The men and women who have efficiently devoted themselves to awaken the
American people to the element of guilt and peril in their national life
have seldom been exhaustively acquainted with the facts of slavery or
those of emancipation. Few of them were political economists, or had
much concern with scientific relations. They were persons of emotional
organization, and of a delicate moral susceptibility. It was sufficient
for them to know that one God reigned, and that whatever He had caused
to be a true political economy must accord with those Christian ethics
which command acknowledgment from the human soul. They wanted no
catalogue of abuses to convince them that an institution which began by
denying a man all right in his own person was not and could not come to
good. And this fine impressibility of nature, which needs no statistics,
when it is combined with genius,--if we may be pardoned an Hibernicism
which almost writes itself,--may be said to create its own statistics.
Shakspeare needed not to dog murderers, note-book in hand, in order to
give in Macbeth a comprehensive summary of their pitiable estate. It
may, indeed, be necessary for physicians to study minutely many
special cases of insanity in order to build up by induction the grand
generalization of Lear; but he who gave it grasped it entire in an ideal
world, and left to less happy natures the task of imitating its august
proportions by patiently piling together a thousand facts.
Pages:
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316