The Kansas herald of freedom., 1855-03-10
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Prom tie BfsfoR 14ftae.
Emerson on Slavery.

From kse Bottom 6tlas.
Emerson on Slavery.
The ninth lecture of the series on sla-
very was delivered before crowded au-
dience in fremont Temple last evening,
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Esq, of Con-
cord. The lecture occupied about an
hour, and the attention of the audience
was kept constantly riveted to the abstruse
but brilliant and suggestive ideas of the
speaker.
Mr. Emerson commenced by referring
to the difficulty of treating subject up
on which so much had been said that it
had become ga twice told tale" End
less negation was a fat affair. Honest
men soon became weary of crying thief,
and one must write with red hot iron to
make any impression upon this subject.
The committee has done well to invite
southerners to defend their institution,
and he regretted that none of them had
seen fit to accept the invitation. We are
the third generation, said he, since the
evil compact was made with slavery by
our fathers, and since then, slavery has
gained many triumphs, the latest among
them being the fugitive slave and Kansas
and Nebraska Legislation, and stands at
this hour more malignant against freedom
than ever before. He proposed to con-
slider how such system can co-exist with
the advantages of education, enlighten-
ment, and morality which we claim to
possess.
Our nation processes to base its laws
upon the idea of liberty-the greatest
good of the greatest number-and in
conformity with the precepts of Christi
anity; yet in a part of the country the
blight of human slavery is allowed to ex-
list. and when its victims escape from op-
preston, we are required to seize them
and send them back, to be stripped and
peeled again as long they live. For a
long time this law was with US q dead
law, and when it was re-enacted with in
creased stringency we supposed it would
not be executed. But We were surprised
at finding men among us, not outcasts,
foreigners, beggars, and conyicts. but
baptized Christians, men who have been
vaccinated and schooled, men holding Of
fetal positions, who catch the slave and
force him back, under this resuscitated
law. Slavery being unnatural and vio-
lent, he believed would ultimately die
out and go to oblivion, with cannibalism,
the sea kings, and other ancient barbara
ties. We must consent to ride in the
same planet with the stakeholder as with
the New Zealander; but he would say to
them, ''you are you, and l am 1, and
God send you speedy conversion" But
to find the baleful influence of slavery
here in New England, among our own
homes, almost staggered his belief in hu-
man progress.
He looked upon slavery as an accident
of larger calamity-skepticism-and
its liberation among the people of the
North he regarded as an index of So
ciety without faith. The intellect of the
nation had not kept pace with its exter-
nal progress. Men do not have heroic
ideas. God still instructs through the
imagination, but the opera glasses of our
young men report to them nothing noble.
They put no trust in the wise teachings
of their elders, or of the professors of
colleges who join with the great mass to
vote down the moral sentiment of man
kind.
Our old political parties inspire men
with no heroic aspirations. The Democ-
racy does not really stand for the good of
the many. and the Wings worship their
ancestors. and strive only to make the
present age as like the past as possible
Politics have run SO low that gentlemen
of character consider it discreditable to
meddle with them. Members of Con-
gress grow corrupt, eat dirt, and have
only honor enough left to feel themselves
degraded. Even our reformers show
this same skepticism and despair. Be-
cause the old parties have not been up
right, men stultify themselves. "a en-
ployed false guides" said the lecturer,
land they misled me; shall l therefore
put my head in bag ?" In the late rev.
olution the reigning parties were turned
out by an immense frolio, but the new
men were playing with edged tools. Men
see nothing beyond their faces. They
behold wealth-meat and wine, steam
and machinery, but not man.. Every
where we find this want of faith, and a
blind worship of success.
There were periods of occultation, he
said, when the light of mind seems to be
partially withdrawn from nations, as in
this country at the time ofgeneral acqui-
escence in slavery, and in Europe at the
same time, in It's cruel political scrvitude.
They were also moments of apparently
total eclipse, as in Paris, when the people
enthroned wanton, and declared her the
goddess of reason; and in the United
States in 1850. when the government
passed a statute making justice and mer-
ey punishable BY fine and Imprisonment,
and there were men found to declare that
there was no higher law than the consti-
tuition and this paper statute.
The institution of this country sprung
from the idea of liberty to all; but the
fathers made fatal blunder when, daz-
zled by the future glory of the prosper
Gus nation, they made their first conces-
sions to slavery, in the formation of the
constitution. They ought never, said
he, to have agreed to the ordinance, or
to have formed Union upon terms OF
concession to slavery. The South might
have remained British colonies, or form
ed an independent government; in either
case slavery would have ceased long ere
now, and their sons would have been
saved from their present degeneracy.
Certain men in all ages, since the days
of Lyeurgus, Socrates, and Jesus, were
perceivers of the right, and, therefore,
natural judges. We were not without
such judges, he said, in more modern
times, and referred to Blackstone, Lord
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