Year: 1860

cal of which are those connected with the
political affairs and governmental conduct of
the country. Leave them where they have
no opportunity of judging of slavery by i'm
mediate connection with it, and they view it
through the medium solely of their feelings
and impulses. The natural sentiment of every
superior intellect, whether cultivated or not,
is for freedom AS an abstract proposition,
land literary men, as q class, are very ab-
stract) scarcely any man in the world, Of
any degree of understanding, could be found
whose soul did not, of its own native in
'tincts, revolt against slavery. Nevertheless.
slavery is, under many circumstances, not
only justitiable but necessary. The literary
men of the North for the most part, know
nothing of slavery except as they judge it by
the light of their own consciences and the
Golden Rule. and their broad hearted bcnev-
olence. They think of slavery in connection
only with the imaginary groans and tears
of the "poor African, whose only crime is
the color of his skin and the climate of his
birth" Occasionally, the original intense
ness of feeling is much modified by practi
cal view of the question, so that it happens
that man like William Cullen Bryant, who
wrote.


"Chained in the market place he stood,


A man Of giant frame.


Amid the gathering multitude


Who shrunk to hear his name;


All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground,


And feartuy they gazed on him,
As ON lion bound"


1t so happens, we say, that man like
William Cullen Bryant who in his early
youth felt so strongly on the subject as to
take sides against slavery in terms impossible
to be recalled, instead of being an Abolition
ist, is Republican. He has edited a paper
long enough, and been engaged in politics
long enough, especially with his acute intel
lect to know that, if slavery be an evil at all
it is one which must be peaceably, legally
and coustitutionally remedied, and that there
are certain legaland constitutional provisions
| in its behalf which sustain it as one Of the
institutions Of the country.


il is quite natural, then, that, as rabid as
the poet Bryant is in opposition to slavery,
there should lie many others of The iterati of
the North hundred times more raLid than
he


John G. Whittier, who never thinks Of the
question Mt all. except in the pure abstract,
grows indignant in many burning line over
the exaggerated woes and wrongs of the
slave. lie feeds with his poetic fre,-for he
possesses indeed the "divine afflatus'-the
fierce fanaticism Of the unreasoning portion
of the North, and, while he endangers the
peace of the Union, fondly and religious
ly believes that he is doing God service


Ralph Waldo Emerson so far forgets him
self, in the wild instincts of strong nature.
as to declare what if deliberately uttered by
practical man, would enttle him to the
halter of John Brown, to wit that John
Brown had made the gullows as glorious as
the cross.


Howadji Curtis, a man of fine fancy and
teeming thought, so overhows with his in
stinctive love of the universal freedom of
man." that he talks and writes like "a traitor
to his country, and so far forgets his obliga-
tons as a citizen as to deliberately insult one
entire section of the American Union, with
his attacks upon an institution which can only
be properly judged, handled or disposed of
by practical legislators, political economists
and statesmen. Curtiss instincts are all
right, but then he knows nothing of what he
is talking about, when he assumes to say
that slavery must be at once, and at all haz-
ards eradicated from the face of the earth,
as crime against Heaven and Man. This is
all very fine but there is a wrong way of do.
ing even a right thing, admitting that these
Northern lterati are right in their notions.


These gentlemen, if they would only stop
to look at things for one moment in a plain,
common sense point of view, would do well
to ponder upon certain memorable words Of
the immortal Edmund Burke, in reference to
the impossibility of carrying into the every
day concerns Of the social organization either
absolute truth or absolute virtue We have
not his works before us, but the idea, as ex-
pressed iu one of his great speeches in Parlia.
ment or perhaps in his book on the French
Revolution, is to this effect: That abstract
truths and principles. like rays of Light re-
heeted through partially transparent me-
dinm, become refracted from their true course
as they pass through the enveloping and RAM
h'ed circumstances Of organized society, and
II Is idle to suppose that either perfect
truth or a perfect principle of any kind
whatever can be applied in its unaduiterated
purity and strictness to any given condition
of human affairs, and especially Of those
which are political in their nature.


THE National learns that q notorious va,,
bond and murderer named Salvador Flores.
one of the gang of the bandit Joaquin Muri
etta has been captured in Arizona. lie had
committed n murder in Tubac, and a trap
was laid for his capture which succeeded.


The Fort Smith (Ark) Times, announces