Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Harriet Beecher StoweЧитать онлайн книгу.
has been sold in Great Britain; and it is this cotton trade that supports the whole system. That you may rely upon. The sugar and rice, so far as the United States are concerned, are but small interests. The system is supported by this cotton trade, and within two days I have seen an article written with vigor in the Charleston Mercury, a southern paper of great influence, saying, that the slaveholders are becoming isolated, by the force of public opinion, from the rest of the world. They are beginning to be regarded as inhuman tyrants, and the slaves the victims of their cruelty; but, says the writer, just so long as you take our cotton, we shall have our slaves. Now, you are as really involved in this matter as we are—[Hear, hear!]—and if you have no other right to speak on the subject, you have a right to speak from being yourselves very active participators in the wrong. You have a great deal of feeling on the subject, honorable and generous feeling, I know—an earnest, philanthropic, Christian feeling; but if you have nothing to do, that feeling will all evaporate, and leave an apathy behind. Now, here is something to be done. It may be a small beginning, but, as you go forward, Providence will develop other plans, and the more you do, the further you will see. I am happy to know that a beginning has been made. There are indications that a way has been so opened in providence that this exigency can be met. Within the last few years, the Chinese have begun to emigrate to the western parts of the United States. They will maintain themselves on small wages; and wherever they come into actual competition with slave labor, it cannot compete with them. Very many of the slaveholders have spoken of this as a very remarkable indication. If slavery had been confined to the original slave states, as it was intended, slavery could not have lived. It was the intention that it should never go beyond those boundaries. Had this been the case, it would increase the number of slaves so much that they would have been valueless as articles of property. I must say this for America, that the slaves increase in the slave states faster than the white people; and it shows that their physical condition is better than was that of the slaves at the West Indies, or in Cuba, where the number actually diminished. We must have more slave territories to make our slaves valuable, and there was the origin of that iniquitous Mexican war, whereby was added the vast territory of Texas; and then it was the intention to make California a slave state; but, I am happy to say, it has been received into the Union as a free state, and God grant it may continue so. [Hear, hear!] What has been the effect of this expansion of slave territory? It has doubled the value of slaves. Since I can remember, a strong slave man would sell for about four hundred or six hundred dollars—that is, about one hundred pounds; but now, during the present season, I have known instances in which a slave man has been sold for two hundred and thirty pounds. There are more slaves raised in Virginia and Maryland than they can use in those states in labor, and, therefore, they sell them at one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred pounds, as the case may be, for cash. All that Mrs. Tyler intimates in that letter about slavery in America, and the impression it is calculated and intended to convey, that they treat their slaves so well, and do not separate their families, and so forth, is all mere humbug. [Laughter and cheers.] It is well known that Virginia has more profit from selling negroes than from any other source. The great sources of profit are tobacco and negroes, and they derive more from the sale of negroes than tobacco. You see the temptation this gives to avarice. Suppose there is a man with no property, except fifteen or twenty negro men, whom he can sell, each one for two hundred pounds, cash; and he has as many negro women, whom he can sell for one hundred and fifty pounds, cash, and the children for one hundred pounds each: here is a temptation to avarice; and it is calculated to silence the voice of conscience; and it is the expansion of the slave territory, and the immense mercantile value of the cotton, that has brought so powerful an influence to bear on the United States in favor of slavery. [Hear, hear.] Now, as to free labor coming into competition with slave labor: You will see, that when the price of slaves is so enormous, it requires an immense outlay to stock a plantation. A good plantation would take two hundred, or three hundred hands. Now, say for every hand employed on this plantation, the man must pay on an average two hundred pounds, which is not exorbitant at the present time. If he has to pay at this rate, what an immense outlay of capital to begin with, and how great the interest on that sum continually accumulating! And then there is the constant exposure to loss. These plantation negroes are very careless of life, and often cholera gets among them, and sweeps off twenty-five or thirty in a few days; and then there is the underground railroad, and, with all the precautions that can be taken, it continues to work. And now you see what an immense risk, and exposure to loss, and a vast outlay of capital, there is in connection with this system. But, if a man takes a cotton farm, and can employ Chinese laborers, he can get them for one or two shillings a day, and they will do the work as well, if not better than negroes, and there is no outlay or risk. [Hear, hear!]. If good cotton fields can be obtained, as they may in time, here is an opening which will tend to weaken the slave system. If Christians will investigate this subject, and if philanthropists generally will pursue these inquiries in an honest spirit, it is not long before we shall see a movement throughout the civilized world, and the upholders of slavery will feel, where they feel most acutely—in their pockets. Until something of this kind is done, I despair of accomplishing any great amount of good by simple appeals to the conscience and right principle. There are a few who will listen to conscience and a sense of right, but there are unhappily only a few. I suppose, though you have good Christians here, you have many who will put their consciences in their pockets. [Hear, hear!] I have known cases of this kind. There was a young lady in the State of Virginia who was left an orphan, and she had no property except four negro slaves, who were of great commercial value. She felt that slavery was wrong, and she could not hold them. She gave them their freedom—[cheers]—and supported herself by teaching a small school. [Cheers.] Now, notwithstanding all the unfavorable things we see—notwithstanding the dark cloud that hangs over the country, there are hopeful indications that God has not forgotten us, and that he will carry on this work till it is accomplished. [Hear!] But it will be a long while first, I fear; and we must pray, and labor, and persevere; for he that perseveres to the end, and he only, receives the crown. Now, there are very few in the United States who undertake to defend slavery, and say it is right. But the great majority, even of professors of religion, unite to shield it from aggression. 'It is the law of the land,' they say, 'and we must submit to it.' It seems a strange doctrine to come from the lips of the descendants of the Puritans, those who resisted the law of the land because those laws were against their conscience, and finally went over to that new world, in order that they might enjoy the rights of conscience. How would it have been with the primitive church if this doctrine had prevailed? There never would have been any Christian church, for that was against the laws of the land. In regard to the distribution of the Bible, in many states the laws prohibit the teaching of slaves, and the distribution of the Bible is not allowed among them. The American Bible Society does not itself take the responsibility of this. It leaves the whole matter to the local societies in the several states, and it is the local societies that take the responsibility. Well, why should we obey the law of the land in South Carolina on this subject, and disobey the law of the land in Italy? But our missionary societies and Bible societies send Bibles to other parts of the world, and never ask if it is contrary to the law of these lands, and if it is, they push it all the more zealously. They send Bibles to Italy and Spain, and yet the Bible is prohibited by those governments. The American Tract Society and the American Sunday School Union allow none of their issues to utter a syllable against slavery. They expunge even from their European books every passage of this kind, and excuse themselves by the law and the public sentiment. So are the people taught. There has been a great deal said on the subject of influence from abroad; but those who talk in that way interfered with the persecution of the Madiai, and remonstrated with the Tuscan government. We have had large meetings on the subject in New York, and those who refuse the Bible to the slave took part in that meeting, and did not seem to think there was any inconsistency in their conduct.
"The Christian church knows no distinction of nations. In that church there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one in Christ; and whatever affects one part of the body affects the other, and the whole Christian church every where is bound to help, and encourage, and rebuke, as the case may require. The Christian church is every where bound to its corresponding branch in every other country; and thus you have, not only a right, but it is your duty, to consider the case of the American slave with just the same interest with which you consider the cause of the native Hindoo, when you send out your missionaries there, or with