Part 4

To proceed: History informs us of many such communities as those defined by Dr. Wayland, to which any other form of government would be entirely inappropriate but the one he calls a “_government of force or a military despotism_,” which is none other than the very highest form of slavery. And your own good sense, young gentlemen, must assure you that it would be grossly absurd to confer on reckless boys of fifteen, or a mass of stupid pagans, all the rights of free citizens of this great republic. No: the one class should be retained under the slavery (for let us not scruple to call things by their right names) of _authoritative control_ by their parents; and the other should be subjected to the operation of the same general principle by the State. And to adopt Dr. Wayland’s own language on this point--suicidal as it is to him--we add, in regard to such citizens as are “_entirely surrendered to the influence of passion_,” that “after a government of force has been established, and habits of subordination have been formed, while the moral restraints are yet too feeble for self-government, an hereditary government, which addresses itself to the imagination, and strengthens itself by the influence of domestic connections and established usage, may be as good a form of government as they can sustain. As they advance in intellectual and moral cultivation, it may advantageously become more and more elective; and in a suitable moral condition, it may be wholly so.” Now, to vary the language in which these important facts are expressed, so as to bring out the great philosophical principles which so evidently underlie them, we would say, that when the government adapted to an ignorant and depraved people has operated under wise appliances to form habits of subordination among the masses, a modification of the elements of government is indicated as best suited to their condition. Some one of the forms of hereditary government may be adopted. In this government, the _principle of slavery_ is made to operate less actively, and there is more room for the play of the opposite principle of self-control. But as the moral principle is yet too feeble for self-government proper, it is still held in strong check by its antagonistic principle--the principle of slavery. As they advance in intellectual and moral cultivation, a further modification of the relative operation of these principles is indicated as proper. It may become more and more elective: that is, more and more of a democratic republic; and in a suitable moral condition it may be wholly so: that is, a government in which the _principle of slavery_ and the _principle of liberty_ operate in about equal ratios. We call this a well-balanced government. If it fulfil this condition, it is because these opposing principles so check and counterpoise each other that the government is not likely to be unbalanced. One holds the other _in equilibrio_. The principle of self-control is in such vigorous operation among the masses, and so craned up to a vigilant activity by coincident forces derived from intelligence and interest, that the _principle of slavery--control by the will of another, which in this instance is the will of the majority_--is not competent, according to the theory of this government, to override and crush the liberties of the country. On the other hand, the _principle of slavery_, which is the great _practical force_ of the government, enfeebled as it is by a prevailing popular enthusiasm for the widest freedom, and deriving no _present_ aid from interest, finds this deficiency so fully supplied by the fact that its impersonation is _the will of the majority_, that it is competent to resist the most violent shocks which may come up from the misguided self-control of the masses. How often have we seen, in the history of our glorious republic, the excited passions of the masses, misdirecting their power of self-control, sweep like a hurricane over the bosom of our political sea, and lash the waters into a storm that threatened to engulf the hopes of the nation! But so _vital_ and so _active_ was that principle which constitutes the true force of the government, that that great ideal, the State--the “Ship of State!”--outrode the tempest in perfect safety; and last, as first, the flag of liberty still streamed from the mast-head.

Now, this is as far as the science of free government, so called, has been carried into practical operation; and in this we cannot fail to see that the restraining and controlling _principle of slavery_ is still in vigorous operation. We call it, by way of eminence, a _free_ government; and so it is, _relatively to other forms, a very free government_. But then it is only relatively, not absolutely, so; for if it were rendered entirely free, by excluding the operation of the principle of slavery altogether, it would be reduced at once to a form of government which authorizes every man to do in all things and in all respects just as he might please to do--a guaranty which in the present state of fallen human nature it could never make good, and, therefore, virtually it would be no government at all.

Seeing that the abstract principle of slavery enters necessarily and essentially as an element into every form of civil government, it is worse than idle to affirm that it is wrong, _per se_. But more than this, it has the sanction of Jehovah: for government, of which we have seen it is a necessary element, is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to be his ordinance. It entered largely into the theocracy by which he governed the Jewish nation; and indeed is equally prominent in the government which he exercises over all mankind, if we take it in its wide sense as comprehending the ultimate rewards and punishments that await us in a future state. How imbecile then is it to say of the system of slavery that it is wrong in the abstract--wrong in principle! How little do men consider what they affirm in this declaration! Certainly no man in his senses will gravely affirm of an essential principle of government that it is wrong! We repeat, then, it is really time that certain politicians, as well as ecclesiastics, had learned to chasten their language on this subject. They have already accomplished incalculable mischief. They have conceded that to the folly of fanaticism which, if it were true, would render domestic slavery, with every other form of civil government, wholly indefensible, and their supporters the objects of the pity and scorn of the civilized world.

There are many among ourselves who, though they are not sufficient metaphysicians to detect and expose the error of a conclusion, are sufficiently candid to admit that if the conceded dogma of Jefferson be true, domestic slavery can never be justified in practice by any circumstances whatever; and they have pious feeling enough to prompt them to great hesitation in supporting the institution in view of this admission, although they are pressed to do so by circumstances of urgent duty to the slaves themselves. In this state of things there arises in many sensitive minds a most painful state of feeling. Pressed on the one hand by what is assumed to be correct principle, and on the other by the claims of a high moral necessity,--the necessity of governing and providing for their slaves, which they erroneously suppose to be in conflict with right principle,--they really find themselves in a most embarrassing situation, from which they sigh to be released. Many such have quietly retired from the State of their nativity and choice as their only alternative. (This may account for more of those removals, usually attributed to worn-out lands, than many of our politicians wot of.) Others remain, it is true, but it is rather an act of subjection than submission. Citizens of this class (and it is not a small class) are of course always liable to become the victims of any fanatical movement on the subject of slavery that may be afoot in the land. To all this mischief, the speakers and writers in question have contributed their full share. Yea, for myself, I doubt not they have contributed much more to dissatisfy the religious community of the South--the large majority of the whole population--than all the abolitionists of the North put together. It is doubtless the magic of their names which at present enables the M. E. Church (the most regular and well-defined anti-slavery, if not indeed abolitionist, association this day existing in the country) to maintain its footing in the District of Columbia, the States of Delaware and Maryland, and along the northern border of Eastern and through a large part of Western Virginia, together with a portion of Kentucky and Missouri. It is the authority of their names, also, which so disquiets the feelings of many good people in the whole country as to make them the victims of the political legerdemain of certain politicians, who, under cover of “free-soilism,” “fugitive slave law,” and “Nebraska” excitements, are overriding their rights and insulting the whole country before the civilized world; and who, last though not least, are daily oppressing the African population by the incubus of a morbid sensibility in regard to them, which utterly prevents the system under which they live from any thing like a reasonable participation in the progress of civilization. In view of these facts, we again assume that it is really time they had learned to chasten their language on the subject of African slavery. Public opinion in the whole country must soon become intolerant of so great an abuse of the truth.

LECTURE III.

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

Objections classified--Popular views discussed--“All men are born free and equal”--“All men are created equal”--“All men in a state of nature are free and equal”--And the particular form in which Dr. Wayland expresses the popular idea, viz., “The relation in which men stand to each other is the relation of _equality_; not equality of condition, but equality of _right_”--Remarks on Dr. Wayland’s course--His treatise on Moral Science as a text-book.

It is now appropriate to consider some of the speculations in Moral Science which may be supposed to invalidate the position discussed in the preceding lecture. As far as they have come under my notice, they all belong to one class. The general objection may be thus stated: _Slavery is an abridgment of rights to which the enslaved are entitled by nature; or, more logically, slavery is an abridgment of inalienable rights_. This doctrine is expressed in different forms of language, but is essentially the same in meaning. It is with the popular view of this subject that I propose to deal in this lecture. Hence I shall restrict my remarks, in the first place, to the objection as it usually _exists in thought_, and notice several popular forms of expression:

1. “All men are born free and equal.”

Until within a few years past, this dogma was stereotyped in all the text-books of the country--from the horn-book to the most eminent treatise on Moral Science for colleges and universities. From the days of Jefferson until now, it has been the text for the noisy twaddle of the “stump-politician,” and the profound discussions of the grave senator in the Congress of the United States. If this dogma, as it generally exists in thought, be true, it will follow, that any and every abridgment of liberty is a violation of original and natural right--that is, inalienable right. Hence every system of slavery must be based upon a false principle. The popular sense in which this language is generally understood, from father to son, is evidently the literal sense. But taken in this sense, the doctrine is utterly false. For men are born in a state of infancy, and grow up to the state of manhood; and infants are entirely incapable of freedom, and do not enjoy a particle of it. They _are_ not, therefore, born equally free, but in a state of entire subjection. They grow up, it is true--if they be not imbeciles--to a degree of mental liberty, that is, the liberty of arbitrary volition in the plain matters of _right_ and _wrong_, and hence are accountable; but the degree of this liberty, or how far they are thus mentally free, depends upon the accident of birth, education, and numerous coincident circumstances, which destroys all equality of mental freedom; and as to _equality_ in other respects, it is scarcely a decent regard to the feelings of mankind to affirm their equality. They are not _physically_ equal. No two men will compare exactly in this respect. They are not _politically_ equal. The history of all human governments, throughout all time, shows this. To be “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” in unequal and subordinate positions, _to the few_, has been the lot of the great mass of mankind from the days of Adam. But, says the “socialist,” (to whom the doctrine is far more creditable,) “this latter is precisely the state of things we deprecate, and affirm that such was never the intention of Deity, but that it is his will that there should be no such inequality among men; that his will is in itself _the right_; and what it is his will we should be, it is _right_ for us to be, and it is our right _to be_; and that system which makes our condition other than this, deprives us of our rights.” This is the philosophy of socialism.

Now it is true that much of the inequality of condition among men is owing to an abuse of the superior power which intelligence confers upon the few; but this admission does not advance the cause of socialism. For if it were allowed that the will of God is the only rule of right--that is, in itself _the right_, instead of this, that that which in itself is _the right_ is the will of God--it will not help the argument. For, on this hypothesis, the will of God is the only rule of right, as on the other it conforms to the only rule of right; so that on either, the will of God may be taken as a certain rule of right. What then does he will? In regard to the present subject of inquiry, we can only judge what he wills from that which he has done. Now we have seen that he has not endowed the souls of men with equal capacity, nor has he even placed them in circumstances of providential equality, favorable to an equal development of the unequal capacities he has given them. Superior intelligence is the condition of inequality. Where this exists, there is essential inequality, and practical inequality cannot usually be avoided. Hence _superior_ and _inferior_, and cognate terms, are found in all languages, and the conditions they represent are found amongst all people. Hence inequality among men is the will of God; and if his will is the rule of _our rights_, we have no abstract right to equality. It is rather our duty to submit to that inequality of condition which results from the superior intelligence or moral power of others. Superior physical power may, for a time, give us the ascendency; but things will find their level. Superior intelligence will ultimately bear its possessor to his destined eminence. A state of oppression is not one of _inequality_ merely. It is one in which superior intelligence has degraded and afflicted those who rank below it, in an inferior condition; or it is an instance in which, by the aid of brute force, those of inferior condition have, for a time, risen at the expense of those of superior intelligence. If we are oppressed, in either of these ways, we have a right to complain, because our oppressors violate the will of God concerning us--violate our rights; but we have no right to complain of _inequality_ merely. Inequality is the law of Heaven. He who complains of this is not less _unwise_ than the prisoner who frets at his condition, and chafes himself against the bars and bolts of the prison which securely confines him!

But if the dogma in question cannot be made to serve the cause of truth, it has often been made to serve the cause of policy. Many there are who have not scrupled to use it as a tocsin to call together a clan, not their inferiors merely, but so degraded in their inferiority, that, for the price of being honored with the distinction of “_free and equal fellow-citizens_,” they have been ready as menials to bow their necks to their masters, debase themselves, dishonor the state, and insult Jehovah!

2. “All men are created equal.”

This is only another form in which the social philosophy is pleased to express its one idea. We need only notice the additional error acquired by the change of language. “All men,” it is said, “are created.” It is written in the first of Genesis, that “God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them.” The term “man” is, of course, to be understood in its generic sense, and all that is affirmed is, that God directly _created_ Adam and Eve, and all their posterity seminally in them; and from whom, therefore, they have proceeded, as to both soul and body, by _generation_, and not by a separate act of creation by Jehovah. Now of these two created beings, one was placed in direct and immediate subordination to the other; and although it be true, as it often practically is, that the _fall_ has reversed this order of things, and placed the wife at the head of affairs, still the doctrine of headship, the doctrine of _inequality_, prevails in the one case as in the other. It is not amiss, however, to remark in passing, that even so great and humble a man as the Apostle Paul preferred the old-fashioned doctrine: he insists that we observe the original order of things: “I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man;” 1 Tim. ii. 12; “but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” 1 Cor. xiv. 34.

As to other points in this dogma, they have been already treated. We only add that philosophy, no less than religion and true patriotism, cannot fail to regret that a dogma setting each of their claims aside, and teaching the purest agrarianism, and that under the most deadly form--the form of _pure abstract truth_--should have found its way into that immortal instrument, the Declaration of American Independence. We cannot otherwise account for it than by the fact that one of the presiding minds of that great paper had become strongly tinctured with the infidel philosophy of France.

3. “All men in a state of nature are free and equal.”

This is the form of words by which that great man, Locke, involved himself in the doctrine of socialism. The school of philosophy has freed itself of the errors of Locke, and of much of the infidelity of Hume which those errors precipitated upon the world. The error now under notice, in the unsettled political state of France, was seized upon by the Communists: infidelity and anarchy followed. From them, it was consecrated in an abridged form of words in the greatest state paper that was ever written,--the “Declaration of Independence,”--and incorporated into the popular language of the American people, and, indeed, into that of every people where the English language is spoken. Great and good men, who abhor the folly of socialism, do not scruple to assert that the true theory of all governments is, that they are an abridgment of original and natural rights; forgetful of the fact that it is from the fountain of socialism that they draw their original supply of ideas. Those of the republican type maintain that the government should be founded upon the _concessions_ of the majority, and that any thing else is tyranny. I propose to deal with this idea in a future lecture. I now only consider the dogma in the literal sense--the form in which it exists in popular thought.

Literally, what is the state of man by nature? and, Is he free and equal in that state? We can conceive of man as existing only in one or the other of two states; one of which is his natural state, and the other merely hypothetical: that is, the _simple_, or individual state, and the _complex_, or social state. To conceive of men in their simple state, or as _not in a state of society_, is to conceive of them as existing as mere individuals: that is, _without connection or relation one with the other_. Is this the _natural_ state of man--the state intended for him by nature? Certainly not. It is not known to history, any more than to us, that any set of men ever existed in this way. This, then, is a merely hypothetical state. In reality, there never was such a state of things, and never will be. Indeed, on the hypothesis that such was the original state of men by nature, or as intended by the Lord, it would follow as a mere truism that each one of those separate individuals was _free_ from control by any one or all of the others: that is, they were all _free_ and equal. That this truism expresses the truth of the case, no doubt exists in the thought of a great many; but they overlook the hypothesis which makes it a hypothetical truism, merely because it never had any existence in fact, and never can have.

To conceive of men in the _social state_ is to conceive of them in their relations to each other. Hence it is a _complex_ state. Several ideas enter into this state--not only individuality, as in the former case, but also contiguity of time and place, variety, and often contrariety of relations, together with all the ideas which, as sequences, grow out of these. Now, a leading idea involved in this state, and inseparable from it, is the idea of _government_: that is, the _political_ is inseparable from the social state. These various and conflicting relations must be defined by certain rules, carrying the full idea of _control_. Without this, these relations could not operate in harmonious agreement for a single day. Now, as the _natural_ state of man is the state for which he was made,--the state to which alone his entire nature is adapted,--there can be no dispute, the _social_ state is the _natural_ state of man. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an helpmeet for him.” He was made, then, for society, and society was immediately furnished him. But the _law_ of relation, we find, was coincident with the relation itself: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Gen. ii. 24. And so also, every one born into the world was born in a state of society--the social state--and has always existed in this state: that is, _under government_. But we have before proved that a state of slavery is fundamental in the _complex_ idea of government. There is, there can be, _no government without it_. Therefore, the natural state of man, or the state to which he is adapted by both his mental and physical constitution, is a state of slavery in combination with liberty, _which is the complex idea of government_.

4. “The relation which men sustain to each other is the relation of _equality_: not _equality of condition_, but _equality of right_.”

This is the form in which Dr. Wayland prefers to express the doctrine of equality.[2] He explains himself thus: “Each separate individual is created with precisely the same right to use the advantages with which God has endowed him as any other individual.” From this position, as thus explained, he deduces an argument the force of which, without expressing it in so many words, is constructively made to pervade the whole performance. For his whole argument may be embodied thus: the government which places an individual in any other condition than that of political equality is an odious tyranny: the government which establishes domestic slavery does this, and is therefore an odious tyranny.

[2] Moral Science. Part II., Division I--Reciprocity.