Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1857-02-07
Che Antt-9Iaperp Buale
SALEM, OHIO, FEBRUARY 7, 1857.
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR.
LINEsvILLE, CRAWFORD Co, Pa.
A.an.. Or lOkE

~ lLLhH EphD ~ L ~ |
January, &c, 1857.
DEAR READER Last week l left home on u brief
lecturing excursion to North Western Pennsyl-
vania, where are to be found some of the best
and truest Of tho slaves friends. Among these
faithful, ara none more faithful found, than the
Brookes, in whose hospitable residence | found my
self on Saturday evening at dark, after q day and
. halls drive through the coolest weather we
have had this cold winter. But the warm welcome
of their cordial hospitality and their blazing wood
fire on the old fashioned hearth, soon made me
~forgetful of my benumbed fingers and aching toes
and all the chills and shiveriugs of a more than
"a forty miles sleigh ride, that day during which,
| HAD stopped but once to warm myself and feed my
faithful Pet. Our friend Isaac though no bunker
in moral reform, might be deemed somewhat fogy-
ish. in this fast age, for he sticks to his great wood
fire. place, old fashioned splint-bJttoMed chairs in
the house and to his OK team on the farm, Those
brought up pleasing rerembrances Of b%oybood,
when such was the order of our domestic and agri-
cultural arrangements on my fathers old home
stead in New England. All what revolutions have
not FAST horses, railroad expresses, lightning tele-
graphs, and other kindred changes which we fat
ter ourselves are improvements in this moving
age. Now every one has TO be up before day ana
ever on the alert, to keep up with the moving
masses in their rush of what is called improve
ment. Whether the wonderful momentum Of this
age shall carry forward our nation and the world
to n bettor moral position-whether steam en-
gines, spinning jennies, rail roads, telcgraphs and
all other appliances of modern physical p~rosperi'
ty shall bring us more quickly to TIE mellenium
is a problem which we shall perhaps never solve.
Sometimes it looks desperately improbable in the
unprincipied scramble for money and power, to
which these things all give yigor and life. 1t
sometimes looks as though these were bearing us
in the opposite direc.ion--as though moral corrup,
ton and despotism were By them let loose to run
riot over the earth. Most certain it is that it is
this very commercial and physical prosperity that
cultiyates and readers impenetrable. the oonserva-
tism Of the North--that makes moral towards of
our boastful people-tbat induces them with shame
full inconsistency to barter and traffic in moral
principle with q handful of slave.driving aristo-
Gratis. 1t is the fear of disturbing their own pres.
ent prosperity and prospective wealth and pow
err. that makes the inhabitants of Massachusetts
and Ohio cling to their disgraceful union with
tyrants, whose practices in their souls, they loathe
and for whose characters, when they see them as
they are, they can feel only contempt and abhor-
renee. 1t is the fear of running stocks, reducing
the rate OF interest, depreciating the prices of
lands or of wares and merchandise, and unset
Ting the whole basis of trade, which makes our
merchants, manufacturers ard capitalists SO bois-
ferrous in their patriotism, so loud and ostentatious
in their glorifcation of the Union, and which
ranks its saviours among the most %virtuous of citi-
zeus and blackens the character of the 6isunion-
lists as the most infamous of all political and NOR
al desperadoes. 1t is not that men love slave. driv-
ing, but that they love money getting, that they
desire a continuance of the partnerhip with slave.
holders. The northern people like the southern.
are Shareholders, from mercenary considerations,
not from that mere devilshness which loves cru
city, and delights in injustice for its own sake
For this same cause the arguments which political
economists address to the Shareholders are compar-
a~tively powerless. Not that the stakeholder has
any disposition to gainsay them. lie knows they
are u"nanswerable. He knows that slavery pro-
hibits an extended commerce that it annihilates
manufactures and gives him only a wasteful and
expensive system of agriculture, He knows all
this as we'll as he knows that slave holding practi.
ces siihe humanity in his own breast. The Vir-
ginian knows full well that Richmond might have
been as New York for commerce, that in agricul-
tural wealth a century ago, she might have sur
passed all that Ohio now is, and in the develop
opment Of mineral wealth have excelled all that
Pennsylvania now is, or is like to be. Bot what
to him is an impoverished state, a ruined commerce
and o crippled agriculture, 80 long. as he knows