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posed under all circumstances to its extension. Even whilst we are writing it is a matter of serious debate in the Senate not whether the ordinance of '87 shall be extended to the territory of Oregon, not whether the existence of slavery shall be left to be decided by the people there, but whether the people shall not be explicitly prevented from excluding slavery!

Delegates from every state represented in the Continental Congress (including all but Georgia) signed the non-importation agreement of 1774, by which they bound their constituents from and after Dec. 1st, 1774, wholly to discontinue the slave-trade, and neither to be concerned in it themselves nor hire their vessels nor sell their commodities or manufactures to those who were concerned in it. Their successors, the Congress of the United States, by the acts of 1807 and 1818, (and others might be cited,) permitted the sale of freemen into slavery, and seventy years afterwards admitted Florida into the Union with a constitution which provides that the general assembly shall have no power to pass laws for "the emancipation of slaves," the House, by a vote of 87 to 76, refusing to require this clause to be stricken out !

Not one of these acts of national degradation could have been accomplished if only the people of the free states had remained loyal to the principle of freedom. That these acts have been consummated is evidence that the spirit of freedom has decayed even in the free states. We do not hesitate to attribute this decay to the demoralizing influence of the compromises of the Constitution. Our fathers thought that they might establish justice for themselves and injustice for the slaves; that they might secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, and at the same time hold in slavery a portion of their fellow men. They did not see that to require an oath to support these compromises from members of Congress, the state legislatures and all the executive and judicial officers of the United States and the states would either prevent real lovers of liberty from holding all these offices, or would cause the love of liberty to lessen and in time to die out. How can a man whose whole soul is filled with abhorrence of slavery conscientiously take the oath to support the return of runaway slaves? He must either at the outset disregard his clear sense of right, or his standard of right must gradually become corrupted. If he takes the oath meaning to keep it, he means to do that which from his very soul he knows to be morally wrong. If he takes it meaning to disregard it, he simply commits per

jury. The Constitution, therefore, requires a lover of liberty to act immorally as a qualification for all the offices of honor and trust-state and national! Is it to be wondered at that the result is what we have described? Would it not be a cause of surprise if the nation did not have less love of liberty now than it had sixty years ago?

In order that this love may not wholly die, it is necessary to put an end to the compromises which have caused it thus to languish. It is time for all those who really wish to establish justice and to secure the blessings of liberty to their posterity, to refuse on all occasions to take this oath, and openly to declare that they ought not and will not any longer support these compromises. We may and should yield a ready sup port to all clauses really intended "to establish justice," but to clauses intended to countenance or support slavery our answer and unalterable resolve should be, we will yield no support whatever, but will use all just and pacific means completely to nullify them. This advice may seem to some persons as no-gov. ernmentism. Such persons cannot see that almost every right of value is supported now by state laws. Neither can they see any power beyond the ballot-box, though the votes of the people are nothing but the expression of the sentiments of the people. They do not see that this popular sentiment may be regenerated by free and continual discussion, and as effectually, perhaps, by individual repudiation of these compromises. They smile when we assure them that "truth next unto God is almighty." But we are thankful that we have faith in Milton's words. If not abolished in blood, and we trust it never will be, we believe that slavery will be ended by means of a public sentiment which will disregard all dead paper barriers in its peaceful advance towards the accomplishment of its noble end the freedom of millions! There is a good time coming. Tokens of its approach are visible in the rending of churches and parties. A determination to overthrow slavery, as unyielding as can be wished, is thoroughly aroused in a large minority of the people, and it needs not the gift of prophecy to foretell what must be the result. When this result is attained, universal annexation will be truly equivalent to universal good will and peace. Nations will ask admission into our confederacy, not as now for the sake of protecting the dying institution of slavery, but to add another to the band of states which will urge each other towards the most perfect practical development of the great principles of freedom.

ART. V.-APOLOGETICAL AND EXPLANATORY.

SOME remarks in our last number in an article upon the "Causes and Prevention of Idiocy" seem to have been misunderstood, and to have been construed into a reproach of men whom we deem to be worthier than ourselves. We said,

"There is yet another institution, by which the rich man uses the whip and spur of necessity, to make the poor always ready to work for him. He gathers together hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children, and matching their living muscles against his tireless machines, from the rising to the setting sun, and even far into the night, exacts of them an amount of physical labor, which, while it barely feeds and clothes their bodies, starves their souls."

Again,

"We are not dealing with single cases of total idiocy, but with causes which lead to the moral idiocy of whole classes of men; and doubtless slavery as practised in this country, and the factory system as practised in England and elsewhere, do tend to brutalize and to make moral idiots of whole classes. The deep and damp gorges of the Alps do not more certainly produce goitres, cretinism, and idiocy, than do the factories and plantations of some refined and Christian gentlemen produce depravity, inbecility, and crime.”

After stating some of the most cruel effects "of all work and no play" upon children, we said,

"It is very probable that these and other like abuses have ceased since the evidences of them were obtained, for such monstrosities perish when dragged into the light of day; nevertheless, it is unquestionably true that even now, in Christian countries, a few men, for the unnecessary increase of their own wealth and luxury, do hold hundreds and thousands of operatives to such severe and ceaseless labor all day that their souls are virtually stunted, blighted, and killed."

Now, since some suppose we meant to say that such inhuman scenes as were brought to light in England and France a few years ago, do exist, or ever have existed in the factories of New England, we hasten to deny it. We have taken some pains, in our day, to ascertain by personal inquiries the moral and intellectual condition of the workmen and women in our factories. We undertook the task soon after seeing the wretched, starved, and degraded helots who toil on after the tireless steam-engine, in England, France, Germany, and whose sweat and blood, whose hunger and nakedness, whose ignorance and vice, were brought vividly to mind by every piece of silk or linen, of cotton or woollen goods that met our sight. Every beautiful dress of calico or de laine recalled the squalid creatures whose lean fingers had worked at its texture; the polish of cutlery was dimmed by the sweat of the boys who had handled it at the furnace; the genial warmth of coal could not dispel a shudder at the thought of the begrimed girls who had dragged it along from its bed; and the

beauty and the usefulness, the abundance and cheapness of all manufactured articles seemed overpaid a thousand fold by the cost to the moral nature of whole classes which the system seemed necessarily to involve.

Great was our comfort upon finding how different was the bodily and mental condition of the youth in our factories from that of the overworked and underfed operatives in Europe; greater was our joy at learning how much the tidiness, the comfort, the enjoyment, the virtues even of the operatives were owing to the humanity and the care of their employers. Verily they deserve much and they get much; — far more than the increased profit derived from virtuous and intelligent agents; they get the satisfaction of believing they are doing good unto others while they are increasing their own stores. All honor to them for their motives; all credit to them for their partial success.

Thus much for apology-now for the explanation. The system is as bad here as it is abroad; the tendencies are the same; and the results are only less evil because of the character of the persons who started the enterprise, and the character of the workmen whom they were able to enlist. The upas tree planted in a virgin soil, and carefully watched, seems, as yet, fair to the eye, but the poison is still in its sap.

We hold that the existence in any community of a working class, a class whose sole business is to do all the manual labor of society, a class who must of necessity spend so much time in hewing wood and drawing water for those who will do neither, that none is left for the culture and exercise of their truly human nature, and for the development of their affections, tastes, and sentiments, -the existence of such a class is a great wrong and a crying sin.

He who, having already enough and to spare, exempts himself and his household from all manual labor whatever, and, in order to increase his store, employs his capital in the system of competition, and keeps hundreds of his fellow-men so hard at work from the rising to the setting sun that they cannot have a tithe or a hundredth of the mental culture which he prizes above all things for his own children, he who does this, be whatever else he may, is not a Christian loves not his neighbour as himself does not as he would be done by.

All the talk about the employer working as hard as the laborers is worse than twaddle. He works with his brain, does he? he has care, anxiety, forecast? Yes! truly, and too much of it! He may indeed be as tired as his workmen, because they have both worked awry, and both pay the penalty, one by an infirm body, the other by an infirm mind, and society is all out of joint in consequence. The master should have a little bodily toil, the workmen a little mental exercise, and the wear and tear to

mind and body would be less. As for the supposed necessity of division of labor, the one taking all the head work and no hand work, the other all hand work and no head work, it is entirely assumed; there is no authority for it in the constitution of man. Even if there were nothing to do in this world but to make material gain, the increased intelligence and virtue of workmen would more than counteract the withdrawal of part of the mental energy of the employer. Besides, with a fair share of hand work, the amount of head work that can be done is always greater.

There is a certain amount of hand work to be done in society, and if it were fairly distributed among all the members all would be healthier, happier, and richer. Until there is greater equality in this distribution there will be no peace on earth, that is certain. Every man who is doomed by necessity to labor at hard hand work the livelong day and every day, suffers a grievous and double wrong, a wrong by that which he is made to do, and a wrong by that which he is prevented from doing. Every man who, to increase what is a sufficiency, so employs others, inflicts upon his brother a wrong -does not as he would be done by. Now it will be seen by this, that we mean that not only the rich manufacturer, but every one who needlessly makes others drudge their lives out upon scanty wages, does not live up to the doctrines of Christianity. We, all of us, all who are employers, are apt to sin this way.

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This leads us to notice another complaint about what we said in our last respecting "domestic servitude."

Perhaps we described extreme cases, perhaps we dealt too much in generalities, and did not make allowance enough for the many kind and generous employers. But, extreme cases illustrate the tendencies of the system, and though we are inclind to think that a pretty large class of employers are not open to the charge of heartlessness in the treatment of their domestics, further reflection convinces us that there is too much ground for our remarks.

If we look at the condition and relation of masters and mistresses and servants in what may be called two extremes of society in the North, it will appear that the term "domestic servitude" is a fitting one, and that the picture we drew of it is not too high colored. We mean those who have attained to what they consider the summit of fashion and social grandeur, and those who are just emerged from the condition of hand laborers themselves and have a hand laborer or two under them.

Catch, as by a daguerreotype, a view of one of each class. See an ultra fashionable lady, kneeling upon a velvet cushion in an ultra fashionable church, or partaking the holy sacrament of Him who washed his disciples' feet, where are her servants?— beside her, or in the gallery even? No! the cook is at home preparing a luxurious dinner; the coachman, and the footman too,

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