, on the score of cruelty
or neglected hospitality to our shipwrecked mariners? Suppose she slay
our ambassador, or our resident minister; would we not still further
force upon her, in a summary manner, those well-known rules of law,
and amenities of civilization, and principles of justice, which are
proclaimed to be right by the united voice of nations?

We are considering the subject of the enslavement of the African race
in this Republic. We are inquiring into the RIGHT of African Slavery.
We have asserted the right of slavery, as founded upon the principle
that universal right holds a just and hereditary control over wrong;
and as the African is a race of barbarians, and barbarism is wrong,
it follows that it is the right of civilization to hold the African
subject to those rules of justice which pertain to civilization, and
to protect him from the injustice, violence, and degradation, which
are the concomitants of barbarism. To deny this is to deny the
superiority of RIGHT over _wrong_. He who denies this, becomes the
advocate of barbarism; for, barbarism being below civilization, he
asserts its equality with civilization, and thus becomes its apologist
and advocate.

VIOLATION OF NATURAL RIGHT.

Such an one will claim that involuntary labor performed by the
African, in behalf of civilization; or the production, by his labor,
of material or fabrics to hide his nakedness, or adorn the human race,
or protect them from the cold, degrades the barbarian, because it
encroaches upon his natural right to go naked and houseless, and
perish with the cold. He is quite _primitive_ in his ideas of dress,
and ought to emigrate to a warm climate, like South Africa or South
America, where the elements of nature do not conspire with
civilization to degrade and oppress him. He perceives that our unjust
and oppressive laws actually punish, as an offense, the exposure to
view of man's natural external beauties! This is about as far as it is
safe to go on the subject of natural right, both from considerations
of propriety and modesty, and also, as it almost amounts to a
digression from the subject immediately under consideration; but we
are merely following the advocate of emancipation, on the score of
equality and natural right, just where his principles lead him; and as
it forcibly suggests the inexpediency of emancipation, and consequent
barbarism, on the score of morality and decency, it seems entirely
apposite to the subject