The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-11-23

may must eltner neip US 10 e4plOue the uOc-
trines that Slavery can be legalized, and that
Legislatures may annul common law; or else
they must get the Government out of the hands
of maiorities into their own hands, rather a
hazardous attempt;) or else they might as vel
make up their minds to make the best of the
doctrine of Legislative supremacy over natural
or common law, when it comes to be applied
in different direction.
The same dilemma in some form, lies before
all, rich or poor, who have any rights OF any
description = personal rights, rights of con-
science rights of property, civil rights political
rights. If Legislatures can legally ensaye men,
there can be no security for the rights of any
man.
1t will avail nothing to plead our constitu-
hOnaI rights, after having conceded that the
Legislature or the Courts can take away our
natural rights; for the former, as before shown,
rest on the latter. Our State Constitutions
do not provide, in express terms, that the Lee
gislature shall not divide the wealth of the rich
among the poor, nor make the poor the slaves
Of the rich. They cannot specify all possible
aggressions in detail. The most that they can
do is to declare that the Legislature cannot le-
gislate away the binding force of natural or
common law Rejecting that legal axiom, we
reject all the defences and restrictions of con-
stitutional law, casting them all to the winds.
We may see evidence of this truth in the
condition of communities that recognise the
legality of Slavery. Constitutional provisions
become unmeaning and useless. The Consti-
tutions of the slave States provide for freedom
of speech and of the press. But the Legisla-
lures and the Courts habitually violate these
provisions. No State that sustains Slavery,
secures personal freedom. Lynch clubs at the
South and mobs at the North, have their natu-
raj origin in Slavery, and are chiefly welded
in defence of it. The idea that Slavery may
be legalized, is an idea that corrupts all our
ideas of LAW, human and divine. 1t makes
law the creature of caprice, independent OF rea-
son and right; thus undermining all our IN
stinctive reverence for law.
If Slavery can be legalized, then law can be
an aggressor, instead of protector-an enc
my, instead of friend Thus law becomes the
object of hatred and jealousy, instead of conf
dence and love. Instead of flying to it for
shelter, it would be wiser to look after safe
guards against it. If legislation can intiict
the deadliest of all injuries, and if jurispru-
dence must needs sanction it, and magistracy
must needs enforce it, then legislation, juris-
prudence, and magistracy, may become con-
spirators against human nature, deserving to
be overthrown, and not reverenced.
If Slavery can be legaized then any other
invasion Of human rights-theft, robbery, kid
mapping, murder, and crime of every descrip-
tiOn-may be legalized. The unlawful may be
made lawful, and sorOng changed into right. 1t
is not possible for God himself to do this. The
thought of it cannot without impiety, be enter
tanned. And if God cannot legalize iniquity,
his dependent creatures certainly cannot; and
Slavery is, in the very nature of things, inca
pable Of legalization.
The comprehension and essence of lawless
ness cannot be made lawful The affirmation
of it is contradiction in terms. 1t is not only
incredible, but inconceivable No man can
tell, ntelligibly, a0hat he MEANS when he says
that Slavery can be legalized. He may con-
tinue to repeat the words but he cannot ex-
plain them, without uttering absurdity and self
contradiction.
Very few of those who affirm the legality or
the possible legaization of Slavery, will admit
that they hold it to be "right in the abstract"
or that it can be made morally right or lawful
Do they then only mean that it can be, and
that it is in matter of fact, enforced? The same
may be said of any criminal violation of mems
rights and thus no distinction is left between
the lawful and the criminal, in human action.
If the Legislature can make lawful what was
before criminal, then it can take away the Grim
inality of crime, which is a contradiction in
terms or else it can make criminality itself,
remaining such, legal, which is equally absurd.
If you say Slavery is legal, by human law,
but illegal by the DiUine law, then You suppose
two opposite and conflicting laws, obedience to
one of which is disobedience to the other. You
make man the subject of two rival authorities.
But this cannot be. If he owes allegiance to
the one, he is absolved from allegiance to the
other. He cannot be subject to both at the
same time. As between two rival human juris-
dctions, every one admits this. There can be
no validity in the jurisdiction and the law Of the
one, if there be any validity in those of the
other. How much more evidently is this true,
where the jurisdiction and the law are those
of the only Supreme Potentate and Lawgiver,
from whom all rightful authority and valid law
are derived 1t confuses, perPlexes, misleads,
and demoralizes men, to teach the doctrine of
conflicting laws and jurisdictions. We see men
busted in administering and enforcing what
they call human laws, which they do not pre-
tend to believe in harmony with the DiUine law
This they would not do if it were universally
understood that there can be no valid human
law that conflicts with the Divine
To say, as our Courts commonly do, that
though Slavery does not and cannot exist I'M
der common or natural law, yet it can be le-
galized by municipal, positive law, is saying
warranted by the law of God, but is in direct
opposition to it. For the law of Nature is
nothing less than the law of God, the Author
of Nature, by whom its laws are established
1t is amazing to see with what GOODNESS and
effrontery civilians and jurists, even those who
profess to be Christian, will lay down this, as q
grave axiom of law, without seeming to be at
all aware that, in so doing, they are setting the
OmnipOtent Lawgiver at defiance, and much
more obviously and inexcusably so than could
be done by an open and avowed atheist, who
denies or ignores the existence of any Supreme
Being.
A Legislature claiming right to make stat
utes in conflict with natural law, is LegisIa-
ture claiming right to annul and reverse the
laws of God. And Judiciary affirming the
validity of such enactments, is judiciary
throwing off allegiance to God, for the sake of
maintaining allegiance to the Legislature.
This is the position of all who maintain the
legality of Slavery, so long as they admit that
Slavery is contrary to moral right, or. which is
the same thing, unsupported by the law of ma
ture.
The only alternative, then, for the advocates
of legalized Slavery, is to maintain it on the
ground of natural right, as the more resolute
and consistent among the shareholders are now
beginning to do. This astonishes and disgusts
the people of the North, who ought to know
that such position is not more impious and
absurd than that of admitting that Slavery,
though contrary to the law of God, the law of
nature, can nevertheless be legalized, by human
enactments.
If the legality of Slavery is to be maintained
at all, undoubtedly it must be done by placing
its claims on the basis Of natural law Neither
religion, nor morality, nor philosophy, nor legal
science, nor common sense, can ever admit Its
legality or its possible legalization on any other
basis. 1t must make good its claims on that
basis or NOT at oil To that o4ru0rla 1asna