History is sometimes called a gallery, where are exhibited scenes,
events, and characters of the Past. It may also be called the world's
great charnel-house, where are gathered coffins, dead men's bones, and
all the uncleanness of years that have fled. Thus is it both an example
and a warning to mankind. Walking among its pictures, radiant with
the inspiration of virtue and of freedom, we thrill with new impulse
to beneficent exertion. Groping amidst unsightly shapes without an
epitaph, we may at least derive fresh aversion to all their living
representatives.
In this mighty gallery, amidst angelic light, are the benefactors of
mankind,--poets who have sung the praise of virtue, historians who
have recorded its achievements, and the good of all time, who, by
word or deed, have striven for the welfare of others. Here are those
scenes where the godlike in man is made manifest in trial and danger.
Here also are those grand pictures exhibiting the establishment of
free institutions: the signing of Magna Charta, with its priceless
privileges, by a reluctant monarch; and the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, announcing the inalienable rights of man, by the
fathers of our Republic.
On the other hand, in ignominious confusion, far down in this dark,
dreary charnel-house, is tumbled all that now remains of the tyrants,
the persecutors, the selfish men, under whom mankind have groaned.
Here also, in festering, loathsome decay, are monstrous _institutions_
or _customs_, which the earth, weary of their infamy and wrong, has
refused to sustain,--the Helotism of Sparta, the Serfdom of Christian
Europe, the Ordeal by Battle, and Algerine Slavery.
From this charnel-house let me draw forth one of these. It may not be
without profit to dwell on the _origin_, _history_, and _character_
of a custom, which, after being for a long time a by-word and a
hissing among the nations, is at last driven from the world. The easy,
instinctive, positive reprobation which it will receive from all must
necessarily direct our judgment of other institutions, yet tolerated in
defiance of justice and humanity. I propose to consider the subject of
_White Slavery in Algiers_, or, perhaps it may be more appropriately
called, _White Slavery in the Barbary States_. As Algiers was its
chief seat, it seems to have acquired a current name from that place.
Nevertheless I shall proceed to speak of White Slavery, or the Slavery
of Christians, throughout the Barbary States.
This subject may fail in interest, but not in novelty. I am not aware
of any previous attempt to combine its scattered materials.