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Page 19
Will the gentlemen tell us that it is the quantity of slaves, not the
quality of slavery, which takes from a government the republican
form? Will they tell us (for they have not yet told us) that there are
constitutional grounds (to say nothing of common sense) upon which the
slavery which now exists in Missouri may be reconciled with a republican
form of government, while any addition to the number of its slaves (the
quality of slavery remaining the same) from the other States, will
be repugnant to that form, and metamorphose it into some nondescript
government disowned by the Constitution? They cannot have recourse to
the treaty of 1803 for such a distinction, since independently of what I
have before observed on that head, the gentlemen have contended that the
treaty has nothing to do with the matter.
They have cut themselves off from all chance of a convenient distinction
in or out of that treaty, by insisting that slavery beyond the old
United States is rejected by the Constitution, and by the law of God
as discoverable by the aid of either reason or revelation; and moreover
that the treaty does not include the case, and if it did could not make
it better. They have, therefore, completely discredited their own theory
by their own practice, and left us no theory worthy of being seriously
controverted. This peculiarity in reasoning of giving out a universal
principle, and coupling with it a practical concession that it is wholly
fallacious, has indeed run through the greater part of the arguments
on the other side; but it is not, as I think, the more imposing on that
account, or the less liable to the criticism which I have here bestowed
upon it.
* * * * *
But let us proceed to take a rapid glance at the reasons which have been
assigned for this notion that involuntary servitude and a republican
form of government are perfect antipathies. The gentleman from New
Hampshire has defined a republican government to be that in which all
the men participate in its power and privileges; from whence it follows
that where there are slaves, it can have no existence. A definition is
no proof, however, and even if it be dignified (as I think it was) with
the name of a maxim, the matter is not much mended. It is Lord Bacon
who says "That nothing is so easily made as a maxim"; and certainly a
definition is manufactured with equal facility. A political maxim is
the work of induction, and cannot stand against experience, or stand on
anything but experience. But this maxim, or definition, or whatever else
it may be, sets facts at defiance. If you go back to antiquity, you will
obtain no countenance for this hypothesis; and if you look at home you
will gain still less. I have read that Sparta, and Rome, and Athens, and
many others of the ancient family, were republics. They were so in form
undoubtedly--the last approaching nearer to a perfect democracy than any
other government which has yet been known in the world. Judging of
them also by their fruits, they were of the highest order of republics.
Sparta could scarcely be any other than a republic, when a Spartan
matron could say to her son just marching to battle, "Return victorious,
or return no more."
It was the unconquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by republican
habits and institutions, that illustrated the pass of Thermopylae. Yet
slavery was not only tolerated in Sparta, but was established by one
of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its object the
encouragement of that very spirit. Attica was full of slaves--yet the
love of liberty was its characteristic. What else was it that foiled the
whole power of Persia at Marathon and Salamis? What other soil than that
which the genial sun of republican freedom illuminated and warmed,
could have produced such men as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and
Epaminondas? Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large. It is
sufficient to name the mighty mistress of the world, before Sylla gave
the first stab to her liberties and the great dictator accomplished
their final ruin, to be reminded of the practicability of union between
civil slavery and an ardent love of liberty cherished by republican
establishments.
If we return home for instruction upon this point, we perceive that same
union exemplified in many a State, in which "Liberty has a temple in
every house, an altar in every heart," while involuntary servitude is
seen in every direction.
Is it denied that those States possess a republican form of government?
If it is, why does our power of correction sleep? Why is the
constitutional guaranty suffered to be inactive? Why am I permitted to
fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the
discussion of the "_nugae canorae_" (for so I think them) that have been
forced into this debate contrary to all the remonstrances of taste
and prudence? Do gentlemen perceive the consequences to which their
arguments must lead if they are of any value? Do they reflect that they
lead to emancipation in the old United States--or to an exclusion of
Delaware, Maryland, and all the South, and a great portion of the West
from the Union? My honorable friend from Virginia has no business here,
if this disorganizing creed be anything but the production of a heated
brain. The State to which I belong, must "perform a lustration"--must
purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and
emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the
gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have
any title to appear in this high assembly. It will be in vain to urge
that the old United States are exceptions to the rule--or rather (as the
gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule
to them. There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a
rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States
by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they
point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded
manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed
themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no
disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps
not--but who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a
pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the Constitution, will not
grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? It is the
natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever
it finds it. New States, colonized by the apostles of this principle,
will enable it to set on foot a fanatical crusade against all who still
continue to tolerate it, although no practicable means are pointed out
by which they can get rid of it consistently with their own safety. At
any rate, a present forbearing disposition, in a few or in many, is not
a security upon which much reliance can be placed upon a subject as to
which so many selfish interests and ardent feelings are connected with
the cold calculations of policy. Admitting, however, that the old United
States are in no danger from this principle--why is it so? There can be
no other answer (which these zealous enemies of slavery can use) than
that the Constitution recognizes slavery as existing or capable of
existing in those States. The Constitution, then, admits that slavery
and a republican form of government are not incongruous. It associates
and binds them up together and repudiates this wild imagination which
the gentlemen have pressed upon us with such an air of triumph. But the
Constitution does more, as I have heretofore proved. It concedes that
slavery may exist in a new State, as well as in an old one--since the
language in which it recognizes slavery comprehends new States as well
as actual. I trust then that I shall be forgiven if I suggest, that no
eccentricity in argument can be more trying to human patience, than a
formal assertion that a constitution, to which slave-holding States were
the most numerous parties, in which slaves are treated as property
as well as persons, and provision is made for the security of that
property, and even for an augmentation of it by a temporary importation
from Africa, with a clause commanding Congress to guarantee a republican
form of government to those very States, as well as to others,
authorizes you to determine that slavery and a republican form of
government cannot coexist.
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