The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V | Page 2

should be considered
applicable to the Constitution of the Society and to that of the United
States, we must attribute to the former a solemnity and importance
which involve a palpable absurdity. To claim for it the verbal accuracy
and the legal wariness of a mere contract is equally at war with
common sense and the facts of the case; and even were it not so, the
party to a bond who should attempt to escape its ethical obligation by a
legal quibble of construction would be put in coventry by all honest
men. In point of fact, the Constitution was simply the minutes of an
agreement among certain gentlemen, to define the limits within which
they would accept trust funds, and the objects for which they should
expend them.
But if we accept the alternative offered by the advocates of strict
construction, we shall not find that their case is strengthened. Claiming
that where the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, it should be
interpreted according to the contemporary understanding of its framers,
they argue that it would be absurd to suppose that gentlemen from the
Southern States would have united to form a society that included in its
objects any discussion of the moral duties arising from the institution of
Slavery. Admitting the first part of their proposition, we deny the

conclusion they seek to draw from it. They are guilty of a glaring
anachronism in assuming the same opinions and prejudices to have
existed in 1825 which are undoubtedly influential in 1858. The
Anti-slavery agitation did not begin until 1831, and the debates in the
Virginia Convention prove conclusively that six years after the
foundation of the Tract Society, the leading men in that State, men
whose minds had been trained and whose characters had been tempered
in that school of action and experience which was open to all during the
heroic period of our history, had not yet suffered such distortion of the
intellect through passion and such deadening of the conscience through
interest, as would have prevented their discussing either the moral or
the political aspects of Slavery, and precluded them from uniting in any
effort to make the relation between master and slave less demoralizing
to the one and less imbruting to the other.
Again, it is claimed that the words of the Constitution are conclusive,
and that the declaration that the publications of the Society shall be
such as are "satisfactory to all Evangelical Christians" forbids by
implication the issuing of any tract which could possibly offend the
brethren in Slave States. The Society, it is argued, can publish only on
topics about which all Evangelical Christians are agreed, and must,
therefore, avoid everything in which the question of politics is involved.
But what are the facts about matters other than Slavery? Tracts have
been issued and circulated in which Dancing is condemned as sinful;
are all Evangelical Christians agreed about this? On the Temperance
question, against Catholicism,--have these topics never entered into our
politics? The simple truth is that Slavery is the only subject about
which the Publishing Committee have felt Constitutional scruples. Till
this question arose, they were like men in perfect health, never
suspecting that they had any constitution at all; but now, like
hypochondriacs, they feel it in every pore, at the least breath from the
eastward.
If a strict construction of the words "all Evangelical Christians" be
insisted on, we are at a loss to see where the committee could draw the
dividing line between what might be offensive and what allowable. The
Society publish tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced

and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. But throughout the
South it is criminal to teach a slave to read; throughout the South no
book could be distributed among the servile population more
incendiary than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our
Southern brethren take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of
either denying that the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting
to the terrible mockery of assuring him that the way of life is to be
found only by searching a book which he is forbidden to open.
If we carry out this doctrine of strict construction to its legitimate
results, we shall find that it involves a logical absurdity. What is the
number of men whose outraged sensibilities may claim the suppression
of a tract? Is the taboo of a thousand valid? Of a hundred? Of ten? Or
are tracts to be distributed only to those who will find their doctrine
agreeable, and are the Society's colporteurs to be instructed that a
Temperance essay is the proper thing for a total-abstinent infidel, and a
sermon on the Atonement for a distilling