Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/82

 76 pretension was not blasted at once

when

by the Declaration of Inde-

announced that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and as if anywhere within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, which contains no sentence, phrase, or word, sanctioning this outrage, and which carefully excludes the idea of property in man, while it pendence,

it

surrounds all persons with the highest safeguards of a citizen, such pretension could exist. Whatever it may be elsewhere,

Popular Sovereignty within the sphere of the Constitution has Claiming for all the largest liberty of a true Civ-

its limitations.

ilization, it

does

it

except tories

compresses

allow any

when he

all

within the constraints of Justice

make

—

do what he

to assert a right to

pleases to do right.

attempt to

this pretension

man

King

a

As



nor

pleases,

well within the Terri-

make a slave. But by every Slave-master and by

as attempt to

rejected alike

every lover of Freedom Where To

band agree freedom when themselves are

I behold a factious

call it

free,

proceeding originally from a vain effort to avoid the impending question between

— assuming a delusive — speaking with the hands of Esau — and, by

Freedom and Slavery

phrase of Freedom as a cloak for Slavery voice of Jacob while

its

hands are the

plausible nick-name, enabling politicians sometimes to de-

its

and sometimes even to deceive themselves be dismissed with the other kindred pretensions for Slavery, while the Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Douglas,] who, if ceive the public,

may not

its

inventor, has been

its

boldest defender, will learn that

whom

he has done so much, can not afford to be generous that their gratitude is founded on what they expect, and not on what they have received and, that having its root in desire rather than in fruition, it necessarily withers and The Senator, revolving dies with the power to serve them. Slave-masters, for



these things in his mind,

may

confess the difficulty of his posi-

tion, and, perhaps,

"Wedged

And

remember Milo's end, Timber which he strove

in that

to rend.

here I close this branch of the argument, which I have first, partly because time and strength

treated less fully than the foil

me, but chiefly because the Barbarism of Slavery,

fully established, supersedes all other inquiry.

when

But enough