Page:The Responsibilities of the American Youth.pdf/12

12 of her empire, rose the nations of modern Europe: the chief and leader of which has been England, whose supremacy over all the nations of the earth for centuries has been felt and acknowledged. But that supremacy, yielding to that mysterious law which has impelled the march of empires westward, is passing from her to another nation and another people; which people and nation, I need scarcely tell you, are ourselves. England, like all nations that have preceded her, has had her day: her destiny is nearly completed, her mission is drawing to a close, her work is done. And, under the providence of God, she has done much good, if she has done much evil. The world owes her much, and will owe her much more; but chiefly by us and through us, will the latter and greater part of that obligation be due. We owe England much, but more to her cruelty, injustice and harshness, than to her kindness and clemency. Had she been less harsh and selfish to us in our childhood, and more kind and generous, she, perhaps, would not this day have the painful and humiliating reflection of seeing her greatness, her supremacy and her influence departing from her and attaching themselves to us, whom in her cruelty and folly she drove into the wilderness to suffer and to die.

But tyranny and oppression of every kind are as blind to their own interests, as they are regardless of the interests and welfare of those they oppress; and, by a strange perversion of will and purpose, defeat their own designs, and build up and preserve what they would pull down and destroy. And of all fools in this world of folly, royal and imperial fools are the last to learn wisdom; and seldom, if ever, learn it until it is too late to be wise.

God, in his written revelation, has most unequivocally declared his abhorrence of and detestation against tyrants and oppression; and the revelations of his providence in the moral government of the world fully demonstrate and sustain the former.

It is true, that both in the Old and New Testaments God does sanction the institution of domestic slavery, as much as he does every other domestic and social institution; placing slavery in the same category with all the others, imposing upon it the same instructions and obligations that he does upon the parental, the conjugal and the political: and it is only injustice and cruelty he