Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/380

Rh the view he took of the necessarily rude and low condition of a State in which slavery is a “domestic institution;” of the corrupting influence of slavery on the morals and tone of mind, and as a consequence thereof the dominion of the pistol and the bowie-knife. His belief was that negro-slaves might and ought to be transformed into free-labourers. I inquired from him how his own slaves conducted themselves as free men.

“Excellently!” replied he. “But there were not many of them, and they had by degrees been prepared for freedom.”

He inveighed boldly and earnestly in his speech this evening against an institution which loosened all family-bonds and degraded women, and he uttered a violent tirade against the new Fugitive Slave Bill, as well as against Daniel Webster, who had supported it. He recalled to his recollection a painting, which he had seen as a child, in which the fires of purgatory were represented. There might be seen various poor sinners who were endeavouring to come forth from the devouring flames, but a superintendant devil stood by with horns and claws, and a huge hay-fork in his hand, ever ready to seize each poor soul about to escape from the fire, to take him on the prongs of his fork and hurl him back again. This superintendant devil he recognised as Daniel Webster.

That was the brilliant point in the speech, which throughout was controversial, and which passed over from the Slave Bill and Webster, to the Bible and Christianity. The clever combatant was not successful on this ground, and proved himself to be a poor theologian, inasmuch as he mistook Christianity for that contracted church which adhered to dogmas, and measured the doctrines; of the Bible according to their abuse or their irrational misapplication. But this abuse of Scripture is so common among the defenders of slavery, even