absolutely necessary to prosperity. The idea of prosperity and
stability where disunion reigns, where the elements of discord are
actively at work; the idea of prosperity and stability, in such
circumstances, can only serve to mislead. Can that army, in which
faction triumphs among the soldiers and disunion and jealousy
distract the counsels of the officers, hope to succeed in a
campaign? Where each is afraid of the other, where no one has
confidence in any, where every one regards every other one with
feelings not only of jealousy but of positive hostility, how can
there be any hope to bring an unbroken front to bear with undivided
force upon any single point? I would observe also, that the
complexion of the soldiers' mind will be sure to be tinged by that
of their officers. In every community there will be found some few
to whom the mass will look up with unenquiring deference. Mankind,
generally, are averse to the labour of thinking. This circumstance
separates those who should be very friends, and men file off under
different leaders as fancy or caprice may dictate. Each party
ranges itself under the banner of a leader whom it invests with all
perfection of political sagacity and political integrity. To his
semi-brutal followers his word is law; his decisions an oracle.
Finding in him every attribute of perfection, they abandon the
reins to his hand; yield up the glorious privileges of thinking and
examining, and prepare to follow with a blind and implicit
obedience. This unworthy abandonment of the public interests, this
surrender of a privilege to which every man is born, and which
every man should exercise, is the capital of intriguing politicians
and unprincipled political demagogues. And, let me ask you,
fellow-citizens, what scheme, however mad and absurd, which has
been set on foot by these unprincipled leaders, has not had among
the masses its advocates and adherents? Bad, however, as human
nature is, alluring and fascinating as are the glitter and
privilege of place and power, this confidence has not been always
abused. We could easily point out instances, in which the influence
which this disposition we have been adverting to has given to men,
has been exerted wholly and exclusively for the public good. But we
must take human nature as we find it; and as we find this
disposition every where prevalent, the duty becomes imperative on
all who have influence, to exert it for the public good. The root
of the jealousies and divisions among public men will, generally
speaking, be found planted in the soil of selfishness and ambition:
not in any real and sincere disagreement as to the proper measures
for the public good. This, I admit, is always the avowed, the
ostensible, but, I am bold to say, not the real cause.
"It is envy of place and emolument--it is ambition of power, that
array public men in a hostile attitude, and range their infatuated
followers under their opposing banners. In the infancy of our
political existence, let those amongst us who have credit with the
people and influence over them, beware of so great infatuation. Let
us recollect, that all cannot govern: that from the division and
order into which society naturally resolves itself, all even of
those who are worthy, cannot stand in the foremost ranks. Let us
remember, that we equally serve our country, whether we sit in the
gubernatorial or presidential chair; whether we deliberate in the
Hall of the Legislature or preside in the Sanctuary of Justice;
that we equally serve our country, whether from the shades of
cloistered retirement we send forth wholesome maxims for public
instruction, or in the intercourse of our daily life we set an
attracting example of obedience to the laws; that we equally serve
our country, whether from the sacred desk we inculcate lessons of
celestial wisdom, exhibit the sanctions of a heaven-descended
religion and the thunders of an incensed Jehovah, or in the nursery
of learning unfold the mysteries and display the glories of
science, recall and re-enact the deeds and the achievements of the
past, and call back upon the stage the heroes, the patriots, and
the sages of antiquity, to kindle the ardour, nerve the virtue,
awaken the patriotism, elevate and purify the sentiment, and expand
the mind, of the generous and aspiring youth. Humble as many of
those offices of which I have spoken are esteemed to be,--obscure
and concealed from vulgar gaze and destitute of the trappings of
office and the glitter of fame as most of them actually are, it is,
nevertheless, fellow-citizens, not within the reach of our judgment
to determine which one of them exerts the greatest influence on the
destinies of our race. True dignity, and, I may add, true
usefulness, depend not so much upon the circumstance of office as
upon the faithful discharge of appropriate duties.
'Honour and fame from no condition rise;
Act well your part--there all true honour lies.'
'He who does the best his circumstances allow,
Does well, acts nobly: Angels could do no more.'
"It is the false notion of honour which has unhappily possessed the
minds of men, placing all dignity in the pageantry of state and the
tinsel of office, which produces those collisions, jostlings, and
acrimony of contending factions which sometimes shake the fabric of
society to its very foundations: it is by the maddening influence
of this false notion that men, whose claim to respectful notoriety
is inversely as their desire to be conspicuous, are sometimes urged
to abandon their obscure but appropriate position in the line, and
to rush into the foremost ranks. When men shall have learned
wherein true honour lies--when men shall have formed correct ideas
of true and sober dignity, then we shall see all the ranks of
society united as by a golden chain--then Ephraim shall not envy
Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim;--then the occupant of the palace and
of the cottage--then the man in lawn and the man in rags will, like
the parts of a well-adjusted machine, act in perfect unison.
Considering, then, the influence which in every community a few
men are found to possess--considering, also, that each one of these
influential men is sure to be followed by a party, we can hardly
appreciate the obligation which rests upon them, to abandon all
jealousies and suspicions--to merge every private and personal
consideration in thoughts for the public good--and to bring a mind
untrammelled, and free from every party predilection, to a solemn
deliberation on the great objects of public utility.
"The education of our youth is the next subject to which I would
direct your attention. 'Knowledge is power'--is an old proverb--but
not the less true because it is old. This is the spring that
regulates the movements of society--this is at once the lever and
the safety-valve of human institutions. Without it society will
either not move at all, or, like an unbalanced, unhelmed ship, move
in a direction and at a rate that must eventually destroy it.
Education corrects vice--cures disorders--abates jealousies--adorns
virtue--commands the winds--triumphs over the waves--scales the
heavens. In a word, education lays all nature under tribute, and
forces her to administer to the comfort and happiness of man. Nor
is this all that education does. It ennobles and elevates the mind,
and urges the soul upward and animates it to deeds of high and
lasting renown. Education opens sources of pure, refined, and
exquisite enjoyment--it unlocks the temple of nature, and admits
the awe-stricken soul, to behold and admire the wondrous work of
God. An ignorant, vicious, idle community, has the elements of
destruction already in its bosom. On the very first application of
a torch they will explode and lay the whole fabric in ruins. A
virtuous, orderly, educated people, have all the elements of
national greatness and national perpetuity.--Would we be happy at
home and respected abroad, we must educate our youth.
"In professing to notice those things which are necessary to our
prosperity--to the advancement of our prosperity, and the
perpetuity of our prosperity, it is natural that you should expect
that agricultural industry will be brought prominently into view.
I think it may be safely affirmed, that the virtue and independence
of a people will be inversely as their attention is wholly given to
commerce--that their virtue and independence is evermore to be
measured by their pursuits of the wholesome and pleasing and
primitive employment of agriculture and husbandry. Go into the
countries of Europe--examine their large manufacturing and
commercial towns and cities. Then visit the rural, agricultural
districts--compare the quiet, tranquillity, order, virtue, plenty
of the latter, with the bustle, confusion, vice, and general
dependence and poverty of the other, and you cannot fail to be
struck, and deeply affected, by the frightful contrast. And
wherefore? Is not commerce called the great civiliser of the world?
Is it not the means by which nations become acquainted and hold
communion with each other? Is it not by this means that the great
and master-minds of one nation commune with kindred minds of other
nations? Is it not the channel through which improvements in art,
in science, in literature, in all that adorns, dignifies, and
ennobles human nature, flow as on the wings of the wind from
country to country? Grant it. It is not my purpose to pronounce a
wholesale anathema upon commerce. I appreciate its high importance
in improving our race. It is excess I would discourage--it is the
wretched deteriorating influence it will exert upon a people, when,
by absorbing their whole attention, it keeps them looking
constantly abroad to the neglect of the improvement of their own
country. It is to this I would call your attention. Again;--Let it
not be forgotten, that if commerce imports improvements, it imports
vices also. It offers the same facility for the transmission of
both. The same vessel that brings us the Book of God brings us also
the Age of Reason--and in one and the same ship, we not
unfrequently find the devoted self-sacrificing missionary, and that
accursed thing which a celebrated orator with characteristic energy
has styled 'liquid fire and distilled damnation!!'
"In the natural, or, more properly, vegetable world, we have
sometimes seen exotics outstripping in rapidity of growth the
natural spontaneous productions of the soil. In this we have not a
very unhappy illustration of the rank growth of imported vices.
These baneful exotics, grafted on the tree of indigenous
corruption, seem to receive and impart unwonted vigour from the
contact: and the result is, a fruit of the most disorganising
potency. An examination into the moral state of towns and
districts, wholly given to commerce and manufactures, will fully
sustain this remark. How, let me ask you, can there be order, where
the very nature of the pursuits which engross all minds demand
ceaseless hurry, bustle, and confusion?--where to stop to breathe
is to be at once outdone, and where he who can move the most
swiftly amid the greatest confusion is thought to be the smartest
man! In respect of virtue,--is it to be thought of, except for the
purpose of holding it up to ridicule, in a place where the vicious
of all countries meet; and where females of every class and
character, far from the watchful eye of parental solicitude, are
huddled together in one promiscuous throng, and dependent for their
daily bread upon the freaks and fancies of unprincipled employers!
Lowell, in America, is, I believe, the only large manufacturing
town where virtue is held in the least esteem. What shall I say of
honesty and integrity? where the lowest, basest arts, are practised
for gain; where all is intrigue and circumvention--where the maxim
prevails, 'all is fair in trade'--where each regards the other as
lawful game--where one can gain only by the loss of the
other--where, in a word, rascality is fair-play, and villainy
systematic;--where, fellow-citizens, let me ask you, where, in such
a community, is there room for honesty? Can the heart fail, in such
circumstances, to become deadened to every feeling of
humanity--steeled against every kindly, generous, and ennobling
impulse? I will not venture to affirm, that the result we have just
now noticed is universal. I admit, with pleasure, there are
honourable exceptions--but I do affirm, that what I have said forms
the general rule.
"But let us turn from these scenes of noise and smoke and deep
depravity, and visit the quiet abode of the farmer and the
husbandman. What tranquillity reigns here, and order, and peace,
and virtue!! Behold the farmer, as he goes forth in the morning to
his daily task;--how firm and elastic his step; how cheerful his
sun-burnt countenance; how active his athletic arm!! Behold how
cheerfully he labours; how the fat valleys around him laugh with
corn; how the spacious plains teem with grain, and the ancient
forests fall beneath his resounding axe!! Follow him, when the
labour of the day is over, follow him to his humble home. See him
surrounded by an affectionate, industrious, frugal wife,
unsophisticated by the vices and dissipations of the fashionable
world, and by a prattling progeny blooming in health, and big with
promise of future usefulness. No cankering cares gnaw his peaceful
bosom; no uncertain speculation disturbs his quiet slumbers; no
revolutions in foreign lands, damming up the channels of trade,
cloud the calm serenity of his brow. Oh! if there be a spot on
earth, where true happiness is to be found, here is that spot.
"But we take a higher and a more extended view of this subject, and
regard it in its bearing on political economy. And my first remark
is, that no nation can be independent which subsists wholly by
commerce. And here let it be observed, once for all, that I use the
word independent in a sense altogether distinct from sovereignty. I
admit that there may be a temporary prosperity; that so long as
peace prevails amongst nations connected by commercial and
diplomatic relations,--so long as each acts in perfect faith, and
maintains in all their entireness and in all their integrity his
treaty stipulations, there may not be felt a want of the
necessaries or even of the luxuries of life. There may, perhaps, be
a large influx of the precious metals. Nothing, however, could be
more fallacious, than to regard this activity as an indication of
independence or permanent prosperity. For I remark, in the second
place, that so uncertain are the operations of trade--so suddenly
are its channels and outlets closed by misunderstandings and
ruptures between rival nations--so liable is it to paralysing
shocks from intriguing cabinets and wily politicians, the
operations of one year scarcely afford any ground for conjecture in
regard to the operations of the next. Let us illustrate our
position by an humble supposition.
"Suppose the surrounding country should suddenly relent, throw wide
its doors, and shake its teeming wealth of gold and ivory and wood
and gums into our lap; and the native African, patient of labour
and of travel, should supply us at the most accommodating rates
with all the coarser food for our consumption;--suppose vessels
should flock (as, under such circumstances, vessels would most
assuredly flock) to our shores, offering us in exchange for the
produce thus liberally poured in upon us, the conveniences,
elegances, and luxuries of foreign countries. Suppose every man
desert his farm, and betake himself to trading as the more easy and
the more speedy road to wealth,--there would certainly be great
activity and great prosperity. But should we be independent? One
more supposition, and the important and interesting problem is
solved. Suppose the paths to the interior are suddenly blocked up
by feuds among the tribes; all ingress cut off and trade suspended.
Where, then, are our supplies? Should we be able to return to our
farms, and draw thence articles of exchange with foreign nations?
By no means. In the mania for trade our farms have been deserted,
and, like the land on which a curse rests, have long laid fallow.
Think you, fellow-citizens, that our trade once gone, we should
again behold the French, the Bremen, the American, and the English
flag floating to the breeze in our harbour. From that hour you
might bid a long adieu to every white face but that of a
missionary. Fellow-Citizens! our prosperity and independence are to
be drawn from the soil. That is the highway to honour, to wealth,
to private and national prosperity.
"Liberians! do not disdain the humble occupation! It commends
itself to our attention, ennobled and sanctified by the example of
our Creator. 'And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,
and good for food.... And the Lord God took the man, and put him
into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.'[3] Never,
never, until this degenerate age, has this simple, primitive,
patriarchal occupation been despised.
'In ancient times, the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind:
And some, with whom compared your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with unwearied hand,
Disdaining little delicacies, seized
The plough, and greatly independent lived.'
"Thus sings the author of the Seasons, one of Britain's sweetest
bards.
"The last remark time will allow me to make under this head, is,
that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any
people.'[4] All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay
the head-long propensity to vice--to abate the madness of ambition,
will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the
restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound
regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our
dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to
Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing sense of His universal and
all-controlling providence, this, and only this, can give energy to
the arm of law, cool the raging fever of the passions, and abate
the lofty pretensions of mad ambition. In prosperity, let us bring
out our thank-offering, and present it with cheerful hearts in
orderly, virtuous, and religious conduct. In adversity, let us
consider, confess our sins, and abase ourselves before the throne
of God. In danger, let us go to Him, whose prerogative it is to
deliver; let us go to Him, with the humility and confidence which a
deep conviction that the battle is not to the strong nor the race
to the swift, is calculated to inspire.
"Fellow-Citizens! we stand now on ground never occupied by a people
before. However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of
Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from
its enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air,
rise to the height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown
tree, or (inglorious fate!) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in
oblivion. Rise, fellow-citizens, rise to a clear and full
perception of your tremendous responsibilities!! Upon you, rely
upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive, the future
destiny of your race. You, you are to give the answer, whether the
African race is doomed to interminable degradation,--a hideous blot
on the fair face of Creation, a libel upon the dignity of human
nature,--or whether they are incapable to take an honourable rank
amongst the great family of nations! The friends of the colony are
trembling; the enemies of the Coloured man are hoping. Say,
fellow-citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and
sicken their hearts, and gladden the souls of your enemies, by a
base refusal to enter upon the career of glory which is now opening
so propitiously before you? The genius of universal emancipation,
bending from her lofty seat, invites you to accept the wreath of
national independence. The voice of your friends, swelling upon the
breeze, cries to you from afar--Raise your standard! assert your
independence!! throw out your banners to the wind!! And will the
descendants of the mighty Pharaohs, that awed the world--will the
sons of him who drove back the serried legions of Rome and laid
siege to the 'eternal city'--will they, the achievements of whose
fathers are yet the wonder and admiration of the world--will they
refuse the proffered boon, and basely cling to the chains of
Slavery and dependence? Never! never!! never!!! Shades of the
mighty dead!--spirits of departed great ones! inspire us, animate
us to the task--nerve us for the battle! Pour into our bosom a
portion of that ardour and patriotism which bore you on to battle,
to victory, and to conquest.
"Shall Liberia live? Yes; in the generous emotions now swelling in
your bosoms--in the high and noble purpose now fixing itself in
your mind, and ripening into the unyieldingness of indomitable
principle, we hear the inspiring response--Liberia shall live
before God, and before the nations of the Earth.
"The night is passing away--the dusky shades are fleeing, and even
now
'Second day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain top.'"
With all their advantages of education and opulence, I challenge the
abettors of Negro Slavery, who justify their oppressive conduct towards
their fellow-creatures on the ground of their inferiority, to exhibit
half the talent and ability evinced in the eloquent addresses of these
Coloured legislators. Yet these are the men who are described as a
deterioration of our species, who, through vulgar prejudice and popular
insult, combined with political and legislative enactments, hove been
degraded to a level with the brute.
As further evidence of their capabilities, I present the reader with a
few extracts from a Discourse by Henry H. Garnett, (a fugitive Slave),
On the Past and Present Condition, and Destiny of the Coloured Race.
"By an almost common consent, the modern world seems determined to
pilfer Africa of her glory. It is not enough that her children have
been scattered over the globe, clothed in the garments of shame,
humiliated and oppressed; but our enemies weary themselves in
plundering the tombs of our renowned sires, and in obliterating
their worthy deeds, which were inscribed by fame upon the pages of
ancient history.
"The three grand divisions of the earth that were known to the
ancients, were colonised by the three sons of Noah. Shem was the
father of the Asiatics--the Africans descended from Ham--and
Japheth was the progenitor of the Europeans. These men, being the
children of one common father, they were originally of the same
complexion--for we cannot, through the medium of any law of nature
or reason, come to the conclusion that one was black, another was
copper-coloured, and the other was white. Adam was a red man; and
by what law of nature his descendants became dissimilar to him, is
a problem which is yet to be clearly solved. The fact, that the
universal Father has varied the complexions of his children, does
not detract from his mercy, or give us reason to question his
wisdom.
"Moses is the patriarch of sacred history. The same eminent station
is occupied by Herodotus in profane history. To the chronicles of
these two great men we are indebted for all the information we have
in relation to the early condition of man. If they are incorrect,
to what higher authority shall we appeal; and if they are true,
then we acquaint ourselves with the history of our race from that
period
'When yonder spheres sublime
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time.'