Dr. Channing’s third position is to offer explanations to prevent
misapplication of the principles presented in his first two
propositions.
Vol. ii. page 51, he says—“Sympathy with the slave has often degenerated
into injustice towards the master.” We fully agree with him; and we also
admit “that the consciences of men are often darkened by education.”
This short chapter is evidently written in a spirit of conciliation, and
contains many truths eloquently told; yet, he finally grasps his
doctrines, and repeats his elucidations.
His fourth position is, “To unfold the evils of slavery.” He says the
first great evil is the debasement of the slave. Page 60: “This word,
(slave,) borrowed from his condition, expresses the ruin wrought by
slavery within him. * * * To be an instrument of the physical, material
good of another, whose will is his highest law, he is taught to regard
as the great purpose of his being. Here lies the evil of slavery. Its
whips, imprisonment, and even the horrors of the middle passage from
Africa to America, these are not to be named in comparison with this
extinction of the proper consciousness of a human being, with the
degradation of a man into a brute.”
If it be a fact that the debasement of the negro race has been brought
about by their having been made slaves in America; then it will be a
very strong argument, we are willing to acknowledge, an insurmountable
one, against the institution. That Dr. Channing thinks such to be the
fact, we have no doubt; for we cannot a moment admit that he would
assert what he did not believe was true. But “the consciences of men are
often darkened by education.” We hold that the assertion is capable of
proof, that the debasement of the race was the moral, the necessary
effect of a long course of sin; and that, instead of slavery producing
the debasement, the fact is, the debasement produced the slavery; or, in
other words, slavery is the moral, the necessary effect of the
debasement.
The leading object, through all our studies, is the elucidation of the
fact, that sin has a poisonous effect upon the moral, mental, and
physical man, that is in constant action in the direction of
deterioration, debasement, ruin, death. Such we teach to be the doctrine
of the holy books, spread through the whole volume, elucidated upon
every page; that slavery, like a saviour, steps in upon this descending
road, arresting the downward progress, the rapid fall to final, to
unalterable ruin and death.
“If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they
break my statutes, and keep not my commandments,—then will I visit
their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.”
_Ps._ lxxxix. 30–32. “A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man
is loathsome, and cometh to shame.” _Prov._ xiii. 5. “Thou turnest man
to destruction; and sayest, return, ye children of men.” _Ps._ xc. 3.
“I have therefore delivered unto the mighty one of the heathen; he
shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.”
_Ezek._ xxxi. 11. “And I will sell your sons and your daughters into
the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the
Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it.” _Joel_
iii. 8. “Nevertheless they shall be his _servants_ (לַֽעֲבָדִים
_slaves_), that they may know my _service_ (עֲב֣וֹדָתִ֔י, and the
_service_ (וַֽעֲבוֹדַ֖ת, _slavery_) of the kingdoms of the countries.”
2 _Chron._ xii. 8. “The show of their countenance doth witness against
them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Wo unto
their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.” _Isa._ iii.
9. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no
knowledge; and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude
dried up with thirst.” “And the mean man shall be brought down, and
the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be
humbled: but the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God
that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.” _Isa._ v. 13, 15,
16.
Dr. Channing’s book before us goes on to specify this debasement as to
the intellect; its influence on the domestic relations; how it “produces
and gives license to cruelty.” The fact that debasement reaches all
these points, we agree to; nay, further, that it reaches to every act
and thought. But we refer all these displays of debasement to the result
of the degradation, of which slavery is only the moral, the natural
consequence. If we find a man debased as to one thing, it is in
conformity with the common sense of mankind to expect to find him
debased as to another.
Channing, pp. 78, 79. “I proceed to another view of the evils of
slavery. I refer to its influence on the master. * * * I pass over many
views. * * * I will confine myself to two considerations. The first is,
that slavery, above all other influences, nourishes the passion for
power and its kindred vices. There is no passion which needs a stronger
curb. Men’s worst crimes have sprung from the desire of being masters,
of bending others to their yoke.”
It is to be lamented that man is so prone to sin; that he is not more
undeviating in the paths of virtue, of goodness, of perfection. The
charge made by Dr. Channing in the passage quoted, we are sorry to
acknowledge, is too true. But so far as we have any knowledge of the
history of man, even in the absence of slavery, the time has never been
when the passion for power and its kindred vices did not find sufficient
food for their nourishment. The evil passions alluded to are not so
particular as to their food but that, if they do not find a choice thing
to nourish themselves on, they will feed and nourish themselves on
another.
It, perhaps, would not be difficult to show that the love of power and
its kindred vices first operated to bring on us “all our wo;” stimulated
Cain to kill Abel; in fact, has been in most powerful action among those
causes that have introduced slavery to the world. Slavery gave no birth
to these passions. They drove Nebuchadnezzar from his throne down to the
degradation of the brute. “Is not this great Babylon that I have built
for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the
honour of my majesty?” _Dan._ iv. 12.
He had great power, great wealth, and, it is true, he had great
possessions in slaves. The prophet understood his case, and spoke
plainly. If his owning thousands of slaves merely had nursed in him a
forgetfulness of God, the seer would not have hesitated so to inform
him. Great prosperity in the affairs of the world in his case, as in
some others of a somewhat later day, so puffed him up that he forgot who
he was. The owning of slaves may puff up a silly intellect—doubtless,
often does; but the same intellect would be more likely to be puffed up
by a command of a more elevated grade, as officers of government, or,
even in private life, by the control of superior amounts of wealth; or
even by the conceit of possessing a great superiority of intellect.
Doubtless, the disciples of Dr. Channing will agree that abundant
instances of such tumidity might be found in any country, even among
those who never owned a slave.
It may be a fact, that, to some, the having control over and owning a
slave have a greater tendency to produce the effect of _puffing up_ the
owner than would his value in money or other property; because it may be
a fact that a given amount in one kind of property may possess such
tendency to a greater extent than another. But the truth probably is,
that one man would be the most puffed up by one thing, and another man
by another. We agree that being thus _puffed up_ is a sin; that it leads
to consequences extremely ruinous, and often fatal. Very small men are
also liable to the disease, and they sometimes take it from very slight
causes. It is true, “there is no passion that needs a stronger curb.”
What we contend is, that it is not a necessary consequence of owning
slaves, any more than it is of owning any other property, or of
possessing any other command of men; and that so far as it is an
argument against owning slaves, it is also an argument against owning
any other property, or of having any other control, or of possessing any
other command among men.
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