Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/166

152 all countries? If so, we live under an actual censorship of the press. This is like what the Irishman said of our paved cities—tying down the stones, and letting the mad dogs run loose.

If insurrections do occur, they will no doubt be attributed to the Anti-Slavery Society. But we must not forget that there were insurrections in the West Indies long before the English abolitionists began their efforts; and that masters were murdered in this country, before the Anti-Slavery Society was thought of. Neither must we forget that the increased severity of the laws is very likely to goad an oppressed people to madness. The very cruelty of the laws against resistance under any circumstances, would be thought to justify a white man in rebellion, because it gives resistance the character of self-defence. "The law," says Blackstone, "respects the passions of the human mind; and when external violence is offered to a man himself, or those to whom he bears a near connexion, makes it lawful in him to do himself that immediate justice, to which he is prompted by nature, and which no prudential motives are strong enough to restrain."

As it respects promoting insurrections by discussing this subject, it should be remembered that it is very rare for any colored person at the South to know how to read or write.

Furthermore, if there be danger in the discussion, our silence cannot arrest it; for the whole world is talking and writing about it;—even children's handkerchiefs seem to be regarded as sparks falling into a powder magazine. How much better it would be not to live in the midst of a powder magazine.

The English abolitionists have labored long and arduously. Every inch of the ground has been contested.—After obtaining the decision that negroes brought into England were freemen, it took them thirtyfive years to obtain the abolition of the slave trade. But their progress, though slow and difficult, has been certain. They are now on the very eve of entire, unqualified emancipation in all their colonies. I take very little interest in politics, unless they bear upon the subject of slavery;—and then I throw my whole soul into them. Hence the