among them a negro woman, who from indolence had become so excessively fat, that she was entirely helpless, and her mistress before her death, had given up to her a full grown young woman, to attend to her wants. In dividing the estate, it was necessary that "old Chloe" should fall to some one of the heirs, and when her situation was declared to the commissioners who divided the negroes, they made an assessment on all the other lots, amounting to one hundred and fifty-two dollars, in favor of the lot of which Chloe made part, for her support and attendance during the remainder of her life. Yet it probably occurred to no one present at the time, that this was a commendable act. It was not dictated by the humanity of the commissioners. It was the result of the customs of the country, and no one who participated in the act, or who witnessed the transaction, would have been content with less. It has been charged against the slave-holder, that any good treatment of his slaves, proceeds from self-interest, not humanity. The actions of men are commonly influenced by considerations of interest, more or less remote. "Our notions of virtue," says Helvetius, "are corollaries from our notions of our own interests." But we will not stop to analyze the motive. To the slave, whether it proceeds from the one or the other, the result is the same. The slave is forbidden to read the Bible. And who but the abolitionist, has he to thank for that? We have never participated in the apprehensions of those who believed, that the slave would become less useful or more mischievous, by being taught to read. It might not be good policy to disturb our regulations in the present state of the public mind, and in the face of the impertinent and persevering intermeddling of abolitionism, and it might offer them another mode of annoying us and producing discontent among our slave population by the thousand and one lies that are yearly circulated by them on the subject of slavery. We confess, however, that these arguments have not appeared to us of much weight. We never saw a slave who could read, look into any other book than the Bible-and, commonly, the New Testament part of it-or some hymn book. The natural indolence of their dispositions, and the uniformity of their occupations, render any continued intellectual exertion extremely irksome to them. "The slave child," observes the author last mentioned, "follows the condition of the mother, though the father may be free." This is true, but we have law for it. It is an incident of slavery, not only justified by the practice of the Israelites, but enforced by the divine command to the chosen people, in which the legal maxim partus sequitur ventrem, is distinctly laid down. "Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself." This text requires no commentary. All abolitionists, in declaiming against slavery, speak of it as opposed to the laws of God, and when driven to the wall for arguments drawn from the sacred Scriptures, use garbled extracts, torn from the context, and without application to the subject, such as the following: "Bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee." "Be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." "Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of noon-day," etc. To justify their conduct in enticing away slaves from their owners, and giving them refuge and protection, we admit that they may fairly use a passage in Deuteronomy, which we quote entire.-Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him." This passage does unquestionably give color to the efforts of the abolitionists in affording protection to the runaway negroes of the South, and they are fairly entitled to use it, as we have observed. It may be inferred, however, that the intention of the law was to give shelter to those Hebrew slaves who were captured by the Heathen nations in their neighborhood, and by whom they were treated with great cruelty. Whatever may have been the design of this precept, the Old and New Testament furnish each a striking example in opposition to the inference which the abolitionists would deduce from it. The first is illustrated by the conduct of Sarai, the wife of the patriarch Abraham, and her Egyptian (i. e. African) slave, Hagar, who had grievously offended her mistress. "But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold thy maid is in thy hand; do unto her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence comest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarai. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return unto thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands." The second example to which we referred, is contained in the remarkable letter of the Apostle Paul to Philemon, which was written from Rome about the year of Christ 61, the subject of which was as follows:-Philemon was a Phrygian and a citizen of the town of Colossæ, and who, after Paul had converted him to Christianity, exercised his ministry in that town with great success,-had a slave named Onesimus, who ran away from his master and fled to Rome, where he met with Paul, who converted him also to the Christian religion, after which Paul sent him back to his master with a letter, in which he entreats him to forgive Onesimus.§ We are willing to concede to the abolitionists every advantage they can derive from the command in Deuteronomy above referred to; * Exod. xxi.: 2, 3, 4. + Deut. xxiii.: 15, 16. § See Philemon, 8th to 21st verse included. Gen. xvi.: 6, 7, 8, 9. the more especially as we have long regarded it good policy in us, not only to suffer them to keep all who run away from their masters, but to send them, in addition, a yearly supply of idle, worthless and insubordinate slaves, which, while it would free us from a fruitful source of annoyance, would be doing a good turn to the abolitionist and the runaway negro too. We are in dead earnest about this plan, and we propose that every man of a certain amount of property should find one, and where the means of individuals are not sufficient to reach that amount, a number of them should be put together to make it up. We confess that we have not, and we never had, a slave that we would be willing to condemn to the hopeless misery of the free blacks in the "free States;" but we would cheerfully submit to a reasonable assessment, according to our means, to procure one for the purpose. "The law is made for men-stealers, (1 Tim. i.: 10.) This text," observes William Goodell-we are rather chary about giving a title to these abolitionists, as we might be caught Mister-ing a nigger"by the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1794, was applied to 'all those who bring off slaves or KEEP or sell or buy them. And they declared this to be 'the highest kind of theft."" Yet in the sixth chapter of the very same epistle is contained the striking advice of Paul to Timothy, concerning the relative duties between master and slave, and which is so plain, that he must be excessively stupid or wilfully blind, who would not be struck with the force of the passage and its application to this very subject. Men-stealers, indeed!-there is no perversity of sense, or language so absurd, into which ignorance, prejudice, or fanaticism, will not lead the minds of men. If there is any theft in the case, the English and Yankees stole the negroes and sold them to our fathers, who were only accessories after the fact. "Let the galled jade wince, Our withers are unwrung." We can, with greater justice, and without any extraordinary stretch of the imagination or a similar abuse of language, retort the charge of man-stealing upon such abolitionists as steal or keep the runaway slaves of the South, by referring them to the 16th verse of the xxi. chap. of Exodus-"And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." In closing this article, we could easily point out to the authors of these tracts, and to the abolitionists in general of the United States, abundant exercise for their overflowing sympathies in objects at home, and within their reach, without coming so far to interfere with what concerns them not, and about which they show themselves superla tively ignorant. They have the sick to visit, the naked to clothe, and the hungry to feed, at their own doors. We have before us an article from the Louisville Journal, published in the "Globe" newspaper in the year 1841, showing the prices of female labor at the North, from which it appears, that after paying for rent, fuel, clothes, and other expenses necessary for the prosecution of their trade, women who are employed as seamstresses, have left, from their heart-breaking toil, but 20 cents a week for food and drink, or about 2 cents a day. A recent correspondent of the Washington "Union," writing from Philadelphia, observes that "the great increase of prostitution is to be attributed almost wholly to the shamefully trifling wages of the seamstresses and servant girls in the large cities. Many a beautiful woman, delicate, intelligent and refined, is literally driven into the dens of vice to save herself from starvation." But scenes of human distress and depravity at home pass unheeded by the abolitionist. His sympathies are only excited by tales of distant, exaggerated and fanciful misery. Oh, how false is that philanthropy, which always overlooks the suffering ever before its eyes, and seeks sustenance for its morbid sympathies, in objects without its control, and far beyond its power of affording alleviation! Proximorum incuriosi, longinqua sectamur, et ad ea cognoscenda iter ingredi et mare transmittere solemus; at quæ sub oculis posita negligimus To relieve suffering humanity around him, would only be charity, which costs something. The abolitionist chooses that his exertions for his fellows should be dignified by the more pretending, but empty name, of philanthropy, which costs nothing. To him we might forcibly apply the rebuke contained in those memorable words of the Savior of mankind—"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." * Pliny Ep. Lib. 8. 典 J. EGERIA. BY ADRIAN BEAUFAIN. I. THE worshipper of nature and the heart, The Spirit which has made thee what thou art, There hast thou caught the breathings from a shrine Too high for low devotion, and hast felt How much may sorrow's oracle divine, When its faint echoes thus o'ercome and melt. Beauty thou breathest o'er the inanimate vale, And in the night of silence, didst receive, From voices long forgotten, such a tale, As grief may love to hear, and grieving love believe. These have confirmed thee in the happier faith, And blessing all of earth for nature's sake. To mould and not o'erthrow, to bind and not to free. Blessings upon thy fetters! which have given The freedom which the winged nature craves, Subjection first, and ere the seal is riven, Such chastening as becomes the worst of slaves; The blindness which is born of profligate will, To couch, and the insanity which has its birth To trample down, deep down in native earth. IV. These make the harmony that works in thee, The rugged fetters of the heart to free, As with the utterance of a word in Heaven. Grow to an essence exquisite and strong, If thou would'st love, and God endow the whole. V. Go forth, in mercy, minister of gladness, Whose pulses sway the musical cords which bind The links of the selected, and from sadness Draw the best elements for heart and mind. Set free thy doves of nurture,-let thy song, Sweet song of meekness, bosom-toned and deep, Touch, and revive the wounded hearts that long Have only lived to want thee and to weep ; Oh! be thy spirit on the wild again, And let the waters from their blue abode, Bear gently forth the melancholy strain, Sweet strain, sad strain, dear music sent from God. |