No question of the
abstract right of property has ever entered directly into our
politics, or ever will,--the point at issue being, whether a certain
exceptional kind of property, already privileged beyond all others,
shall be entitled to still further privileges at the expense of every
other kind. The extension of slavery over new territory means just
this,--that this one kind of property, not recognized as such by the
Constitution, or it would never have been allowed to enter into the
basis of representation, shall control the foreign and domestic policy
of the Republic.
A great deal is said, to be sure, about the rights of the South; but
has any such right been infringed? When a man invests money in any
species of property, he assumes the risks to which it is liable. If he
buy a house, it may be burned; if a ship, it may be wrecked; if a
horse or an ox, it may die. Now the disadvantage of the Southern kind
of property is,--how shall we say it so as not to violate our
Constitutional obligations?--that it is exceptional. When it leaves
Virginia, it is a thing; when it arrives in Boston, it becomes a man,
speaks human language, appeals to the justice of the same God whom we
all acknowledge, weeps at the memory of wife and children left
behind,--in short, hath the same organs and dimensions that a
Christian hath, and is not distinguishable from ordinary Christians,
except, perhaps, by a simpler and more earnest faith. There are people
at the North who believe, that, beside _meum_ and _tuum_, there is
also such a thing as _suum_,--who are old-fashioned enough, or weak
enough, to have their feelings touched by these things, to think that
human nature is older and more sacred than any claim of property
whatever, and that it has rights at least as much to be respected as
any hypothetical one of our Southern brethren.
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