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Untitled Article
beneficent and happy slavery ; it may be a very necessary slavery ; it may deserve all the beautiful things that have ^ ver been said in laudation of negro bondage ; but this has nothing to do with a question of principle . It is slavery . The non-represented are ruled by the represented . And that omnipotence of Parliament which commands their labour , their
wealth , and their lives , is to them as irresponsible a power ( in principle though not in fact ) as that of the slave-owner to his negroes , who may petition , or who may rebel , but who have no recognized portion of the management to which they submit . "To deny the right of a human being to himself , to his own limbs and faculties , to his energy of body and mind , is an
absurdity too gross to be confuted by any thing but a simple statement . Yet this absurdity is involved in the idea of nis belonging to another . " ( p . 12 . ) True ; and is it not also involved in the social arrangements by which the labourer is born into the world with his limbs and muscles mortgaged , so that only perhaps about the hundredth part of what his toil produces is ever consumed by himself , or by those on whom he
bestows it voluntarily ? Born to toil for tithes , and taxes , and the interest of capital , and the support of the endowed unearning , what is the real amount of their ri g ht in themselves ? We put it to Mr . Buxton ' s conscience . \ Ve ask the Antislavery society . We demand it of the professed religionists of all denominations ; of the patriots of all grades ; of the hereditary lords of land and money . We " pause for a reply ;" and may wait long enough .
Dr . Channing says , that " Nature ' s seal is affixed to no instrument , by which property in a single human , being is conveyed . " Did the Doctor never see a marriage contract ? What is the condition of woman , but that she is property , while she cannot possess property ? When that bond has been , as it often must be , unwarily sealed , what but slavery is the condition of dependence and degradation from which nothing can deliver except the foul price of one species of crime to which there is thus affixed a deceptive premium . Yet our divines , and under their direction our legislators , will claim for the
absolute indissolubility of thin indenture , the seal not merely of Nature but of Nature ' s God . " What ! own a spiritual being , a being made to know and adore God . and who is to outlive the sun and stars ! What ! chain to our lowest uses a being made for truth and virtue ! Convert into a brute instrument that intelligent nature on which the Idea of Duty lias dawned and which is a nobler type of God than all outward creation ! Every thing else may be owned in the universe ; but a moral rational being cannot be property . Suns and stars may be owned , but not the lowest spirit . " No , certainly not ; unless it £ e a woman ' s , But then , as our religious casuists would say ,
Untitled Article
tO € Channing on Slavery .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 202, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/10/
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