The Kanzas news., 1857-11-07
Phi1osophy and Fact.


the maxim that negroes had no rights which
white men were bound to respect. Only
upon the recognition of that principle can
slavery be justified or sustained, and while
it is now well understood, received and
practiced upon where slavery exists As an
institution, the Northern mind is expected
first to tolerate, and then embrace it, pre-
paratory to the recognition of slavery and
its establishment in its midst
The maxim is capable of very broad con-
struction and application. However nar-
row may be our first view of it, and however
restricted We may propose to apply it. even
if only to the matter of denying suffrage,
it viii inevitably grow on our hands, and
Eventually work out its complete and ulti-
mate recognition and application, which is
to reduce the negro precisely to the level OF
the horse orox. There is no medium ground
Nature has imbued all her laws with an in
herent vitality and activity, and there is no
such thing as stagnation or quiescenee in
any of them. A bad principle never ceases
its demands on its adherents, until the death
which it leads down to has been fairly reach
ed; and good principle has eternally an
upward step, new blessing, and new life
for those who adhere to it. Then we say
this doctrine, although now perhaps applied
only to depriving the negro of the right OF
suffrage, cannot stop short of reducing him
to the level of the horse and the OK.
Even this, to many may not appear objec-
tionable. They may be prepared to say, as
they do now, that it is his natural condition
the best place for him-he belongs there,
&C., &C. But there is another view to this
question to which we wish to call attention,
which is the effect of this condition upon
whites. Law does not begin and end with
human legislation. God stamped his i'm
press on humanity before legislatures were
invented-and they are powerless to destroy
it. The relation of mind to mind and the
mutual effect of such relation belongs to
statutes more enduring than the Constitution
of the United States, and which that instru-
ment is powerless to effect. We may re-
duce the negro to this condition of abject
physical degradation, but it is an inevitable
law that the moral degradation of the ty-
rant is in exact harmony with the physical
degradation of the subject, and the brute
which we propose to make of the negro is
the brute first of our own minds and souls.
However we may fail to appreciate it, hu-
manity lives and is linked together by a
common bond, and we can drag no man
down the plane of being without preceding
him in the descent.
History is full and running over with
warning to US on this point. Even at this
moment India thunders the lesson in our
ears. Her history has been, from the first,
one of fraud, rapine and oppression, on the
part of the dominant race. England has
acted from the start on the assumption that
the dark race of India had no rights which
Englishmen were bound to respect, and
on this theory they have been generating
the basest of passions in themselves and
their subjects until nature could 60 no low
er. and convulsion exists which threatens
common ruin, and in which each seems to
strive to excel the other in horrible cruel
ty. If the English were to analyze the in
dividual cruelties practiced on them by the
natives they would find them the creatures
of their own generation distorted and exag-
gerated by the prolific element of cruelty in
which planted.
1t is utterly impossible that any such re-
lation as master and slave can be sustained
between sentient beings without working
out the results indicated. jefferson had a
clear perception of the state of the case,
when he said:
''The whole commerce between master
and slave is perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions; the most unremitting
despotism on the one part and degrading SUBJ
mission on the other. Our children
see this and learn to initiate it. =
The parent storms, the child looks on, catch
es the lineaments of wrath, puts on the
same airs in the circle of the smaller slaves,
gives loose to his worst passions, and thus
nursed, educated and daily exercised in ty-
rsnny, cannot but be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a
progidy who can retain his manners and
morals undepraved by such circumstances. !"
Here, as we view it, is the great merit of
this slavery question and slavery dispute;
and were our hatred of the negro ever so
great, and our love of self and the white
race exclusively ever so strong, that hate
and that egotism would imbue US with a
deadly hostility to every species of oppres-
sion.
We may enact what we please, resolve
what we please enunciate what we please
from our Supreme Court, yet the wheels of
eternal law move steadily on, and no man
or nation can escape their operations. Moth
ing is clearer, both from philosophy and
the teachings of history, than this, that the
oppression of any part of humanity, be
that part black, white or blue sooner or Ia
ter recoils in manifold horrors on the heads
of the oppressors.
If the doctrine is to be received and es-
tablished, and acted on, that negroes have
no rights which we are bound to respect,
we are inevitably uniting ourselves for the
recognition or practice of any of the moral
duties of life,-we are destroying our capac-
ity to maintain government which can
have no other possible sure basis than one of
morality and intelligence among the people,
and, beyond question, are invoking that
same ruin, which from this same cause, has
lovertaken every preceding Republic of earth.