the Senate of the United States,
was any thing more than a brutum fulmen, a mere
flourish of trumpets, George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, were they now alive, and should dare to show
their faces and to utter the self-evident truths of the
Declaration of Independence within the State of
South Carolina, would be hanged !—hanged in spite
of the interposition of every Government upon earth,
including that of the Union.
I call to your attention the present words and deeds
of exasperated and irresponsible multitudes, who know
not what they do—of gentlemanly mobs who burn down
convents, churches, school-houses, halls of freedom, who
cast printing presses into the river, and speed the rifle-
ball to the heart of the minister of Christ, who break
up with insult and contumely peaceful assemblages of
women, or who carry about them the bowie knife, with
" Death to Abolition," inscribed upon its blade. All
this we have seen and heard—all this and more we
daily see and bear in " this land of the free and this
home of the brave." And what is the purpose of all
this ? To rivet the chains of unmitigated servitude
upon three millions of our countrymen and upon their
posterity to the end of time.
It is not the occasional ebullition of popular passions,
however terrible or destructive, which constitutes the
most remarkable contrast between the principles univer-
sally recognized at the period of our revolution by its
founders, and the slave-holding doctrines of the pre-
sent day. It is the perversion of intellect, the de-
pravation of moral feeling, the degradation of man
to the standard of the brute, which marks the Ame-
rican school of servile philosophy. Professors of
morals at Universities, Chancellors sworn to adminis-
ter equity between men, Judges of Courts of Justice,
Governors and Senators of Sovereign States, now tell
us that the Declaration of Independence was an im-
posture, that its self-evident truths were a pack of cold-
tohdeeirdsainndceirmitpudent lies; not one word of which was
believed by those who signed the instrument, and ap-
pealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the proof
of
Y. And what is is that has wrought this
woful change ? What but that fatal drop of slavery
intermingled in our primitive association, and which it
was the intention of all at that time as soon as possible
to extinguish ?
The servile doctrines of the present day are in-
compatible with any system of Liberty. Just as
far as the people of the free States submit to them,
or acquiesce in them, just so far they suffer their
own liberties to be crippled and impaired. Were
it possible for them to give way to the encroach-
ments which far the last three or four years have been
creeping upon them without a recoil, they would soon
sink thmselves into the most abject of slaves. Ido
not believe that the descendants from the revolutionary
stock have
burns yet, though with a flickering flame in New En-
so degenerated. The fire of liberty
gland. It will yet kindle and consume to ashes the
dastardly sophisms with which slavery would pollute
our souls. I may not live to see the day, but I wait
for it only to say with Simeon, " Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace." J. Q. ADAMS.