The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-10 00:00:00

the Revenue. But, while the experiment is
properly tested, it is essential to preserve the
means of defraying the national liabilities and
maintaining the national establishments by means
of a Property Tax, equitably apportioned on the
community.

"Our domestic institutions" are in a slippery,
tumble-down condition just now, to all appear-
ance, in the Slave States. What other interpre-
tation can we give of the universal panic fear of a
rising of the slave population in insurrection ?—of
the hanging, shooting, menaces, public meetings,
combinations, of which the newspapers are so full ?
—of the clamorous outcry against white aboli-
tionist missionaries in disguise traversing the
country to excite the blacks to revolt ? Can any
one point out any satisfactory evidence as yet
promulgated of the truth of the allegations made
by the slaveowners ? For our part we have not
come across such evidence. We will even go
further, and say such evidence is not merely not
forthcoming ; it has no existence.
Is there, then, it will be asked, no real danger ?
Are the Southern slaveowners at the present
moment appalled by an unwarrantable fear, and
busying themselves with measures of prevention
against a peril which has no existence ? What.
ever may have been the case in the first instance,
we should be loth to say as much now. If we
are not mistaken they are precipitating a crisis it
was a month or two ago in their power to avert.
There can be little doubt the late Presidential
election has been the moans of quickening the
minds of the slave population to a keen
sense of the abject and miserable bondage
under which they groan, being burdened. Not
a meeting at which the claims of the rival
candidates were discussed but was attended by
the most intelligent and adventurous of the op-
pressed people. The black attendants of the
white man, it will be remembered, are generally
selected, because of their superior ability and
cultivation. On their return be sure the closeness
of the contest between the supposed friend and
foe of the slave, and the imminent danger of the
final overthrow of Southern domination would be
told in the fullest amplitude to greedy ears, and
pondered over by understandings but too much
under the sway of imagination. The flame of
liberty, always catching, is likely enough to have
been veritable wildfire among them ; not, how-
ever, stimulating them directly to revolt, but
awakening their dormant hope of liberation, and
opening their eyes yet further to the enormities
of which they are either the victims or the eye-
witnesses. Such a state of feeling could not exist
without revealing itself in some indefinable manner
to their masters. One communicates with another
—he has observed the same thing— so has a third
the intelligence spread—the confirmation is gene-
ral ; a panic ensues ; meetings, combinations,
shooting, and hanging follow on discoveries,
owing, with few exceptions, their birth to appre-
hension ; and—the slave bides his time.
Frighten an excited African with the gallows !
what with yon charred stump before your eyes,
where in sullen silence passed away the soul of
black " clod " in the very flames superior
to the white man's vengeance. Frighten the most
enduring race in the world—in whom the faculty
of passivity has shown itself at least as strong as
in any other—with powder and ball, and the hope
of freedom stirring within him ! Not exactly.
But by any of these means he may readily be
stimulated to vengeance ; and the vengeance of
an outraged, down-trodden, long-suffering black
is as remorseless and scathing as the leven-bolt of
heaven ! Who that has read the frightful history
of slave insurrections but remembers with horror
the drunken fury, the unhesitating butchery, the
insatiable hate, the wide-spread desolation, by
which they have been characterised. There is
room for no European magnanimity in the breast
•f the up-risen African, .on fire with the unavenged
wrongs of his race for unforgotteu generations.
Neither is there for discrimination. The gentle
and forbearing master and mistress have no better
chance of escape than the overbearing ruffian. A
contemporary tells of " the agony of that kind-
hearted Virginia planter on the eve of being
overtaken by the Southampton rising four-and-
twenty years ago. A friend from the Northern
States was staying at the house ; and his host was
anxious to assure him of the safety of good
masters among their slaves. He summoned his
butler—his confidential head of the establish-
ment—bade him shut the door, and asked him
if he knew of the rising at Southampton, and
that the insurgents were approaching. The man
did know it. He was told that he and his com-
rades would be expected to protect the family ;
and he made no answer. Being asked whether,
if armed, he would protect the family, he replied
No.' Being asked whether, if the Southampton
negroes arrived, ho would join them, lie
answered Yes.' His master dismissed him,
and the
wept without restraint." Adding—
" The
bnitterness was in the magnanimity
of the slave, who told the truth at such a
time and in such a way. The virtues which are
brought out in such crises are the worst part of
the grief of the slaveholders, as they are the most
tremendous condemnation of the system. If there
is a slave of really high character in the black
household, he is the one most sure to fail his
master when the master's claims come into colli-
sion with the higher stress of nature aid of duty."
Can anything more clearly demonstrate the
insane policy which, instead of holding out hope
to the negro at a crisis like the present, stimu-
lates him to vengeance by the butchery of his com-
patriots in a paroxysm of fear. What cares ho for
death, so that he has his hour of retribution. And
how should he be expected to discriminate when the
best master holds him in unwarrantable bondage ?
" Our domestic institutions" are, we suspect,
really in a tottering state. The cry of blood
rises from hundreds of. lynched whites as well
as from the slain of the objects of their com-
passion, and in the hardening of the oppressor's
heart may be recognised the approach of retribu-
tion. No humane individual can contemplate the
prospect of a negro insurrection without a shud-
der, but when the means of averting it are
neglected, and a "reign of terror" is adopted
instead, such an insurrection can occasion no
surprise.