FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   1286   1287   1288   1289   1290   1291   1292   1293   1294   1295   1296   1297   1298   1299   1300   1301   1302   1303   1304   1305   1306   1307   1308   1309   1310  
1311   1312   1313   1314   1315   1316   1317   1318   1319   1320   1321   1322   1323   1324   1325   1326   1327   1328   1329   1330   1331   1332   1333   1334   1335   >>   >|  
this country might find in this discourse matter of encouragement, and that our anti-christian prejudices against the colored man might be strengthened and confirmed by its malignant vituperation and sarcasm. On this point we have sympathized with the forebodings of an eloquent writer in the London Enquirer:-- "We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people than his (Carlyle's) last composition. Every cruel practice of social exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom. The slave-holder, of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European celebrity. But it is not merely the slave who will feel Mr. Carlyle's hand in the torture of his flesh, the riveting of his fetters, and the denial of light to his mind. The free black will feel him, too, in the more contemptuous and abhorrent scowl of his brother man, who will easily derive from this unfortunate essay the belief that his inhuman feelings are of divine ordination. It is a true work of the Devil, the fostering of a tyrannical prejudice. Far and wide over space, and long into the future, the winged words of evil counsel will go. In the market-place, in the house, in the theatre, and in the church,--by land and by sea, in all the haunts of men,--their influence will be felt in a perennial growth of hate and scorn, and suffering and resentment. Amongst the sufferers will be many to whom education has given every refined susceptibility that makes contempt and exclusion bitter. Men and women, faithful and diligent, loving and worthy to be loved, and bearing, it may be, no more than an almost imperceptible trace of African descent, will continue yet longer to be banished from the social meal of the white man, and to be spurned from his presence in the house of God, because a writer of genius has lent the weight of his authority and his fame, if not of his power, to the perpetuation of a prejudice which Christianity was undermining." A more recent production, 'Latter Day Pamphlets', in which man's capability of self-government is more than doubted, democracy somewhat contemptuously sneered at, and the "model republic" itself stigmatized as a "nation of bores," may have a salutary effect in restraining our admiration and in lessening our respect for the defender and eulogist of slavery. The sweeping impartiality with which in this latter production h
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   1286   1287   1288   1289   1290   1291   1292   1293   1294   1295   1296   1297   1298   1299   1300   1301   1302   1303   1304   1305   1306   1307   1308   1309   1310  
1311   1312   1313   1314   1315   1316   1317   1318   1319   1320   1321   1322   1323   1324   1325   1326   1327   1328   1329   1330   1331   1332   1333   1334   1335   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
writer
 

prejudice

 
social
 

Carlyle

 

exclusion

 

derive

 

production

 
faithful
 

continue

 
banished

longer

 
diligent
 

loving

 

imperceptible

 

African

 

bearing

 

worthy

 

descent

 

susceptibility

 

perennial


growth

 

influence

 

haunts

 
suffering
 

resentment

 

refined

 

church

 

contempt

 

education

 
Amongst

sufferers

 

bitter

 

genius

 

lessening

 

respect

 

doubted

 

democracy

 

government

 

Pamphlets

 

defender


capability

 

contemptuously

 
sneered
 
nation
 

salutary

 

effect

 

stigmatized

 

admiration

 

republic

 
eulogist