most rigorous, is a blessing; that it accords with the
creative intent of God, and with his revealed institutions; that a
nation cannot be homogeneous, and should not aim at it; that there is
a law and scale of gradation, on which the top is privilege and
authority, the bottom labor and obedience. _These are the radical
theories of the respective sections of the land._ Men often are
profoundly ignorant of the principles which control their policy, as a
ship is unconscious of the rudder that steers her. Many are found,
both North and South, whose conduct over-rules their theory, and who
are better or worse than their belief. There are southern men who are
more generous than their theory, and there are northern men who are
grossly untrue to the northern theory, which, with their lips, they
profess. There are southern men with northern consciences, and there
are northern men with southern consciences. But, in the main, these
respective theories reign and regulate public procedure. There is not
a man so poor in the North, or so ignorant, or souseless, as not to be
regarded as a Man, by religion, by civil law, and by public opinion.
Selfishness and pride, avarice and cunning, anger or lust, may prey
upon the heedlessness or helplessness of many. Society may be full of
evils. But all these things are not sequences of northern doctrines,
but violations of them. If sharks in great cities consume the too
credulous emigrant; if usurers, like moths, cut the fabric of life
with invisible teeth; if landlords sack their tenements and pinch the
tenant--all these results are against the spirit of our law, against
public feeling, and they that do such things must slink and burrow.
They are vermin that run in the walls, and peep from hiding-holes, and
we set traps for them as we do for rats or weazels. But, in the South,
the subordination of man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time
and labor--in his person, his affections, his very children--is a part
of the theory of society, drawn out into explicit statutory law,
coincident with public opinion, and executed without secrecy. A net
spread for those guilty of such wrongs against man, would catch
States, and Legislatures, Citizens, Courts, and Constitutions.

In the North the most useless pauper that burdens the Alms-House--the
most uncombed foreigner that delves in a ditch--the most abject
creature that begs a morsel from door to door, _is yet a man_; and
there is, not in theory