If the African is entitled to his freedom, he is also entitled to the
privilege of remaining in servitude; a privilege which nine tenths of
the Negroes in this country are well known to crave. But we deny his
right of choice in the premises. His barbarism was the oblivion of his
right to choose his own proper position; and the absence of inherent
right in him subjects him at once to the dominion of universal or
external right in civilization. His right of choice, therefore, has no
real validity, and should not even be tolerated to denounce the
heinous wrong of his emancipation, and consequent restoration to
barbarism. His right to remain a slave is not his own, but the right
of civilization; and even his willingness to remain in servitude,
though a double evidence of his barbarism and of his appreciation of
his partially ameliorated condition as an accessory of civilization,
is not available in deciding as to his present or future condition;
because the right exercised in his subjection to the rules of
civilization is primordial, and sovereign, and all-controlling, as
Universal Right, and is in no case subject to the will of barbarism.