SHAKSPEARE-JOHNSON-MILTON. 189 he night be better protected in the possession of his rights. In both cases, therefore, it was manifestly unjust, that a man should be made to labor during the whole of his life, and yet have no benefit from his labor. Hence the slave-trade and the colonial slavery were a violation of the very principle, upon which all law for the protection of property was founded. Whatever benefit was derived from that trade to an individual, it was derived from dishonor and dishonesty. He forced from the unhappy victim of it that, which the latter did not wish to give him; and he gave to the same victim that, which he in vain attempted to show, was an equivalent to the thing he took, it being a thing for which there was no equivalent, and which, if he had not obtained by force, he would not have possessed at all. The injustice complained of was not confined to the bare circumstance of robbing them of the right to their own labor. It was conspicuous throughout the system. They, who bought them, became guilty of all the crimes which had been committed in procuring them; and, when they possessed them, of all the crimes which belonged to their inhuman treatment. The injustice in the latter case amounted frequently to murder. For what was it but murder to pursue a practice, which produced untimely death to thousands of innocent and helpless beings? It was a duty which their lordships owed to their Creator, if they hoped for mercy, to do away this monstrous oppression." WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, SAMUEL JOHNSON. * This argument, considered as used to the particular persons, seems conclusive. I see not how Venitians or Englishmen, while they practice the purchase and sale of slaves, can much enforce or demand the law of doing to others as we would that they should do to us. JOHN MILTON. O execrable son, so to aspire Above his brethren, he himself assuming He made not lord; such title to Himself In all things that have beauty, there is nothing to man more comely than liberty. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, above all liberties. 190 ALEXANDER POPE-JOSEPH ADDISON-ROBERT BURNS. ALEXANDER POPE. Some safer world in depths of woods embraced, Essay on Man. God fix'd it certain, that, whatever day reason. JOSEPH ADDISON. O Liberty, thou goddess heav'nly bright, Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less rectified or swayed by When one hears of negroes, who, upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it sometimes happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner? What might not that savage greatness of soul, which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what color of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospects of happiness in another world as well as in this; and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it? Spectator, and Murray's English Reader. ROBERT BURNS. If I'm designed yon lordling's slave, Why was an independent wish Ere planted in my mind? If not, why am I subject to His cruelty or scorn? Or why has man the will and power WILLIAM COWPER. Then let us pray that come it may, That sense and worth o'er all the earth It's coming yet, for a' that; When man to man, the warld all o'er, Here's Freedom to them that would read, Here's Freedom to them that would write, There's none ever feared that the truth should be heard, May Liberty meet with success, May Prudence protect it from evil, May tyrants and tyranny tine in their mist, And wander their way to the devil. WILLIAM COWPER. Man finds his fellow guilty of a skin And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. The tender ties of parent, husband, friend, All other sorrows virtue may endure, But SLAVERY!! Virtue dreads it as her grave, Patience itself is meanness in a slave. Nature imprints upon whate'er we see That has a heart and life in it, "BE FREE!" Why did all-creating Nature Make the plant for which we toil? 191 Sighs must fan it, tears must water, Speaking from his throne the sky? Dwells in white and black the same. All sustain'd by patience, taught us Deem our nation brutes no longer, Prove that you have human feelings, Ere you proudly question ours. The Negro's Complaint. WILLIAM ROSCOE. Offspring of love divine, Humanity! To whom, his eldest born, th' Eternal gave And strike the string that from a kindred breast Dropping o'er fancied woes her useless tear ;- Form'd with the same capacity of pain, HANNAH MORE-JAMES MONTGOMERY. Faints, if not screen'd from sultry suns, and pines Wrongs of Africa. 193 HANNAH MORE. See the dire victim torn from social life, She! wretch forlorn, is dragg'd by hostile hands By felon hands, by one relentless stroke, The fibres twisting round a parent's heart, Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part. What wrongs, what injuries does Oppression plead, JAMES MONTGOMERY. Lives there a reptile baser than the slave? |