THE HIGHER LAW.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for January, 1851.]

PROFESSOR STUART appears to have written this pamphlet from patriotic motives, with an earnest desire to allay the uncalled for popular agitation on the subject of negro slavery, and to contribute his share towards the maintenance of domestic peace, and the preservation of the Union. His chief purpose appears to have been to remove the scruples of some of his friends, by showing that a man may with a good conscience support the federal constitution although it recognizes slavery, and requires the slave escaping into a non-slaveholding state to be given up on the demand of his owner; and though he is no great proficient in moral theology, and his style is prolix, prosy, and at times even garrulous, he has shown this to the satisfaction of all but mere factionists and cavillers.

We do not think that the learned professor has made out his case as conclusively as he might have done. He is a man of respectable ability and attainments, but not remarkable for the strength or acuteness of his logical powers. He makes now and then a slip, of which an uncandid critic might take advantage. He is strongly opposed to slavery, but wishes at the same time to prove that the Christian may with a good conscience be a slaveholder. In order to prove this, he asserts and proves that slavery is not malum in se, and therefore, if a sin at all, it is so only accidentally. But in order to justify his sincere aversion to slavery, he maintains that it is always and every where an evil, and excuses the old patriarchs for holding slaves only on the ground of invincible ignorance! In the darkness of those early ages men knew and could know no better! This we need not say is in contradiction to his assertion that slavery is not malum in se. But passing over slips of this sort,-somewhat common in all Professor Stuart's writings that have fallen under our notice,-and looking only to the main design and argument of the pamphlet, we can very cheerfully commend it to our Protestant readers.

* Conscience and the Constitution, with remarks on the recent Speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster in the Senate of the United States on the Subject of Slavery. By MOSES STUART. Boston: 1850.

VOL. XVII-1

For ourselves we agree with Professor Stuart that slavery is not malum in se. We hold that in some cases at least slavery is justifiable, and to the slave even a blessing. To the slave it is always good or evil according as he wills it to be one or the other, or according to the spirit with which he bears it. If he regards it as a penance, and submits to it in a true penitential spirit, it is a blessing to him, a great mercy.―as are on the same condition to every one of us all the sufferings and afflictions of this life. We should covet in this world, not happiness, but suffering, and the more grievous our afflictions, the more should we rejoice and give thanks. Christianity does not teach carnal Judaism, but condemns it, and commands its opposite as the condition of all real good, whether for this world or for that which is to come. To the master, slavery is not an evil, when he does not abuse it; when he has not himself participated in reducing those born free to servitude; when he treats his slaves with kindness and humanity, and faithfully watches over their moral and religious well-being. The relation of master and man, as to the authority of the former and the subjection of the latter, differs in nothing from the relation of father and son while the son is under age, and there is nothing which necessarily makes the relation less advantageous to either party in the one case than in the other.

That slavery as it exists in the southern states is an evil, we do not doubt; but it is so accidentally, not necessarily. The evil is not in the relation of slavery itself, but in the fact that the great body of the masters do not bring up their slaves in the church of God, and train or suffer them to be trained to observe the precepts of the divine law. The mass of the slaves in this country grow up in heresy or heathenism, to the everlasting destruction of their souls. Here is the evil we see and deplore, an evil, however, which none but Catholics do or can feel with much vividness. It is an evil which does not and cannot weigh much with Protestants, for the slaves in general are as little heathen and fully as orthodox as their masters. If the masters were good Catholics, as they ought to be, and are under the condemnation of God for not being, and brought up, as they are bound to do, their slaves in the belief and practice of the Catholic religion, there would be no evil in negro slavery to disturb us. The only evils we see in it are moral and spiritual, inseparable from heresy and heathenism.

The

physical and sentimental evils, or pretended evils, about which abolitionists and philanthropists keep up such a clamor, do not move us in the least. We place not the slightest value on what the men of this world call liberty, and we are taught by religion that poverty and suffering are far more enviable than riches and sensual enjoyment.

But conceding the evil of slavery as it exists in this country, it is far from certain that it is an evil that would be mitigated by emancipation, or that emancipation would not be even a greater evil. The negroes are here, and here they must remain. This is a "fixed fact." Taking the American people as they are, and as they are likely to be for some time to come, with their pride, prejudices, devotion to material interests, and hatred or disregard of Christian truth and morals, it is clear to us that the condition of the negro as a slave is even less evil than would be his condition as a freedman. The freed negroes amongst us are as a body, to say the least, no less immoral and heathen than the slaves themselves. They are the pests of our northern cities, especially since they have come under the protection of our philanthropists. With a few honorable exceptions, they are low and degraded, steeped in vice and overflowing with crime. Even in our own city, almost at the moment we write, they are parading our streets in armed bands, for the avowed purpose of resisting the execution of the laws. Let loose some two or three millions like them, and there would be no living in the American community. Give them freedom and the right to vote in our elections, and the whole country would be at the mercy of the lowest and most worthless of our demagogues. With only Protestantism, indifferentism, infidelity, or savage fanaticism to restrain them, all their base and disorderly passions would be unchained, and our community would be a hell upon earth. No; before we talk of emancipation, before we can venture upon it, with the least conceivable advantage to the slaves, we must train them, and train the white American people also, to habits of self-denial and moral virtue under the regimen of the Catholic Church, which alone has power to subdue the barbarous elements of our nature, and to enable men of widely different races, complexions, and characteristics to live together in the bonds of peace and brotherhood. We cannot, therefore, agree with Professor Stuart in his demand for emancipation, and we are decidedly opposed, for the present at least, not only to the fanatical proceed

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ings set on foot by our miserable abolitionists and philanthropists to effect emancipation, but to emancipation itself. In the present state of things, emancipation would be a greater evil than slavery, and of two evils we are bound to choose the least. We have heard enough of liberty and the rights of man; it is high time to hear something of the duties of men and the rights of authority.

We write very deliberately, and are prepared for all the obloquy which may be showered upon us for what we write. The cry of liberty has gone forth; we, as well as others, have heard it; it has gone forth and been echoed and reëchoed from every quarter, till the world has become maddened with it. The voice of law, of order, of wisdom, of justice, of truth, of experience, of common sense, is drowned in the tumultuous shouts of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!-shouts fit, in the sense they are uttered, only for assembled demons declaring war upon the eternal God. But this should be our shame, not our boast. It ought not

to be, and, if the world is to continue, must soon cease to be. Society cannot subsist where the rights of authority are forgotten, and loyalty and obedience are foresworn. There is no use in multiplying words on the subject. Man is a social being, and cannot live without society; society is impracticable and inconceivable without government; and government is impossible where its right to command is denied, or the obligation to obey it is not recognized. It is of the essence of government to restrain, and a government that imposes no restraint, that leaves every one free to do whatever seemeth right in his own eyes, is no government at all. The first want of every people is strong and efficient government, a regularly constituted authority, that has the right and the power to enforce submission to its will. No matter what the form of your government, no matter in whose hands the power is lodged,-in the hands of the king, of the lords, or the commons,-it must, in so far as government at all, be sovereign, clothed, under God, with supreme authority, and be respected as such, or society is only Bedlam without its keeper.

This is the great truth the American people, in their insane clamor about the rights of man and the largest liberty, that is to say, full license to every man, lose sight of, or in reality deny; and it is on this truth, not on liberty, for which all are crying out, that it is necessary now to insist, both in season and out of season. There may be times and