Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1845-08-28

i illZdllOn-1rOm lQOlalfy 10 OuElSlldIllLy-ln
short from death to life.
Bnt let us leave the African slave trade,
which has so signally defeated the phiIan-
thropy of the world, and turn to American
slavery, to which you have directed your
attention, and against which crusade has
been preached as enthusiastic and ferocious
as that Of Peter the Hermit-destined, be-
lieve, to be about as successful. And here
let me say, there is not vast difference be-
tween the two, though you may not acknow-
ledge it. The wisdom of ages has concur
red in the justice and expectancy of estab-
fishing rights by prescriplive use, however
tortuous in their origin they may have been.
Y on would deem man insane whose keen
sense of equity would lead him to denounce
your right to the lands you hold, and which
perhaps you inherited from long line of
ancestry, because your title was derived
from a Saxon or Norman conqueror, and
your lands were originally wrested by vio-
lence from the vanquished Britons. And so
would the New England abolitonist regard
any one who would insist that he should
restore his farm 10 the descendants of the
slaughtered Red men to whom God had as
clearly given it as he gave life and freedom
to the kidnapped African. That time does
not consecrate wrong, is fallacy which all
history exposes; and which the best and
wisest men of all ages and professions Of re-
Iligious faith have practically denied. The
means, therefore, whatever they may have
been, by which the African race now in this
country have been reduced TO slavery, can
not affect us, since they are our property, as
your lands are yours, by inheritance, or pur-
chase and prescriptive right. on will say
that man cannot hold property IN man. The
answer is, that he can and actually does hold
property in his fellow all the world over, in
a variety of forms, and has azarays done SO.
| will show presently his authority for do
ing it.
If you were to ask me wether was an
advocate of slavery in the abstract, should
probably answer, that am not, according
TO my understanding of the question. do
not like to deal i'll distractions. it seldom
leads to any useful ends. There are few
universal truths. do not now remember
any single moral truth universally ackrow-
lodged. We have no assurance that it is
given to our finite understanding to compre-
bend abstract moral truth. Apart from Re-
violation and the Inspired Writings, what
ideas should we have even of God, salvation,
and immortality? Let the Heather answer.
Justice itself is impa pable as an abstraction,
and abstract liberty the merest phantasy that
ever amused the imagination. This world
was made for man, and man for the world
as it is. Ourselves, our relations with one
another and with all matter are real, not
ideal. might say that | am no more in
favor of slavery in the abstract than am Of
poverty, disease, deformity, idiocy or any
other inequality in the condition of the hu-
man family; that love perfection, and think
should enjoy Millennium such as God
has promised But what would it amount
to? A pledge that | would join you to set
about eradicating those apparently inevitable
evils of our nature, in equalizIng the condi-
ton of all mankind, concentrating the per-
fiction of our race and introducing the Mil
Ienium? BY no means. To effect these
things belongs exclusively to higher pow
er, And it would be well for us to leave
the Almighty to perfect His own works and
fulfil HIS own Covenants. Especially, as
the history Of all the past shows how en-
tirely futile all human efforts have proved,
when made for the purpose of aiding Him
in carrying out even his revealed designs,
and how invariably he has accomplished
them by unconscious instruments, and in
the face of human expectation. Nay, more,
that every attempt which has been made by
fallble man to extort from the world obedi-
ence to his 'abslract" notions Of right and
wrong, has invariably attended with calami-
ties, dire and extended just in proportion to
the breadth and vigor of the movement
On slavery in the abstract, then, it would
not be amiss to have as little as possible to
say. Let US contemplate it as it is. And
thus contemplating it, the first question we
have to ask ourselves is, whether it is con-
trary to the will Of God, as revealed to US
in His Holy Scriptures-the only certain
means given us to ascertain His will. IF i'll
is, then slavery is sin. And admit at
once that every man is bound to set his face
against it, and to emancpale his slave should
he hold any.
Let us open these holy scriptures. In the
Goth chapter of Exodus, 18th verse, find
the following words: ''Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbours. house, thou shalt not covetI
thy neighbours wife, nor his man servant,
nor his maid servant, nor his OK, nor his