The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1850-05-02
CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE QUESTION.


- article. bearing the unmistakeable impress Of
the Anelo-G erman peculiarities Of Thomas Car.
,v,e. entitled "An Occasional Discourse on the
Negro q uestiop,n which would be interesting as
literary curiosity, were IL not in spirit and ten
dency SO unspeakably wicked as to excite in every
right-minded reader feeling Of amazement and
disgust. With hard, brutal audacty, bias
phemous irreverence, and o sneering mockery,
which would do honor to the devil of Faust it
takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and
the precepts of Christianity. Having ascertained
that the exports of sugar and spices from the
West. Indies have diminished since Emancipation,
and that the negroes, having worked, as they
believed, quite long enough without wages now
refuse to work for the planters without higher
pay than the latter, with the thriftless and evil
habits Of slavery still clinging to them, can afford
to give-the author considers himself justified in
donouncing Negro Emancipation as one OF the
shamsp which he was specially sent into this
world to belabor. Had he confined himself to
simple abuse and caricature of the selfdenying
and Christian aboitionists of Bngland-" the
broad-brimmed pbilanthropists Of Exeter Hall y
there would have been small occasion for MOTTO
ing his spenetic and discreditable production
Doubtless there is a can't of philanthropy-the
ALLOW of human frailty and folly--in the most
righteous reforms, which is fair subject for the
Indignant sareasm of professed hater OF shows
and falsities. Whatever is hollow and hypocrifi-
cal in politics, morals, or religion, comes very
properly within the scope of his mockery, ana We
bid him God speed in plying his satiricai iasn
upon it, Impostures and frauds of all kinds de-
serve nothing better than detection and exposure
Let him blow them up to his hearts content, as
Daniel did the image of Bel and the Dragon
But our author, in this matter of negro slavery,
has undertaken to apply his explosive pitch and
rosiu not to the affectation of humanity, but to
humanity itself He Knocks at pity, SCOTS at all
who seek to lessen the amount of pain and suffer
iny sneers at and denies the most sacred rights
and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the
children of his Heavenly Father to the doom of
compulsory servitude He vituperstes the poor
black man with coarse brutality, which would
do credit to Mississippi slave-driver, or rem
egade Yankee dealer in human cattle on the banks
of the Potomac His rhetoric has flavor Of the
slaye-pen and Observation-Disclosures, unmanly,
inascent-a scshG6s,vas outrage upon good Ssste
and refined feeling, which at once degrades the
author and insults his readers.
He assumes flor he is one of those sublimated
philosophers who reject the Baconian system of
induction, and depend upon intuition, without re-
course to facts and fgares) that the emancipated
Id 81 do mi 11v
idle improvident, and unfit for freedom; that
God created them to be the servants and slaves of
their born lords,n the white men, and designed
them to grow sugar, coffee, and spices, for their
masters, instead of raising pumpkins and yams
for themselves and that, if they will not do this,
the benefcent whip" should be again employed
to compel them. He adopts in speaking of the
black class the lowest slang of vulgar prejudice
Black Quashee," sneers the gentlemanly philos-
opher, black Quashee, if he will not help in
bringing out the spices, will get himself made a
slave again, (which state will be little less ugly
than his present one and with benefcent whip
since other methods avail not, will be compelled
to work.
Ii is difficult to treat sentiments SO atrocious,
and couched in such offensive language, with any
thing like respect. Common sense and upper
verified conscience revolt instinctively against
them. The doctrine they inculcate is that which
underlies all tyranny and wrong of man towards
man. 1t is that under which the creation groan-
eth and travaileth unto this day. 1t is as old as
sin the perpetual argument of Strength against
Weakness, of Power against Right--that of the
Greek philosopher, that the barbarians, being Of
an inferior race, were born to be slaves to the
Greeks; and Of the infdel Hobbies, that every
man, being by nature at war with every other
man, has perpetual right to reduce him to servi-
tude if he has the power. 1t is the cardinal doc
trine of what John Quincy Adams has very
properly styled "the Satanic School of Philoso-
ply the ethics of an old Morse sea-robber, or
an Arab plunderer Of caravans. 1t is as widely
removed from the "sweet humanities and I'M
selfish benevolence Of Christianity, as the faith
and practice of the East India Thug or the New
Zealand cannibal.
Our author does not, however, take us alto
gether by surprise He has before given no I'M
certain limitations of the point towards which
his philosophy was tending. In his brilliant essay
upon Francia of Paraguay, for instance, we find
him entering with manifest satisfaction and ad-
miration into the details Of his hero's tyranny
In his Letters and Speeches Of Oliver Crom-
well lin half dozen pages of savage and al
most dabolical sarcasm directed against the grow
ing humanity of the age, the rose-pink senti-
mentalisms," and squeamishness which shudders
at the sight Of blood and infection Of pain-he
prepares the way for justification Of the massa-
ere Of Drogheds. More recently, he has init
mated that the determination Of the Celtic race
is the best way of settling the Irish question, and
that the enslavement and forcible transportation
of her poor to labor under armed task-masters in
the colonies, is the only rightfu and proper RENE
dy for the political and social evils Of England.
In the Discourse on Negro Slavery we see this
devilish philosophy in full bloom. The gods, he
tells us, are with the strong. Might has Divine
right to rule-blessed are the crafty Of brain and
strong of hand. Weakness is crime " Vs Vien ~
as Brennus said when he threw his sword into
the scale. Woe to the conquered The negro is
weaker in intellect than his "born lord,n the
white man, and has no right to choose his own
vocation Let the latter do it for him, and, if
need be- return to the benefcent whipp "On
the side Of the oppressor there is power . let him
use it without mercy, and hold flesh and blood to
the grindstone with unrelentipg rigor Human
ity is squeamishness; pity for the suffering, mere
"rose-p'pk sentmentalism,n maudE;n and s.-
manly The gods the old Morse gods, doubtless
laugh to scorn alike the complaints of the miser-
able and the weak compositions and @philan-
thropisms" Of those who would relieve them.
FMS Is the substance Of Thomas Carlyle's ad-