“Europe might well open its eyes in wonder. On that continent, with all
its aristocracy, the coloured man mixes freely with his
fellow-creatures. He sometimes receives the countenance of the rich, and
has even found his way into the palaces of the great. In Europe, the
doctrine would be thought to be too absurd for refutation, that a
coloured man of pure morals and piety, of cultivated intellect and
refined manners, was not a fit companion for the best in the land. What
must Europe have said, when brought to understand that, in a republic,
founded on the principles of human rights and equality, people are
placed beyond the laws for treating the African as a man. This
Philadelphia doctrine deserves no mercy. What an insult is thrown on
human nature, in making it a heinous crime to sit or walk with a human
being, whoever it may be? It just occurs to me, that I have forgotten
the circumstance which filled to overflowing the cup of abolitionist
wickedness in Philadelphia. The great offence was this, that certain
young women of anti-slavery faith were seen to walk the streets with
coloured young men!”
Such are the lessons taught the youth as well as the aged of the Free
States, even by Dr. Channing himself. We now ask, under the teachings of
which school will the pupils be the best prepared for this cohabitation
with the negro?
The burning of the Hall of Freedom was, no doubt, a very great outrage,
well meriting severe condemnation. Yet we cannot but notice, that Dr.
Channing has nowhere, in all his works, said one word about the burning
of the Convent on Mount Benedict, by his own townsmen, the good people
of Boston.
We care not with what severity he punishes such outrages. But it is the
influence of his lesson in palliating the familiarity, and mitigating
the evil consequences of a coalition of the white man with the negro,
that we present to view. It is with grief that we find him infusing into
his disciples this nauseating, disgusting, moral poison; preparing their
minds to feel little or no shame in a cohabitation with the negro, so
degrading to the white man, and so disgraceful in all Slave States. Yea
further, what are we to think of the judgment, of the taste,—may we not
add, habits, of a man who could unblushingly publish to the world his
partiality to the negro of Jamaica, after his visit there, as follows:
“I saw too, on the plantation where I resided, a gracefulness and
dignity of form and motion, rare in my own native New England.” Vol. vi.
p. 51.
Again, page 52. “The African countenance seldom shows that coarse,
brutal sensuality which is so common in the face of the white man.”
May we be pardoned for feeling a strong desire,—rather, a curiosity,—to
be made acquainted with the faces of the white men with whom he was the
most familiar!
------------------
LESSON VIII.
In vol. ii. page 82, Dr. Channing says—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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