e read in any civilized country without mingled
horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice
of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and
bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,--of men
who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it
is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise
additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and
beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and
tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery
are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the
system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring.

If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a
general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of
a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of
individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the
system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which
this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in
this, it was really acting on the defensive,--on the defensive, however,
not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of
God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in
a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they
glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the
slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of
conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and
however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give
heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no
doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an
intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however
much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which
declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its
nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the
land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with
leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that,
to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large
areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws
of population. To limit it is