The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V | Page 5

right of personal comfort or convenience.
We say, then, that we are glad to see this division in the Tract Society;
not glad because of the division, but because it has sprung from an
earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was not only
impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of truth and
sincerity everywhere. We have no desire to impugn the motives of
those who consider themselves conservative members of the Society;
we believe them to be honest in their convictions, or their want of them;
but we think they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism is,
and that they are wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to wipe
away the film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents their seeing the
handwriting on the wall, or in conserving reverently the barnacles on
their ship's bottom and the dry-rot in its knees. We yield to none of
them in reverence for the Past; it is there only that the imagination can
find repose and seclusion; there dwells that silent majority whose
experience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes our thought in
spite of ourselves;--but it is not length of days that can make evil
reverend, nor persistence in inconsistency that can give it the power or
the claim of orderly precedent. Wrong, though its title-deeds go back to
the days of Sodom, is by nature a thing of yesterday,--while the right,
of which we became conscious but an hour ago, is more ancient than
the stars, and of the essence of Heaven. If it were proposed to establish
Slavery to-morrow, should we have more patience with its patriarchal
argument than with the parallel claim of Mormonism? That Slavery is
old is but its greater condemnation; that we have tolerated it so long,
the strongest plea for our doing so no longer. There is one institution to

which we owe our first allegiance, one that is more sacred and
venerable than any other,--the soul and conscience of Man.
What claim has Slavery to immunity from discussion? We are told that
discussion is dangerous. Dangerous to what? Truth invites it, courts the
point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can but reveal more clearly the
grace and grandeur of her angelic proportions. The advocates of
Slavery have taken refuge in the last covert of desperate sophism, and
affirm that their institution is of Divine ordination, that its bases are
laid in the nature of man. Is anything, then, of God's contriving
endangered by inquiry? Was it the system of the universe, or the monks,
that trembled at the telescope of Galileo? Did the circulation of the
firmament stop in terror because Newton laid his daring finger on its
pulse? But it is idle to discuss a proposition so monstrous. There is no
right of sanctuary for a crime against humanity, and they who drag an
unclean thing to the horns of the altar bring it to vengeance, and not to
safety.
Even granting that Slavery were all that its apologists assume it to be,
and that the relation of master and slave were of God's appointing,
would not its abuses be just the thing which it was the duty of Christian
men to protest against, and, as far as might be, to root out? Would our
courts feel themselves debarred from interfering to rescue a daughter
from a parent who wished to make merchandise of her purity, or a wife
from a husband who was brutal to her, by the plea that parental
authority and marriage were of Divine ordinance? Would a
police-justice discharge a drunkard who pleaded the patriarchal
precedent of Noah? or would he not rather give him another month in
the House of Correction for his impudence?
The Anti-slavery question is not one which the Tract Society can
exclude by triumphant majorities, nor put to shame by a comparison of
respectabilities. Mixed though it has been with politics, it is in no sense
political, and springing naturally from the principles of that religion
which traces its human pedigree to a manger, and whose first apostles
were twelve poor men against the whole world, it can dispense with
numbers and earthly respect. The clergyman may ignore it in the pulpit,

but it confronts him in his study; the church-member, who has
suppressed it in parish-meeting, opens it with the pages of his
Testament; the merchant, who has shut it out of his house and his heart,
finds it lying in wait for him, a gaunt fugitive, in the hold of his ship;
the lawyer, who has declared that it is no concern of his, finds it thrust
upon him in the brief of the slave-hunter; the historian, who had
cautiously evaded it, stumbles over it at Bunker Hill. And why?
Because it is