PART III.

THE REPUBLICS OF THE WORLD.

History, the glass that reflects the images of the past, shows us, in every land where man has ruled, the form of human slavery.

We will pass by royal governments, so called. These were founded by the enslavement, or, what is the same, subjection of the people to their masters, either kings or nobles, or both. In all these nations, so far as we can learn, a lower class than subjects were found, even servants of servants."

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But in republics, those governments where freedom was, to a certain extent, enjoyed by all citizens, plebeian and patrician, publican and pharisee, was slavery mingled with freedom. Did the "peculiar institution" stand side by side with liberty in ancient Greece, that nursery of heroes, from whom were formed their gods; that mother of artists, poets, philosophers, who were better and more glorious than their gods?

Yes! Athens, the crowned queen of genius, where human intellect attained its highest triumphs of reason, unassisted by divine revelation-the city of Athens was, pre-eminently, the place of slaves. In numbers they far exceeded the free citizens. There was in the city a regular slave market-the Kuklos. A household was not considered complete without a slave. Aristotle calls these servants "working tools and possessions." The father of Demosthenes was a large slaveholder, and left these slaves to his son, the orator and friend of liberty. The slaves were of two kinds, those taken in war and those bought with money; and this system was universal throughout Greece. It was universal in all free governments.

History tells us that from the time of Moses to our own Washington, from the Theocratic to the Federal Republic, there has never been the formation of a government for free citizens where bond servants were not included and allowed. Search the records of every republic-Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Carthagenian, Goth, Venetian, Italian, Dutch, American-in all there will be found this class of servile dependents; "persons held to labor;" servants of free citizens; slaves of free masters.

It is worthy of note, also, that none of the nations descended

IS SLAVERY SANCTIONED IN HISTORY?

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from Ham have, so far as we can learn, ever formed for themselves a free or republican government,* (Carthage, in northern Africa, was a Phoenician colony, Japhetic in origin,) or borne the title of citizen. All have been ruled despotically as slaves, serfs, or dependents. The same is true of the descendants of Shem, with the single exception of the Hebrew Commonwealth, whose people were made free citizens by laws heavengiven; and yet they rejected this constitution, this citizenship of Israel, and would have "a king to rule over them :"-thus, they became subjects and Jews!

The capacity for true liberty requires that man shall govern himself by the best moral instincts of his nature, which, enlightening his reason, enable him to discern his duty towards other men, and do it accordingly. This capacity for freedom and civilization conjoined seems inherent only in the Japhetic peoples, the WHITE RACE.

Does not this indicate, decisively, that the white race must lead, if not rule, in the march of human improvement? That if the highest civilization, freedom of conscience, obedience to constitutional law, and the knowledge of the true God-which is the key to all excellence-be ever attained by the dark-colored races of Shem and of Ham, they must be taught, influenced, and guided by the white race?

There is another grand instinct of morality and sentiment of social justice, without which the human becomes brutish, that has always distinguished the white race-it has been obedient to the Eden law of marriage. A plurality of wives has never been meral allowed in Japhetic nations; and there has never been a repub- har sp lican government that has permitted polygamy!

This important fact should be carefully studied and earnestly brought out in the controversy now raging in our land. An attempt has been made to identify negro slavery, as legalized under our Constitution, with the polygamy of Brigham Young's colony in Utah, styling these two "the twin relics of barbarism.'

*The Republic of Liberia is not taken into this account. Its rise and progress are remarkable evidences of the beneficial effect which slavery in our southern States has had on the African negroes trained under it. We shall prove this by and by. But Liberia is no exception to the rule that black men have never established for themselves a free republican government, since that was organized by white men. Americans, northern pro-slavery philanthropists, and southern slaveholders-all, in works, Christian-together purchased the domain in Africa, and have ever been the sustaining power, under God, to build up that republic of refuge for the negro, where fanatics, let us hope, will never hinder him from the good he may enjoy and do, because he cannot reach, with one talent, all the duties and dignities that ten talents might be able to attain.

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The friends of "the Constitution as it was framed, and the Union as it is," should never, for a moment, permit these false assumptions to go uncontradicted. The tendency of falsehood is always to evil, and in this case it would most assuredly be disastrous and destructive. Slavery is not a relic of barbarism. It has been the means of civilization to ignorant barbarians; the means of enlightenment and salvation to heathen idolaters; the means of freedom and improvement to those nations that worship the true God. It has been the rule of all republican governments, and it has been the practice in all the civilized and Christian nations of the world. The learning of Greece, the laws of Rome, the liturgies of the church, the life of commerce, the liberty of the Japhetic peoples, are all based on, and bound up in, that prophetic utterance of Noah, which gave the leadership to the white race. And all events have been developed in accordance with the destiny of his three sons, which he predicted or pronounced.

Through the race of Shem came the knowledge of the true God; the Saviour was in the flesh of this grand race; and the divine revelation was made through its sons. "Salvation is of

the Jews." "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." Truly, Shem was blessed. But the mastership was given to Japheth. It is his now; and his descendants have always led in the improvement of material good and mental power. Since "the Gospel was preached to the Gentiles," they have also led in moral enlightenment and religious truth.

That the Japhetic nations had gained and kept this mastership over other races, by the subjection of the sensual to the moral, in their own nature, is proven by history, sacred as well as secular. They had, intuitively, perceived the right in regard to marriage, that primal rule and fountain of all good in domestic and social life. They saw that no system, save monogamy could be just among men, even if the rights and happiness of woman were thrown out of the account. But as woman is the root of humanity, the right of the child to freedom must rest on the condition of the mother. This, the legislators of Greece and Rome saw by the light of reason, and established their laws in accordance with the truth of nature, which always agrees with the truth of revelation.

This agreement of all free States, heathen as well as worshipers of the true God, in guarding the right of the free woman to her own husband, as sacredly as the right of the free man to his own wife, is a remarkable fact, when we take into consideration the other established fact, that all these free States were slaveholding.

We find, then, that republican freedom and domestic servitude have, in history, always been found together; but republican freedom and polygamy never, in any age or nation, have been united. Those persons who assert the contrary, should look over their historical lessons more carefully. Thus we come to the result the white race had, in its natural characteristics, the moral virtues that conserve the well-being and improvement of society, and aid men to the right understanding of the laws of God. St. Paul, in his wonderful epistle to his Roman converts, alludes to these characteristics, when laying down the following propositions:

"For as many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law.

(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves.

Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else ex, cusing one another;)

In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, accord, ing to my gospel.”—Romans, 2: 12 to 16.

Here we are taught that Gentiles, heathen men, may be "doers of the law" of God, because it has been "written in their hearts;” therefore, without such special revelation as had, on Mount Sinai, been given to the Hebrews, the Roman people might have obeyed God, acceptably, because they could "do by nature the things contained in the law."

Now, these propositions must have had reference chiefly to the laws of the second table, called moral laws, or, the duties of men to each other; because all knowledge of the true God was utterly lost, and idolatry had, like Egyptian darkness, settled over the nations of the earth. The Romans, when St. Paul thus addressed them, worshipped thirty thousand acknowledged divinities. They could have had no idea, no conception of the "Lord God"—"God alone"- God, and not man, the holy one." Nor could they, without a divine revelation, ever have attained to the knowledge of their duty towards God, as laid down in the first table of the decalogue.

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But the Greeks, the Romans, and all Japhetic peoples, so far as we know from history, had embodied in their laws and customs the identical enactments, or their equivalents, of the laws of the second table, which Paul thus sums up in this very epistle :

"Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

"Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

"For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

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'Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."-Romans, 13: 7-10.

Obedience to parents was enforced in Roman law by the death penalty; murder, adultery, theft, false witness, were crimes of the deepest obliquity, and severely punished. But SLAVERY"bondage; the state of entire subjection of one person to the will of another," (Webster;) "slavery, the obligation to labor for the benefit of the master without the contract or consent of the servant," (Paley :)—this slavery, in its most rigorous form, had been legalized and practiced by the Romans from their first gathering on Mount Palatine till the end of the republic, a period of more than seven hundred years. Neither was slavery ever accounted as evil in the republic, or as causing evil to their liberties.

Then onward, during the empire, till its final overthrow, and through the long ages of Gothic rule and papal power, while Christianity was gaining its first converts under St. Paul and St. Peter, and its great triumphs under their successors, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and all the "Fathers"-this institution of bondservice for certain classes of persons, either as slaves or serfs, was the rule in every part of Christian Europe, Asia, and Africa; it was never questioned as a right by any legislator, nor condemned as a sin or a wrong by any ethical or religious writer for more than a thousand years after the Christian era.

True, the expediency (that is, profitableness) of holding white men in slavery began to be questioned at an earlier period. Captives taken in war were allowed to ransom themselves or be exchanged, and the suppression of Feudalism in Europe, or rather in France, by Louis XI, who virtually freed the serfs from their masters by making all his subjects vassals, and reducing princes and peasants to the condition of slaves-these changes had taken place. But that negro slavery was wrong, "damnably wrong".

the sum of all villanies," was never thought of. Would the English government have made the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, and agreed "to furnish the Spanish colonies with 4,000 negroes annually for a term of thirty years," if this servitude had ever been branded as sin?- 66 a sin per se?". -a sin so revolting that "no slaveholder could be considered a Christian?"

Was this universal sanction of slavery wrong? Was the agreement of the most moral and best civilized nations among heathen,