erience of men, do homage at the shrine of
justice, as the arbiter of right. This great moral tribunal,
established at the dawn of creation, has existed through all time, and
still exists; and at this tribunal we try barbarism, and find it to be
wrong, because it conduces to the misery and degradation of men. At
this tribunal, we find civilization to be right, because it conduces
to the happiness and welfare of mankind. This being so (and the man
who denies it, is a barbarian), it follows, that civilization,
carrying with it the preponderating elements of right and justice,
holds a just and hereditary control over barbarism, which is wrong.
When we assert, therefore, the right of slavery, because it is just
that barbarism shall subserve civilization, we only say it is just
that wrong should subserve right;--a proposition, which, certainly,
ought to commend itself to the common sense, the intellect, and the
conscience of every good man.

Some assert that civilization should subserve barbarism; but when
tried by our rule, they at once see that it is preposterous to assume
that right should subserve wrong.

FORFEITURE OF NATURAL RIGHT.

Some propose, that the advantages of the great and little, the served
and the servant, the good and the bad, should be reciprocal; that that
which is used is, or should be, as much advantaged in the using as is
the user. I would ask them--what particular advantage it is to the
oyster to be devoured? or what return can the earth make to the sun
for his rays, constantly poured upon it? Some assert that every human
being is unqualifiedly endowed by nature with the right of individual
freedom. This we deny. We assert that barbarism is not humanity, and
cannot claim to exercise the prerogative of civilization, which it has
ignored, or which it never knew. We assert that the murderer has
forfeited that right; and more than this, with the element of murder
developed in him, originally, he never was entitled to freedom.
Prisons, and even dungeons, are as necessary and proper as schools and
colleges, but not more so than servitude to the barbarian. They are
all appliances of right and justice and civilization, not to make the
good subserve the bad, but to make the bad subserve the good.

TAKING THE EXCEPTION FOR THE RULE.

It will not do for men to pretend that they do not know which is right
and which is wrong; what is civilization and what is barbarism. The
exception for the rule is as p