SIR,--I ask attention to an eloquent and characteristic article
on Slavery, by Macaulay, never yet printed in our country with
his name. It is in an old number of the “Edinburgh Review,”
while Jeffrey was its editor, and in point of time preceded
the famous article on Milton. It is, indeed, the earliest
contribution of the illustrious writer to that Review, of
which he became a chief support and ornament. As such, it
belongs to the curiosities of literature, even if it did not
possess intrinsic interest from subject and style.
Here are seen, no longer in germ, but almost in perfect
development, those same great elements of style which appear
in the maturer essays and the History,--mastery of language,
clearness of statement, force, splendor of illustration, an
irrepressible sequence of thought and argument, and that same
whip of scorpions which he afterward flourished over Barère:
all these are conspicuous in this first effort, where he utters
the honest, gushing indignation of his soul. Never has Slavery
inspired speaker or writer to more complete and scornful
condemnation.
The article was called forth by British Slavery in the West
Indies; but it is just as applicable to American Slavery.
_Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur._ Every line bears upon
the slave-drivers of our country, with greater force even than
upon the slave-drivers of the West Indies; for audacity here
goes further than it was ever pushed in the British dominions.
It is interesting to find how exact the parallel becomes. In
the picture of illiberal men conspiring to support Slavery
Macaulay seems to delineate us.
“The slave-drivers may boast, that, if our cause has
received support from honest men of all religious and
political parties, theirs has tended in as great a
degree to combine and conciliate every form of violence
and illiberality. Tories and Radicals, prebendaries and
field-preachers, are to be found in their ranks. The only
requisites for one who aspires to enlist are a front of
brass and a tongue of venom.”[9]
Aiming to exhibit Slavery in its laws, without dwelling on
the accumulated instances of cruelty, he puts the case on the
strongest ground; and here his unimpeachable witness is the
statute-book itself. But this same argument bears with equal
force upon _our_ Slavery; so that, in reading his indignant
exposure of the West India jurisprudence, we see rising
before us the kindred enormities of our own Slave States, and
acknowledge the truth of his generous words.
He seems also to have anticipated that flagrant sophism, which,
under the guise of Popular Sovereignty, insists that men shall
be at liberty--“perfectly free” is the phrase of the Nebraska
Bill--to buy and sell fellow-men.
“If you will adopt the principles of Liberty, adopt them
altogether. Every argument which you can urge in support
of your own claims might be employed, with far greater
justice, in favor of the emancipation of your bondsmen.
When that event shall have taken place, your demand will
deserve consideration. At present, what you require under
the name of Freedom is nothing but unlimited power to
oppress. It is the freedom of Nero.”[10]
The threats of disunion, coming from slave-drivers, are also
foreshown, and treated with the scorn they merit.
“Who can refrain from thinking of Captain Lemuel Gulliver,
who, while raised sixty feet from the ground on the hand
of the King of Brobdignag, claps his hand on his sword and
tells his Majesty that he knows how to defend himself?
You will rebel!… But this is mere trifling. Are you, in
point of fact, at this moment able to protect yourselves
against your slaves without our assistance? If you can
still rise up and lie down in security,--if you can still
eat the bread of the fatherless and grind the faces of the
poor,--if you can still hold your petty Parliaments, and
say your little speeches, and move your little motions,--if
you can still outrage and insult the Parliament and people
of England,--to what do you owe it?”[11]
The sensitiveness of slave property--the same in our Slave
States as in the British West Indies--is aptly described in
the remark, that a pamphlet of Mr. Stephen or a speech of Mr.
Brougham is sufficient to excite all the slaves in the colonies
to rebel. And it is shown that in a servile war the master
_must_ be loser; for his enemies are his chattels. Whether
the slave conquer or fall, he is alike lost to the owner. In
the mean time, the soil lies uncultivated, the machinery is
destroyed. And when the possessions of the planter are restored
to him, they have been changed into a desert.[12]
Here also is an exhibition of the incompatibility between
Slavery and Christianity, which ought to be read in every
Southern pulpit:--
“The immorality and irreligion of the slaves are the
necessary consequences of their political and personal
degradation. They are not considered by the law as human
beings.… _They must become men before they can become
Christians_.… Can a preacher prevail on his hearers
strictly to fulfil their conjugal duties in a country where
no protection is given to their conjugal rights,--in a
country where the husband and wife may, at the pleasure of
the master or by process of law, be in an instant separated
forever?… The great body of the colonists have resolutely
opposed religious instruction; and they are in the right.
They know, though their misinformed friends in England do
not know, that Christianity and Slavery cannot long exist
together.”[13]
Such is the philippic against Slavery by the first writer of
the English language in our day, and one of the first in all
times. As testimony to a sacred cause, it is priceless; as a
contribution to literature, it cannot be forgotten. Why it was
suppressed by American publishers, who gave us the earliest
collection of Macaulay’s Essays ever printed in England or
America, I know not. Unhappily, this suppression was too
much in harmony with the received American system from that
day to this, whether in publishing Humboldt’s work on Cuba,
the Bishop of Oxford’s work on the American Church, or the
engraving of Ary Scheffer’s “Christus Consolator,” from all of
which the slave is shut out. That this blame may not fall upon
the author himself, it is important to know that the American
collection was made without any list supplied by him. In the
modesty of his nature, he regarded his contributions to Reviews
as fugitive pieces, which he abandoned to the world, without
caring to gather them together. It will be for posterity to
rejudge this judgment.
In this statement, I rely upon personal recollection of
conversations with him. More than twenty years ago--as also
more recently--I was in the habit of meeting the great writer
in the society of London; and I remember well how, on one of
these occasions, when told that an American bookseller proposed
to publish a collection of his articles, he very positively
protested against it, and refused to furnish a list. Nor
is it out of place to add here, that, while his wonderful
conversation left on the mind an ineffaceable impression of
eloquence and fulness, perhaps without parallel, it also showed
a character of singular integrity.
This article is not alone in attesting his sympathy with the
Antislavery cause. The first public appearance of Macaulay,
while yet a very young man, was at an Antislavery meeting;
and one of his most stinging speeches, at the maturity of his
powers, in the House of Commons, bore testimony to the depth
and constancy of this sentiment.[14] This was natural; for he
was son of Zachary Macaulay, one of the devoted Abolitionists
who helped to carry, first, the abolition of the slave-trade,
and then, at a later day, the abolition of Slavery itself, in
the British dominions.
The services of the father, as friend of the slave, have been
aptly commemorated by a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, situated
in the nave, on the left side of the great door as you enter,
and close to the imposing monument of Fox. The son now lies
in the same historic burial-place and beneath the same mighty
roof,[15] but in Poets’ Corner, distant by more than the whole
length of the nave from the tablet erected in honor of his
father. In all that multitude of monuments to the illustrious
dead, if we except the line of kings, there is but one other
instance of father and son enshrined in the Abbey, and that is
Lord Chatham and William Pitt, whose monuments are also distant
from each other by more than the whole length of the nave.
Such is the conspicuous fellowship of the two Pitts and
the Macaulays, father and son, although most unlike in
circumstances of life and the services which have secured this
common foothold of immortality. In each case, the father, even
with the fame of Lord Chatham, has new glory from the son. The
resting-places of the two Pitts are known at once on entering
the Abbey. Hereafter, the stranger, who has stood with grateful
admiration before the grave of the younger Macaulay, will
seek with reverent step the simple tribute to his father, the
Abolitionist,--mindful that the love of Human Freedom in which
the son was cradled and schooled gave to his character some of
its best features, and to his career of authorship its earliest
triumph.
My purpose is simply to introduce this new-found testimony
against Slavery, and not to dwell on the life or character of
the author. If I followed a hint from him, the way would be
open. Nobody can forget that in one of his most magnificent
essays he has availed himself of the interest, transient it may
have been, created by a newly discovered prose work of Milton,
and has reminded his readers that the dexterous Capuchins never
choose to preach on the life and miracles of a Saint till they
have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by
exhibiting some relic of him,--a thread of his garment, a lock
of his hair, or a drop of his blood. Here, indeed, is a relic
of Macaulay; but I venture no further.