The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1850-07-09
A Slavery more sinful than the African

A Slavery more sinful than the African.
"The child is the father of the man," truly
says one of the greatest thinkers of the age.
What men can be formed out of such children as
those described in the Nep York Sunday Times,
in the following indignant expostulation cannot
be doubted: -#t '..1.0 al. ..".
| Boy Decentralization of the most melancholy
| spectaces on Gods foostool is drunken child
| 70 see a boy of ten twelve years, reelng
| through the streets, with lcaden eyes and SLAYER
ing mouth, absolutely idiotized for the time being
with liquor and tobacco, and pouring forth streams
of obscenity and basphemy, is a sight at once
affecting and horrible. We saw more than fifty
lads in this situation on Thursday last, hiccup-
ping curses as they staggered blindly along. Who
sold these children liquor? No matter who-it
is no crime! The law winks at it; the public
wink at it; but the omnipotent God does not wink
at it; and If the reddest bolt of his wrath does
not strike the murderer Of young souls in the
homicidal act, il ,riH find him one day, or there
is no Justice in the courts Of Heaven Men are
hung for crimes venial in comparison with his
who supplies youth with the means of intoXica-
ton.
A more painful incidant never fell on the
eye or the heart of any man who honors
humanity-of any American who loves his
country, or respects himself. Let the Pharisees
who thank God that they have not our sins to an
swer for, look into their own streets and reflect
upon the responsibilities and the duties which
devolve upon them at home-unless they would
brand upon their own unblushing forcheads the
seal of that hypocrisy, the stamp of that selfish
ness which processes but never practices bcnev.
olence,
The soul sickens at the thought of such
shamclcssness in those, whose fresh young
hearts are thus prematurey blasted and withcr.
ed in the sitting atmosphere of the great city
and the far deeper depravity of the base panders
to their vicious observation-disclosures decoy ducks Of
the devil, with whom it would be a degradation
to decent slave to class him. And are the,
) not slaves of far more degraded kind? Slaves
to sensual Indulgence, to low vice in all its shapes
and forns, bond slaves III body and soul
, working for master, whose wages the Scrip
lures tell us ais peath?'
Let Senator SEWARD, whose conscience is SC
J tcndcr-whosc sensibilities are so acute-whost
philanthropy is of that expansive kind that
compasses sea and land to find one proselyte"-
turn his eyes homcwards. Let him commence
his mission of benevolence, and preach up hi.
evangel in his own baiiwick first. Let him make
his own "soil' "tree' of such slaves as thes,
young victims and their tempters, and then hi
may be listened to as one sincere, if fanatica
, but not until then.
, We speak not in mockery, but in shame
= and sorrow, that such stains should soil thi.
young country-that the sins and the sufferings
of the old world should be rehearsed on a wider
| theatre in the new. But the lesson it teaches
the blind preachers of progress-the rebuke it
administers to the designing knaves who would
speculate on their mistaken philanthropy--is
too striking to be lost
That Southern society is exempt from this
plague-spot of juvenile depravity, and from
white slavery in all its shapes pauperism, arises
from the sparseness Of population, resulting
from the very institution which these Free-soil
fanatics seek to destroy.
The freedom to starve--to sin--to suffer-to
drag out life in one lingering disease-may be q
blessed thing; but to our imperfect vision, the
condition is not one to be envied by the slave,
whom it is both the interest and inclination of
his master to have well cared and provided for,
Contrast the condition Of these wretched free
children born and bred in cellars in New York
city, with that of the young negroes on PLAN
tation, sleek comfortable and happy-and which
sight, think you, must be most pleasing in the
eve of man, or of his great Creator?
A sterner tragedy Dante never conceived q
sadder story he never told nor did his vision o.
He'll and Purgatory afford pictures of pain al
which shuddering nature recoils more instinc
, lively, than from the brief record of what on,
man saw in the streets ofNcw York on the an
niversary of our National Independence.
!. The Emigration to America.
A letter from Norway, of recent date, says
: " Emigrations are preparing on grand seal