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    a career of active industry on the moving waters instead of the firm land . This monstrous act of injustice has not been perpetrated by regular pirates or lawless banditti—recognizing no right of property save the long sword and the strong arm , It has been a deliberate act of the Legislature of England , whose

    people are accustomed to arrogate to themselves the title of the most civilized nation of the earth , and more especially as regards the inviolability of the right of private property . This deliberate act is a proof that the spirit of barbarism is not yet extinguished in the breasts of those who rule the nation , and it is

    another powerful argument for getting rid of their mischievous authority at the earliest possible opportunity , Either they understand not the principles of justice or they wilfully violate them , and in either case they are unfitted to possess the confidence of the public .

    As a matter of political economy , it is all but universally conceded , that impressment is a great evil , tending materially to increase the general cost of seamen in a national and mercantile point of view . Scarcely any but the most interested persons attempt to set up any plea of justice as a defence for it . Therefore all serious argument in its favour is reduced to that stirring cause

    which Tory tyrants christen necessity , and Whig tyrants denominate expediency . It is , in fact , the ancient custom whereby the strong arrogate to themselves the right to make the weak do their bidding , themselves being the judges whether that bidding be good or not , while they allow the weak no choice but obedience . If human beings were entrapped by man-catchers for

    the purpose of forcing them to labour in the formation of roads and harbours , and other matters tending to human comfort , some plea of utility might be set up ; not a sound one it is true , but still a semblance of it . The brutal Pacha of Egypt , when he destroyed so much human life in the forced labour of canal-making by imperfect and unhealth y processes , could still allege that

    canal-making was a means to human improvement . Nay , the very Negro-catchers of Africa might allege that sugar is an important article of human food , and therefore , as freemen refuse to cultivate it , it is necessary to have slaves . This also sounds plausibly , but the error lies in not seeing , or in refusing to sec , that the good arising from possessing sugar is much less than the evil arising from possessing slaves . Perfect human happiness

    might exist without sugar ; it cannot exist with slaves . Canals , also , are very useful things , but if they be made by forced human labour , human beings will , very naturally , take an antipathy to them , and acquire a dislike for , and a distrust in , all useful public works . Thus , the amount of evil becomes greater than the amount of good , for a . comparatively small number of human beings are alive to the prospect ol future advantages , while almost all can feel the pressure of present evils .

    Untitled Article

    296 ! Civilized BarbarUm .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 286, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/54/