Year: 1859




be universal exchange Of indvidualities
in the world, the amount of sin would be
sensibly diminished. In other words, if
you, or /, had been subjected to the same
temptations, under the same circumstances,
that resulted in the sending Of our old sc-
guaintanance to tire state prison for for
gerry, the probabilities are that we should
to-day be dressing stone for the public good.
If your daughter or mine had been expos
ed to to the wiles of villain under the
circumstances which surrounded our neigh
bor's daughter when she fell, and that neigh
boris daughter had been in the place Of ours,
the probabilities are that our daughter
would be lost to Us and true life, and
that our neighbours daughter would be safe.
Our business, then, is to thank God for the
circumstances which have favored u.s. to
pity those who have not been thus favored
and to be very careful Of our censure.


To greater extent than the most Of us
imagine, the wrongs, sins and errors of the
age we're born Of, and have been perpetua-
ted by, circumstances We are accnstom-
ed to inveigh against slavery. We de-
nounce it as a high crime in those who sus-
tain it, and curse to all the parties con-
cerned in it, We wonder why anybody
can regard 1t in any different light On
the other hand, the upholders of slavery
regard it as divine institution, beneficial
to the blacks and to themselves, and hold
its opponents to be fanatics, hypocrits, dis
organizers and inexpressibly contemplate
men. To make both parties feel more
kindly toward each other, it ought to be
only necessary for them to remember that,
had they exchanged dwelling-pIaces and
circumstances at their birth, they would
have exchanged sentiments and opinions
Our crazlest abolitionists would from their
natural temperament, have been in Charles
ton the craziest 6re-eaters, and the most
jealous advocate of slavery would at the
North have been the principal speaker at
the Syracuse conventions If Wendell
Phillips and Lloyd Garrison had been born
in New Orleans, to an inheritance to 300
slaves apiece, and Robert Toombs and
Alexander Stevens had grown up under
the shadow of Bunker Hill, they would
have been diametrically opposed to each
other as they are to day 1t is the most
senseess thing in the world for these par
ties to feel unkindly towards each other
Each may struggle strenuously for the
maintenance of his own ideas of the right,
but both should always remember that it
is from no merit or demerit of theirs that
they differ Circumstances, in ninety.nine
cases in hundred, make both the oppo-
nents and the defenders of slavery.


Thus it is in the matter of religion
The Catholic regards the Protestant as no
Christian, and the Protestant regard the
Catholic as the upholder of the grossest
errors. Each class regards the other with
contempt, and wonders how it can embrace
a system which it deems utterly iIegitmate
and falsely dangerous. What makes them
differ 7 Circumstances, not choice. Eng
land and ireland, sit side by side, subjects
of the same Queen. The English, born of
Protestant parents, are Protestants. The
Irish, born of Catholic parents, are Catho-
lies. They stand in the relation of religious
enemies, and talk about each other as Bit
terly as if they had really had something
to do in making themselves what they re-
spectively are, when, in ninety-ninty cases
in hundred, they have had nothing to do
with it whatever. The circumstances in
which they were born and bred have made
them what they are The Catholics emf
CRATE to this Protestant country. We re-
gard them as misled in the main, and in
tentionally misleading in the exceptions
We wonder how they can pin their
faith to their church in the way they
do. Yet circumstances, over which they
had no control, led them naturally into the
Catholic Church-circumstances gave them
Catholic parentage and surrounded them
with Catholic influences No Protestant
can reasonably doabt that had he been
born and reared under the same circumstan-
ces, he would now be Catholic and
there are not probably one in thousand
Catholics who would not be Protestants
had they been born and bred under Prot
estant influences. Now, while this fact
should make no difference in the estimation
in which each holds the others system of
religion, it should dispossess them at
once and forever of all bitterness of feel.
ing toward each other, and of the self
righteous assumption of superiority.


1t would be relevant to allude to politi-
cal parties in this connection, but it is not
necessary. The same fact holds good,
in general way, with relation to all the
great subjects that divide men into oppos-
ing masses. 1t may be well, however, to
say that 10 the matter of social position,
so far, at least, as it is based 10 birth, there
is no cause of gloryfying on the part of
any man. Two children play together,
and grow mp together. One is the OFF
spring of man Of wealth and high social
standing. The other is son or daughter
OF laborer, poor, and, perhaps, ignorant.
One of these children come in time to look
down upon bis humble neighbor, and the
other is brought to feel sooner or later that
he is prescribed What makes these child
rem to differ Nothing but circumstances,
over which neither had particle of con.
troll, yet one Of them gets proud in his ad-
ventitious position--proud Of bis circum-
stances. Circumstances ordered by Provi-
dence, doubtless, grade society through all
the steps that reach from the bottom to
the '0p of it. This fact may be recogniz.
ed-and yet between each class there can.
not legitimately be particle Of bitterness,
of envy, of jealousy, or Of pride.


Again, to leave this class of generaliza,
tions let as instance lad in the city born
e \ r