Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1864-03-24
Bishop Hopkins ON Negr" slavery.

The promised book OF Bishop Hopkins
in defence OF negro slavery is nearly
ready for publication, and we are indebt-
ed to the publisher for advance sheets.
IL is and will ever after continue to be
literary curiosity, as probably the last
elaborate defence of negro slavery which
will emanate from any respectable
source in this country. The nation. re-
generate and disenthralled, will soon
outgrow the last lingering vestige of
those ideas of the dark aYes upon the re
lations of the strong and the weak, of
capital and labor, which have enthralled
the mind of Bishop Hopkins and few
other prominent divines.
The plea of Bishop Hopkins for slave
ry presents no new argument. He calls
his book "a Scriptural, Ecclesiastical
and Historical View of Slavery, from
the DAYS of the Patriarch Abraham to
the Nineteenth Century, addressed to
the Right Reverend Alonzo Potter D..
d." The title sufficiently indicates the
contents. The Bishop defends slavery
on scriptural and moral grounds. The
Bible argument is familiar to ALL and
one equally strong special plea could be
| drawn from its pages in defence of po-
| lygamy. The moral argument would
have justified the cnslavement of the ma
| tiyes of the Sandwich Islands, or of 9th
er regenerated heather communities, as
a means of Outstanding them, instead
of the instrumentalities which were
adopted. All the historical illustrations
and specious reasoning of the reverend
| Bishop, drawn from the practice Of the
past, can have no weight unless founded
| on the immutable principles of right
| and justice, and it is by this test that
slavery has been tried and found want
| ing. We as a nation or people are not
TO do wrong that good may come
Christianity offers other and more effica-
cious means of lettering the condition
| of the African than stealing him from
his cabin, subjecting him to all the hor-
rors of the middle passage, and making
him the instrument of unholy gain to a
master whose interest it is to keep him
in Ignorance and prevent him from ri
| sing in the social scale. Two centuries
of human slavery on this continent has
not done SO much towards Christianiz-
ing the Negro race as a few selfdevoted
Christian missionaries have ACCOMPLISH
ed in elevating races scarcely less de-
based in India and the islands Of the Pa
cific.
But let us not do injustice to Bishop
Hopkins. He says in his summing
up that he rs opposed to slavery under
any human master and desires to see the
Southern Institution abolished. He has
never been in favor of the perpetual
bondage of the negro race and has never
opposed their peaceable and gradual en-
franchisement. This appears to be beg
ging the whole question But we find
this statement qualified by the assertion
that "the relation of the master to- tbe
slave in the Southern States involves no
sin, provided the treatment OF the slave
ibe in accordance with the Scriptures y
An important proviso truly. But he
&dds further that s'to the negro race ala
very in the hands of their Southern mas.
ters has been blessing, because it has
been the means appointed in wisdom by
Divine Providence to redeem them from
a far more bitter bondage in Africa, in
the midst OF savage barbarism and
heatisern degradation, to train them up
to civilization of the gospel, to qualify a
portion of them to plant the State of Lii
IBERIA, and to enroll five hundred thou
sand communicates amongst the pro-
fessed Christians of the South" The ar
gument of expediency we have already
briefly answered. But granting that
the slaves have been benefited by their
association with the white race, does
this furnish an argument for continuing
them in bondage? When these Chris.
TANNED slaves raise the cry how
long !" is it for a Christian bishop to an |
swer them with the story of their an |
cestor's paganism? And finally, is that |
"peacable and gradual enfranchisementp |