With the success of the American Revolution prophecy entered other
spheres, and here we welcome a remarkable writer, the Rev. William
Paley, an English divine, who was born July, 1743, and died 25th May,
1805. He is known for various works of great contemporary repute, all
commended by a style of singular transparency, and admirably adapted to
the level of opinion at the time. If they are gradually vanishing from
sight, it is because other works, especially in philosophy, are more
satisfactory and touch higher chords.
His earliest considerable work, and for a long period a popular
text-book of education, was the well-known “Principles of Moral and
Political Philosophy,” which first appeared in 1785. Here, with grave
errors and a reprehensible laxity on certain topics, he did much for
truth. The clear vision with which he saw the enormity of Slavery was
not disturbed by any prevailing interest at home, and he constantly
testified against it. American Independence furnished occasion for a
prophetic aspiration of more than common value, because embodied in a
work of morals especially for the young:--
“The great revolution which seems preparing in the Western
World may probably conduce (and who knows but that it is
designed?) _to accelerate the fall of this abominable tyranny_:
and when this contest, and the passions that attend it, are
no more, there will succeed a season for reflecting whether
a legislature which had so long lent its assistance to the
support of an institution replete with human misery was fit to
be trusted with an empire the most extensive that ever obtained
in any age or quarter of the world.”[603]
In thus associating Emancipation with American Independence, the
philosopher became an unconscious associate of Lafayette, who, on
the consummation of peace, invited Washington to this beneficent
enterprise,[604]--alas! in vain.
Paley did not confine his testimony to the pages of philosophy, but
openly united with the Abolitionists of the day. To help the movement
against the slave-trade, he encountered the _claim of pecuniary
compensation_ for the partakers in the traffic, by a brief essay, in
1789, entitled “Arguments against the Unjust Pretensions of Slave
Dealers and Holders to be indemnified by Pecuniary Allowances at the
Public Expense, in Case the Slave Trade should be abolished.”[605]
This was sent to the Abolition Committee, by whom the substance was
presented to the public; but unhappily the essay was lost or mislaid.
His honorable interest in the cause was attested by a speech at a
public meeting of the inhabitants of Carlisle, over which he presided,
9th February, 1792. Here he denounced the slave-trade as “this
diabolical traffic,” and by a plain similitude, as applicable to
slavery as to the trade in slaves, held it up to judgment:--
“None will surely plead in favor of scalping. But suppose
scalps should become of request in Europe, and a trade in them
be carried on with the American Indians; might it not be
justly said, that the Europeans, by their trade in scalps, did
all they could to perpetuate amongst the natives of America the
inhuman practice of scalping?”[606]
Strange that the philosopher who extenuated Duelling should have been
so true and lofty against Slavery! For this, at least, he deserves our
grateful praise.