the flatteries which you hear, as if your participation in the national sovereignty made you equal to the noblest of your race. You have many and great deficiencies to be remedied; and the remedy lies, not in the ballot-box, not in the exercise of your political powers, but in the faithful education of yourselves and your children. These truths you have often heard and slept over. Awake! Resolve earnestly on Self-culture. Make yourselves worthy of your free institutions, and strengthen and perpetuate them by your intelligence and your virtues. THE END. PALMER and CLAYTON, Printers, 9, Crane Court, Fleet Street. REMARKS C ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION, IN A LETTER ΤΟ JONATHAN PHILLIPS, ESQ. BY W. E. CHANNING. LONDON: WILEY AND PUTNAM, 35, AND CHARLES FOX, 67, LETTER. MY DEAR SIR, ON reading Mr. Clay's speech on Slavery, many thoughts were suggested to me which I wished to communicate; and our conversation of last evening confirmed me in the purpose of laying them before the public. I have resolved to give my views in the form of a letter, because I can do my work more easily and rapidly in this way than in any other. A general, methodical discussion of the subject would be more agreeable to me; but we must do what we can. I must write in haste, or not at all. If others would take the subject in hand, I should gladly be silent. Something ought to be spoken on the occasion; but who will speak? My range of topics will be somewhat large; nor, if good can be done, shall I hesitate to stray beyond the document which first suggested this communication. I shall often be obliged to introduce the name of Mr. Clay; but, as you will see, I regard him in this discussion, simply as the representative of a body of men, simply as having given wide circulation to a set of opinions. I have nothing to do with his motives. It is common to ascribe the efforts of politicians to selfish aims. But why mix up the man with the cause? In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions, are often worse than those we assail. Besides, our business is with the arguments, not the character of an adversary. A speech is not refuted by imputations, true or false, on the speaker. There is indeed a general presumption against a politician's purity of purpose; but public men differ in character as much as private; and when a statesman holds an honourable place in his class, and brings high gifts to a discussion, he ought to be listened to with impartiality and respect. For one, I desire that slavery should be defended by the ablest men among its upholders. In the long run, truth is aided by nothing so much as by opposition, and by the opposition of those who can give the full strength of the argument on the side of error. In an age of authority and spiritual bondage, the opinions of an individual are often important, sometimes decisive. One voice may determine the judgment of a country. But in an age of free discussion, little is to be feared from great names, on whatever side arrayed. When I hear a man complaining, that some cause, which he has at heart, will be put back for years by a speech or a book, I suspect that his attachment to it is a prejudice, that he has no consciousness of standing on a rock. The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed; and discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error -a good never to be expected in an unenquiring age. I have said, that my concern is wholly with Mr. Clay's speech, not with the author; and I would add, that in the greater part of the discussion which is to follow, my concern will be with slavery and not with the slaveholder. Principles, not men, are what I wish to examine and judge. For the sake of truth and good temper, personalities are to be shunned as far as they may. I shall speak strongly of slavery, for we serve neither truth nor virtue by pruning discourse into tameness; but a criminal institution does not necessarily imply any singular criminality in those who uphold it. An institution, the growth of barbarous times, transmitted from distant ages, and "sanctified" by the laws, is a very different thing, as far as the character of its friends is concerned, from what it would be, were it deliberately adopted at the present day. I must indeed ascribe much culpableness to the body of slaveholders, just as I see much to blame in political parties; but do I therefore set down all the members of these classes as unprincipled men? The injustice, criminality, inhumanity of a practice we can judge. The guilt |