The Anti-Slavery Examiner, OmnibusAmerican Anti-Slavery Society
Religion
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
11. _Restraints upon freedom._ Children are restrained by
parents--pupils, by teachers--patients, by physicians--corporations, by
charters--and legislatures, by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs,
quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing as they please.
Restraints are the web of society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then
civilized society is a giant slave--a government of LAW, _the climax of
slavery,_ and its executive, a king among slaveholders.
12. _Compulsory service._ A juryman is empannelled against his will, and
sit he must. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders _must_ turn in. Men
are _compelled_ to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support their
families, and "turn to the right as the law directs," however much
against their wills. Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with
involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a _condition_. The slave's
_feelings_ toward it, are one thing; the condition itself, is another
thing; his feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether
he desires or detests it, the condition remains the same. The slave's
willingness to be a slave is no palliation of the slaveholder's guilt.
Suppose the slave should think himself a chattel, and consent to be so
regarded by others, does that _make_ him a chattel, or make those
guiltless who _hold_ him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the
assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer? Does my
_consent_ to his crime, atone for it? my partnership in his guilt, blot
out his part of it? The slave's willingness to be a slave, so far from
lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so
palsied his mind that he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents
to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and
confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of
the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of
the master, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him
as a man and thus break the sorcery that cheats him out of his
birthright--the consciousness of his worth and destiny.
Many of the foregoing conditions are _appendages_ of slavery. But no
one, nor all of them together, constitute its intrinsic unchanging
element.
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