Page:Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.djvu/9

678 now! On the whole it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for White men to live beside Black men, and in some just manner to command Black men, and produce West-Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West-Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (Brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies; bidding us ignominiously, Depart ye quack-ridden, incompetent!—

One other remark, as to the present Trade in Slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the Sugar-Islands for sale again be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the Laws of this Universe, let us heartily pray Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this Earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it; why, then indeed——But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold, unbought, unmarketable Irish 'free' citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my Lord of Rackrent and the constitutional sheriff's have evicted them; or at those 'divine missionaries,' of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what 'freedom' really is;—and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means; this thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it,—provided your premiss be not doubtful.

But now furthermore give me leave to ask, Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the Continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast? The enterprize is very gigantic; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprize has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it!—Watch the Coast of Africa, good part of the Coast of the terraqueous Globe? And the living centres of this slave mischief, the live-coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable.

If the Laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question; if you really can appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it,—why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of s; and signify to those nefarious countries: That their procedure on the Negro Question is too bad; that, of all the solecisms now submitted to on Earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact, is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same Planet with it; that they clearly will not, the nefarious populations will not, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the Negro enough;—wherefore you here, with your Seventy-fours, are come to be King over them, and will on the spot henceforth see for yourselves that they do it! Why not, if Heaven do send you? The thing can be done; easily, if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done: it is the way to 'suppress the Slave-trade;' and so far as yet appears, the one way.

Most thinking people!—If hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruizing incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect: or will you not try rather to