We must also mark the importance of paying with promptness the
indemnity to the master, in order that the greater part of it may pass
in the form of wages into the hands of the servant. Forewarned of
mistakes in the methods of emancipation, which other nations deplore, we
encounter the question with many important aids to its solution.
M. Cochin, though not a Protestant like Count de Gasparin, writes in a
similar spirit of fervent Christian belief. In the second volume of
his work, which we trust will soon appear in America, the relation of
Christianity to slavery is powerfully discussed. The Catholic Church
is shown to oppose this crime against humanity, and the Pope, as if to
indorse the conclusion, has conferred an order of knighthood upon the
author since the publication of his book. It is worth while to note that
the most logical and effective assailants of slavery that these last
years have produced have been devout Catholics,--Augustin Cochin in
France, and Orestes A. Brownson in America. And while we think that it
will require a goodly amount of special pleading to clear either the
Catholic Church or most Protestant sects from former complicity
with this iniquity, we heartily rejoice that those liberal men who
intelligently encourage and direct the noblest instinct of the time are
the exclusive possession of no form of religious belief.
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