![]() How can the reason of a man be enlightened and strengthened, while we hold him in a state where reason is useless to him, and where its exercise may be injurious? We cannot seriously hope it. The same remark may be applied to the other arguments. The several means which the legislature or the master may use to attract him to that condition, which they have rendered him incapable of desiring, will always be without effect. It is easy to perceive that every motive, which incites the freeman to a lawful union, is lost to the slave by the simple fact of his slavery. A man does not marry when he cannot exercise marital authority, when his children must be born his equals, irrevocably destined to the wretchedness of their father when, having no power over their fate, he can neither know the duties, the privileges, the hopes, nor the cares which belong to the paternal relation. There exists, indeed, a profound and natural antipathy between the institution of marriage and that of slavery. But the negroes have generally escaped, and still escape, this salutary influence. It must, however, be allowed, that, in this respect, the masters have sometimes attempted to do what the law has not done. 1 It is true, that Edition: current Page: our colonial institutions have not favored, as much as they should have done, the marriage of the blacks. It is true, that the conjugal union is almost unknown among the slaves of our colonies. Because we have made him unworthy of liberty, can we forever refuse to him and his descendants the right of being free? True but if all these preparations cannot be made in a state of slavery, to exact that they shall have been made before servitude can cease,-is it not in other words to declare that it never shall cease? To insist on giving to a slave the thoughts, the habits, and morals of a free man, is to condemn him to remain always a slave. After you have accomplished all these things, you can without fear set him free. ![]() The truths of Christianity are almost unknown to him, and of the morals of the Gospel he knows only the name.Įnlighten his religion, reform his habits, establish for him the family relation, extend and fortify his intellect, until his mind can conceive the idea of the future, and acquire the power of forethought. The black now escapes almost entirely from the salutary bonds of marriage he is dissolute, idle, and improvident in more than one respect he resembles a depraved child rather than a man. Those, who, while they admit that slavery cannot always continue, desire to defer the period of emancipation, say that before breaking the chains of the negroes we must prepare them for independence. We are not to consider whether slavery is evil, and ought to terminate, but when and how it can best be brought to an end. It is at length comprehended in the field of Edition: current Page: practical politics. The question before us has ceased to be a theoretical one. This truth is now universally acknowledged, and one which slaveholders themselves do not deny. The Commission has not now to establish the position, that slavery can and ought to cease. They cannot serve the cause of the colonies, and can only injure those planters who still uphold them. ![]() Thank God, the Commission has no such false and odious doctrines to refute. It has been declared that the slave-trade was a benefit to its unfortunate victims and that the slave was happier in the tranquillity of bondage, than in the midst of the agitation and the struggles that accompany independence. It has been sometimes assumed that Negro Slavery had its foundation and justification in nature herself. The Commission, in the name of which I have the honor to speak, perceived, from the commencement of its labors, that its task was at once more simple and more grand. They, who have hitherto considered the subject of slavery, have, for the most part, endeavored to show its injustice or to mitigate its hardships.
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