Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1849-11-24
From the Massachusetts, Spy.
"ThC Mercury" Rising,

nv ~
ID -
The South Carolina Chivalry are still do
ing battle with the books. The immediate
oracle of st. JOIN G.. Calhoun, the Charles
ton Mercury, in its holy censorship over lit
erature and science, has just prescribed Pa
Iey's Moral Philosophy, as a p~estilent work,
that must no longer faint the pure atmos-
phere of South Carolina.-This standard
work, which has so long had a home in al
most every good library, and has been used
for more than half a century as n text. book
in colleges and schools, wherever the En-
glish language was the mother tongue, has
been discovered by the great Apostle of Sla-
very, or some of his gifted seers, to CON
tain sentiments favorable TO human liberty,
and ofcourse denying the faith of the politi-
cal saints of the holy land of South Carolina,
that " Sldrery is the corner stone ofG republic"
And, us the book in question does 'tfot har-
monte with that cardinal doctrine, it is, of
course, u~ncanonical, heretical, dangerous to
the +" pntriarchal institution" and worthy on
w of eternal qualification"
Accordingly, the Charleston Mercury, the
well approved standard of political orthodoxy
for all the parishes, cities, boroughs, pine
barrens, swamps, and sand-hills of South
Carolina, and the faithful reflector of that
burning and shining light of slavery, st.
John G. Calhoun, has published n decree,
dated at the imperial city of Charleston, on
the Sd day of the present month OF the 18Th
year of the most sacred era of Modification,
in the following solemn, sovereign, and mon
tory words:
"PALEY's Moral Philosophy SHOULD BE
TREATED by THE LAW AS AN I~NcENDIARY
BOOK, AND BE BANIsHED FROM OUR BOOK
STORES, n CERTAINLY FROM u SCHOOLS"
Will it require a Solomon to answer the
following queries?
l. Would it have been any reflection OH
MIR. Ex-senator Preston, nov President OF
the University of South Carolina, to have
condemned the noXious book to be burned
by the hands of the common "hdngman 2"
2. If the literature of Liberty should be
burned up, would not a Phoenix rise out OF
its ashes?
3. If all "incendiary books" should be
burned at Charleston, would not the "incen-
diary letters" plundered from the Charles
ton post-oilicc and the United States mail,
make ~first-rate kindling stuff?
a. Would not such a blaze give light to all
the world, not excepting even South Carroll
ia, that miracle Of States?
5. Will the outside barbarian P" book pub
fishers of Philadelphia, New York Boston
and other outlandish places, take timel,
warning, and moi hazard their p-rseinns nsaLi
by sending to the Western "CelestiaI En-
pire," the works of those arch heretics ant
propagators of the damnable doctrine of hu
man liberty, John Milton, Algernon Sydney
John Locke, John Adams, and Thomas JET:
f%erson, and " certainly" any work containing
that infidel creed, the Declaration of Ameri-
can Independence?
G.. Will not his Excellency, the Governor
of all the sovereign State of South Carolina,
recommend, in Ills next annual message, the
prohibition of the north wind from blowing
over her sacred domain, as being quite toe
free, and so interfering with her estate rights?'
and, also, that the North star shall no lon.
ger shine thereon, lis being 'incendiary' in
its character, and intermeddling with hel
" domestic institutional"
Z. Arc the following lines on the freedom
of the " Press" as true now as when first pub
lished, more than a century ago?
"This nurse Of arts and freedoms fence,
To chain, is treason against sense,
And Liberty, thy Thousand tongues,
None silence, who design no wrongs
For those who use the gags restraint,
First rob, before they stop complaint"