Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1846-12-18


most respectable. People generally feel a
greater respect for, and treat with more defer
ence, him who has power over others. The
dignity, responsibility and influence of a king
depend upon the amount of his power, the
extent Of his possessions, and the Number Of
his subjects.
So it is with the STAKEHOLDER, and not only
does the fact of his possessing slaves rom
mand for him the respect of others, because
of the power placed in his hands, but for an
other reason his respectfully increases in
the ratio of the number he claims to own
The greater the number he possesses, the far
ther is he removed from the necessity of de-
grading himself by laboring or even hiring
laborers.
The planter loses caste by parting with his
slaves by sale, unless he supplies their place
with others; and by manumitfing them he
subjects himself to the merciless prescription
of public opinion, which strips him of his re-
spectability and his influence, and gives him
the station of an humble, uninnuential, union
ored non-slavoholder: or if the planter loses
his slaves by a change of fortune, he becomes
as a king who has been stripped of his pow
err and left to be buffeted by the waves of an
adverse fortune, obtaining a precarious sub
s%istence by means of his W exertions, or as
it is afforded him by some who have a lin
gering feeling of compassion for him in his
fallen greatness.
We have met with planters in lower Viz
ginia, who, at their lire-sides would deplore
the evils of slavery and condemn the prac-
tice of slaveholding, (for in the South as well
as in the North, there are those who are on
posed in sentiment to slavery, but, like ma
ny of the abolitionists of the North, there is
something that prevents them from making
slavery feel their opposiiion,) yet these plan
tiers had not the moral courage TO condemn
slavery, or advocate its abrogation in public,
or even to liberate their own slaves.
Some of these, when they saw their bond
men at their compulsory toll, laboring with
out a compensation, would have troubled con-
Sciences, and Belshazzar-like, their knees
would knock together, but they feared the
consequences of a violation of Gods law less
than they did the tyrant public opinion
themselves the slaves of public opinion, they
would do its biddings and hold with an iron
clutch to their wretched victims.
The more intimate the intercourse with the
STAKEHOLDER of America, or the aristocrat of
Europe, the greater the influence of that sem
timent which wishes labor disreputable, and
degrades the laborer on account Of his occu.
patton. The stronger is that sentiment which
wishes wealth the criterion by which to Judge
of responsibility, because that wealth gives
It's possessor power, and in proportion to the
amount of it, is he the further removed from
the necessity Of laboring,) and the more hui
initiating is it esteemed to labor or become
Identified with the laborer, especially the un.
paid laborer, the poor wretched slave. Hence
how few there are who, willing that reputa-
ton should take care of itself, identify them
selves with the slave by giving evidence that
they ''ieel for those in bonds as bound with
them" s