The Dublin University Magazine for December, 1856, says: "The United States must learn, from the example of Rome, that Christianity and the pagan institution of slavery cannot coexist together. The Republic must take her side and choose her favorite child; for if she love the one, she must hate the other." THE VOICE OF SCOTLAND. BEATTIE says:— "Slavery is inconsistent with the dearest and most essential rights of man's nature; it is detrimental to virtue and industry; it hardens the heart to those tender sympathies which form the most lovely part of human character; it involves the innocent in hopeless misery, in order to procure wealth and pleasure for the authors of that misery; it seeks to degrade into brutes beings whom the Lord of Heaven and Earth endowed with rational souls, and created for immortality; in short, it is utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, humanity, and conscience. It is impossible for a considerate and unprejudiced mind, to think of slavery without horror." MILLER says: "The human mind revolts at a serious discussion of the subject of slavery. Every individual, whatever be his country or complexion, is entitled to freedom." MACKNIGHT says: "Men-stealers are inserted among the daring criminals against whom the law of God directed its awful curses. These were persons who kidnapped men to sell them for slaves; and this practice seems inseparable from the other iniquities and oppressions of slavery; nor can a slave dealer easily keep free from this criminality, if indeed the receiver is as bad as the thief." THE VOICE OF FRANCE. LAFAYETTE says: "I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery." Again, while in the prison of Magdeburg, he says:— "I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne; but I hope Madame de Lafayette will take care that the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty." O. LAFAYETTE, grandson of General Lafayette, in a letter under date of April 26th, 1851, says : "This great question of the Abolition of Negro Slavery, which has my entire sympathy, appears to me to have established its importance throughout the world. At the present time, the States of the Peninsula, if I do not deceive myself, are the only European powers who still continue to possess slaves; and America, while continuing to uphold slavery, feels daily, more and more how heavily it weighs upon her destinies." MONTESQUIEN asks : "What civil law can restrain a slave from running away, since he is not a member of society ?" Again, he says: 66 Slavery is contrary to the fundamental principles of all societies." Again : "In democracies, where they are all upon an equality, slavery is contrary to the principles of the Constitution." Again : Nothing puts one nearer the condition of a brute than always to see freemen and not be free." Again : "Even the earth itself, which teems with profusion under the cultivating hand of the free born laborer, shrinks into barrenness from the contaminating sweat of a slave." LOUIS X. issued the following edict : "As all men are by nature free born, and as this Kingdom is called the Kingdom of Franks, (freemen) it shall be so in reality. It is therefore decreed that enfranchisement shall be granted throughout the whole Kingdom upon just and reasonable terms." BUFFON Says: "It is apparent that the unfortunate negroes are endowed with excellent hearts, and possess the seeds of every human virtue. I cannot write their history without lamenting their miserable condition." "Humanity revolts at those odious oppressions that result from avarice." ROUSSEAU Says: "The terms slavery and right, contradict and exclude each other." BRISSOT Says: "Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of divine law, and a degradation of human nature." "Those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell or buy slaves or free men. To steal a man is the highest kind of theft." GOETHE says: "Such busy multitudes I fain would see LUTHER says: "Unjust violence is, by no means, the ordinance of God, and therefore can bind no one in conscience and right, to obey, whether the command comes from pope, emperor, king or master." An able German writer of the present day, says, in a recent letter to his friends in this country : "Consider that the cause of American liberty is the cause of universal liberty; its failure, a triumph of despotism everywhere. Remember that while American liberty is the great argument of European Democracy, American slavery is the greater argument of its despotism. Remember that all our actions should be governed by the golden rule, whether individual, social, or political; and no government, and, above all, no republican government, is safe in the hands of men that practically deny that rule. Will you support by your vote a system that recognizes property of man in man? A system which sanctions the sale of the child by its own father, regardless of the purpose of the buyer? What need is there to present to you the unmitigated wrong of slavery? It is the shame of our age that argument is needed against slavery. "Liberty is no exclusive property; it is the property of mankind of all ages. She is immortal, though crushed, can never die ; though banished, she will return; though fettered, she will yet be free." THE VOICE OF ITALY. CICERO says :— "By the grand laws of nature, all men are born free, and this law is universally binding upon all men." Again, he says :— "Eternal justice is the basis of all human laws." Again : "Law is not something wrought out by man's ingenuity, nor is it a decree of the people, but it is something eternal, governing the world by the wisdom of its commands and prohibitions." Again : "Whatever is just is also the true law, nor can this true law be abrogated by any written enactments." Again: "If there be such a power in the decrees and commands of fools, that the nature of things is changed by their votes, why do they not decree that what is bad and pernicious shall be regarded as good and wholesome, or why, if the law can make wrong right, can it not make bad good?" Again: "Those who have made pernicious and unjust decrees, have made anything rather than laws." Again: "The law of all nations forbids one man to pursue his advantage at the expense of another." LACTANTIUS says : "Justice teaches men to know God and to love men, to love and assist one another, being all equally the children of God." LEO X. says : "Not only does the Christian religion, but nature herself cry out against the state of slavery." |