The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-04-05

the objects of his pursuit, even from the sover
eign tribunals of the State, and, furthermore, to
comply with the will of the majority, though II
may conflict with his personal preference, and
his judgment of the course the best interests OF
the country demand. Had such patriotism as
this prevailed in the heroic age of the Republic
when the word rirtue implied courage, eapaci
ty, and honor, all in one, George. Washington
could not have run the noblest career that ever
fell to the lot of man; and Lafayette, and Mont,
gomery, Charles Lee, Stirling, Pulaski, Steuben,
and De ,Kalb, who shed their blood-nay, some
of whom even laid down their hves--in the
cause of land not their own by birth, would
have been placed in scale OF merit beneath
the mercenary treaehery of native like Bene-
| dict Arnold, and the calculating trickery OF the
school of Aaron Burr.
| No, my friends, cannot persuade myself that
| the noble band of patriots and martyrs who
| pledged all they valued on earth, their lives,
| their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to the
cause of their country, would have redeemed
that pledge so well as they did, if they had gone
into by-piaces to listen for a moment to the
proposal of an oath secretly to effect the expul-
sion from their ranks of any of the brave volun-
teers from distant lands, merely for the reason
that they were strangers or Roman Catholics:
1t is very true that, in few cases, they had
the behaviour Of some from among them who
proved unworthy Adventures rushing here in the
crowd with better men. But. when that hap
pened, they made their complaint openly, frank
ly, IS became honest men. One great occasion
of dissatisfaction was, that they had entered
into something like secret society, the object
of which was to set aside Washington from the
chief command. That society became known
under the name of its head, the COn,cay cable.
But did the father of his country lower himself
so far as to attempt to retaliate IN the same
way? Did he go into counterplots and secret
oaths and contrivances to effect their removal?
No, indeed. Nobody would have suspected it
of him. He dealt with his enemies in the broad
daylight, with the skies of heaven for his cano-
DIV, and thousands of his countrymen for his wit
nesses. His magnanimity put to shame their
meanness. Their leader confessed his error,
mplored forgiveness, and then skunk into OBJ
scurity glad to put the widest distance between
himself and the scenes of his dastsrdly conspir
acy.
If am correct in these opinions, then there
are two errors of the first concoction which rem
der the new movement in all its forms utterly
repugnant to the true principles of opponents
of Slavery in America. | mean the secret OBJ
legation, and the absence of moral foundation in
the discrimination set up between men. The
first subjects the right of private judgment abb
solutey to the will of an accidental majority.
The second involves the bad and the good, the
innocent and the guilty, the industrious and the
idle, alike in one common fate, which no act of
their own incurs or can avert. The fugitive
Protestants from the prosecutions of Louis
XIV instigated by the bigotry of his Jesuit
confessor, many of whom came to America, and
left behind them names honored ever since as
among those of the best citizens, would have
Jared WORSE in their day, than the convicts sent
to the colonies in order to relieve the mother
country from a burden by transferring it to
them. This is not justice, nor humanity, nor
even sound political economy.
Emigration is one of the great moral agen-
cies which is doing more than ever was done.
in any former age to change the face of the
world; which is spreading the light of Christi
anity into the dark and benighted regions of
all its various continents which is even now
stretching civilization along the western coast
of North Amersa, as it did, in the last two GEN.
turtles, on the eastern; which is vivifying the
deserts of Australia which is humanizing the
barbarism of Africa; and which is wearing
away the prejudices OF caste, even among the
petrifed institutions Of the East. The exclu-
sive bigotry, which seems now for the first time
losing its hold in its remaining fastness-the
islands of Japan-must not take Its flight from
there, only to settle down upon the banks of
the Hudson or of the Mississippi, or to find
home upon the crests of the Allegheny or the
Rocky Mountains. Such is the declaration of
genuine philanthropy, which looks above the ar
bitrary and conventional demarcations of mans
invention, and appeals to the mission of Christ
as the great symbol of a revelation, that the
good God above looks upon all men alike.
Upon no other foundation than this can the
l.
true defenders can it obtain from among those
who advocate prescription any kind, merely
on account of difference Of race. The men who
assumed that defence did it in behalf of peo-
pie originally torn from their native land, and
brought to this against their will, who have ever
since been deprived, by force, not merely of
civil rights, official distinctions, and social priv
ileges, but Of the fruits of their own labor, and
of the secure enjoyment of their domestic affec-
tons. How can they continue their exertions,
and, at the same time, cOuntenance any other
form of prescription bearing the remotest anal
ogy to that of which they complain? How can
they say to-day, that the STAKEHOLDER is tyrant,
who puts his heel on the neck of his slave, only
because God made him of different color from
his own, and set him In Africa instead of in
Europe, and tomorrow build wall between
themselves and others of their fellow-men, be-
cause God placed them, at the time of their
birth, somewhere else than in the United States?
And if this claim to establish an invidious dis
tinction, abridging the rights of others, be a
pretension to exercise an odous power, how
much more revolving does it look when con-
nected with an ADMIRATION of the Divine Being
to curse those who fail to keep their hostile
schemes secret from the objects of their per
secutionl Can it be possible, that the native
sons of America, proud of their liberty to say
before the world what they honestly think, with
| out being called to account for it by King or
People, in their sovereign capacity; proud of
their unpurchasabe freedom Of the press; proud
| of possessing the only asylum to which the per
secuted for conscience sake may fly, and find
safety from the despotisms of the Old World !;
they who, but few months since, with one loud
shout, demanded at the hand Of the Austrian
monarch the person of Martin Koszta, although
he had no rights of nativity, nor even those of
adopted citizenship, but merely because he had
declared his intention to become an American.
and who got him too, Can it be possible, /
say, that they are insensible to the ridcule, if
nothing worse, of going into secret conclave.
like the conspirators who could not get rid of
Julius Caesar and his tyranny in any other way,
10 do with mystery, and in an indirect, ungen-
erous manner, what they may, if they choose,
do openly and boldly? And, upon the top of
this Inconsistency, to shut out of their company
all of their brethren, who, though they may
even agree with them in their exclusive policy,
and approve their measures, yet, because they
feel scruple about the propriety of secret OBJ
legations, must be rejected from all confidence
and public trust-this, it would seem, should
open the eyes, at least, of those opponents OF
Slavery who have enrolled themselves in the
crusade, to the utterly unjusti6abe and I'M
| nv oh of he,
sen to occupy. Let them remember that the
| racnrd they make now In the annals of the M