Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
History
Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments : $b comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject
Scott, Dred, 1809-1858; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; United States -- Fugitive slave law (1850)
In conclusion, we shall merely add that if the foregoing remarks be
just, it follows that the great problem of political philosophy is not
precisely such as it is often taken to be by statesmen and historians.
This problem, according to Mackintosh and Macaulay, consists in finding
such an adjustment of the antagonistic principles of public order and
private liberty, that neither shall overthrow or subvert the other, but
each be confined within its own appropriate limits. Whereas, if we are
not mistaken, these are not _antagonistic_, but _co-ordinate_,
principles. The very law which institutes public order is that which
introduces private liberty, since no secure enjoyment of one's rights
can exist where public order is not maintained. And, on the other hand,
unless private liberty be introduced, public order cannot be
maintained, or at least such public order as should be established;
for, if there be not private liberty, if there be no secure enjoyment of
one's rights, then the highest and purest elements of our nature would
have to be extinguished, or else exist in perpetual conflict with the
surrounding despotism. As license is not liberty, so despotism is not
order, nor even friendly to that enlightened, wholesome order, by which
the good of the public and the individual are at the same time
introduced and secured. In other words, what is taken from the one of
these principles is not given to the other; on the contrary, every
additional element of strength and beauty which is imparted to the one
is an accession of strength and beauty to the other. Private liberty,
indeed, lives and moves and has its very being in the bosom of public
order. On the other hand, that public order alone which cherishes the
true liberty of the individual is strong in the approbation of God and
in the moral sentiments of mankind. All else is weakness, and death, and
decay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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