The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-16 00:00:00

SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

The Free Church of Scotland has already taken
ground on the subject of American slavery, in its
official organ, the North British Review. In an article
on the United States in the November number,
avowedly written by a person who has visited them,
and currently ascribed to the Rev. Dr. Cunningham,
one of the recent deputation thither from the Free
Church, the question of slavery comes in for a re-
ference. The writer professes—of course, no one at
this time of day dare do otherwise—to have " no de-
sire to palliate the evils of slavery, or to encourage the
Americans in apathy and indifference to this great
sin and mischief :" we are much mistaken,
however, if this article have not this tendency and
effect. It is, to a marvellous extent, soothing and
apologetic. A noble occasion was presented to the
writer for augmenting the force of public sentiment
already brought to bear on the slave-holders of the
Union, and for placing so large and important a body
as the Free Church in active co-operation with the
friends of human liberty and happiness throughout
the world. But this opportunity, we regret to say,
has been entirely lost. Instead of a well-sus-
tained and uncompromising protest against " the
great sin and mischief" of American slavery, we
have—who would have believed it ?—an attack
upon American Abolitionists. Hear the reviewer's
words :—" Those who have assumed to themselves, in
the United States, the name of Abolitionists, and who,
while they have done much good, by exposing the
evils of slavery, have also, we fear, done much harm
to a good cause by their injudicious and extravagant
views and measures, have succeeded to a large ex-
tent in propagating in this country the impression,
that in America all men are either Abolitionists
in their sense, adopting their views and concurring,
in their measures, or else approvers and de-
fenders of slavery. This representation is unfair
and injurious." Of course it is, and the Ameri-
can Abolitionists never made it. What they have
said, and all they have said is, that those who disap-
prove of slavery, and take no active part against it,
are practically its strongest supporters. And this is
undoubtedly true. But the Abolitionists (in whose
assuming a name so accordant with their object we
really see nothing so very atrocious) have, as asserted
by this writer, broached injudicious views, and pro-
posed extravagant measures, and have thus done
much harm to a good cause. Whether this be
the case or not, we venture to affirm that no
member of the Free Church deputation is able to
assert it. No portion of that deputation came
into contact with any parties from whom a just ac-
quaintance with the views and measures of the Abo-
litionists could be gathered. The great body of the
Presbyterians being southern and pro-slavery men, it
behoved the deputation, having before their eyes the
importance of the pecuniary issue, to escbew the com-
pany of the Abolitionists altogether; and they did so
accordingly. Under these circumstances, the writer
before us can do nothing but repeat the current
representations of the slave-holder's themselves:
and this is exactly what lie has done. To ac-
cuse the Abolitionists of doing much harm to a
good cause by injudicious and extravagant views
and measures, is of heathen origin, but has become
the established habit of the South, the standing mis-
representations by which the slave-holders endeavour
to enfeeble the hands of the Abolitionists, and to
alienate those who should be their friends. To pro-
pagate this falsehood—for it is strictly such—is to do
all that the upholders of slavery can desire, and
to turn the rising influence of the Free Church,
which might have been so valuable to the
cause of human freedom and happiness, into
a grievous impediment and hindrance to its
progress. It is painful to think that men, but
whose clear heads and noble hearts, but for whose
simplicity of principle, energy of acti.in, and con-
stancy in sacrifices, there would have been no aboli-
tion cause in A merica at all, should be thus incon-
siderately libelled in a publication representing a body
from which the cause of human liberty, in every form,
might have expected so important an aid.—Anti-
Slavery Reporter.