Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/23

 profit of the master, and constituting its ever-present motive power, which is simply to compel the labor of fellow-men without wages!

If the offense of Slavery were less extended; if it were confined to some narrow region; if it had less of grandeur in its proportions; if its victims were counted by tens and hundreds, instead of millions, the five-headed enormity would find little indulgence. All would rise against it, while religion and civilization would lavish their choicest efforts in the general war-* fare. But what is wrong, when done to one man, can not be right when done to many. If it is wrong thus to degrade a single soul — if it is wrong thus to degrade you, Mr. President — — it can not be right to degrade a whole race. And yet this is denied by the barbarous logic of Slavery, which, taking advantage of its own wrong, claims immunity because its usurpation has assumed a front of audacity that can not be safely attacked. Unhappily, there is Barbarism elsewhere in the world; but American Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on which the sun now shines. It is without a single peer. Its author, after making it, broke the die.

If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law — and here I approach a topic often considered in this Chamber — we shall confess again its Barbarism. It is not derived from the common law, that fountain of Liberty; for this law, while unhappily recognizing a system of servitude known as villeinage, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave; protected his person against mayhem; protected his wife against rape; gave to his marriage equal validity with the marriage of his master, and surrounded his offspring with generous presumptions of Freedom, unlike that rule of yours by which the servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped upon the child. It is not derived from the Roman law, that fountain of tyranny, for two reasons: first, because this law, in its better days, when its early rigors were spent — like the common law itself — secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave — in certain cases of cruelty, rescued him from his master — prevented the separation of parents and children, also of brothers and sisters — and even protected him in the marriage relation; and secondly, because the Thirteen Colonies