sistence;
is subject to, and protected by law; becomes semi-civilized, and in
rare, individual instances, as a _lusus naturae_, even aspires to the
nobler prerogatives of mind. The meanest slave that wears the shackle
or feels the whip of civilization, in the reluctant performance of
coerced labor, is a far nobler being than the African barbarian in his
native wilds.

OF THE DEGRADATION OF LABOR.

Labor degrades no man. Labor is honorable, because the products of
labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and
happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion
itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and
elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons
of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do
right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing
wrong. The man only is degraded who, voluntarily or by coercion, does
wrong, or neglects to do right. To talk of the degradation of labor,
whether coerced or free, is, therefore, preposterous.

HUMAN EQUALITY.

But the question of emancipation is started and agitated on the ground
of human _equality_. It is the supposed equality of the African with
the white race, that is the pretext for emancipation, and the
foundation of the assumed right and expediency of emancipation. It has
been supposed by some, that the enunciation of human equality in the
American Declaration of Independence was intended for all the races
of men in the world. Such a supposition is totally unfounded, and
unwarrantable in the very nature of things. In the first place, it is
not true; and in the next place, the writer of that Declaration meant
no such thing, for he held slaves, and knew their inferiority. What a
monstrous act of hypocrisy and folly it would have been in the author
of that instrument, and his cotemporaries, to declare that all men are
created _free_ when they knew millions are born slaves, or when they
knew no _equality_ existed, even of right, between the barbarian and
the man whose sense of justice and perception of RIGHT secured to him
the approbation of Heaven and his own conscience, by a recognition of
and obedience to the laws of morality, and conformity to the just
rules of civilization. They wrote that Declaration for white
men,--meaning white men,--because it did not and could not apply to
the barbarous and savage nations. They saw the world in chains