196 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



deprive any subject of either life or liberty, 



ivithout r/ood and sufficient reason;" and if I had 

 not said' this, the proposition should, it seems to 

 me, have been understood with this limitation, 

 unless this limitation had been excluded by its 

 express terms. The right of a man to alienate 

 his life at the call of of his country, or for the 

 good of his race, does not imply, it seems to me, 

 « the right to commit suicide." 



"Moreover," says our imaginary abolitionist, 

 "the mere quality of alienability does not trans- 

 fer a right or any other piece of property. Ac- 

 tual alienation is necessary for this purpose. 

 And when and where, the abolitionist may most 

 triumphantly ask, has the Southern slave per- 

 formed the act of alienating his liberty ? Who 

 were the witnesses and how was the transfer 

 evidenced?" Now, all that is here said, all 

 that is here implied, is most freely admitted. 

 "Be it conceded," as I have said in the extract 

 already made from liberty and slavery, "that 

 the individual has 'never transferred his right to 

 life or liberty to society" All this has been, as 

 we have seen, conceded to the abolitionist, and 

 laid out of the controversy between us. The 

 question between us is, not what the slave has 

 done, but what he might have done. We all 

 know he has never transferred his freedom to 

 society, but might he not have done so with per- 

 fect propriety ? And if he had refused to do so, 

 might not society, as in these Southern States 

 she has done, have taken it from him? The 

 question is, not whether the slave has trans- 

 ferred to society his right to freedom, but wheth- 

 er he had any such right to transfer. I have 

 uniformly contended that he had no such right; 

 and that society, in denying freedom to him, 

 has done no wrong to any one, and a great good 

 to all. Hence, I would respectfully say to such 

 an abolitionist, that he only contends for what I 

 had fully conceded to him at the outset, and 

 mistakes the real point in dispute betiveen us. 



"How pointedly," continues Mr. R., "might 

 he address Professor Bledsoe in his own lan- 

 guage, 'do Ave then live, and move and breathe, 

 and think, and worship God, only by rights de- 

 rived from society? No, certainly. We have 

 these rights from a higher source. God gave them 

 and all the powers of the earth combined cannot 

 take them away.' " And how well might he main- 

 tain that rights derived from God cannot be alien- 

 able. True, our rights are derived from God, 

 and the powers of earth cannot take them away." 

 I am not at all startled by these old familiar 

 words, which have been six times transcribed 

 with my own hand, and stood upon record be- 

 fore me for ten long years. They assert, it is 

 true, that certain rights are derived from God, 

 and are inalienable. But they do not assert, 

 that all men are created equal, that all men are 

 endowed by their Creator with an inalienable 

 right to life and liberty. Only some men pos- 

 sess such right at all ; and they, it is conceded, 

 possess it as an inalienable right. That is, they 

 can neither transfer it to society, nor can soci- 



ety take it from them. But there are, as I have 

 everywhere contended, cases in which men pos- 

 sess no right to life or liberty; and, in all such 

 cases, both life and liberty may be taken away 

 by society for its own highest good. It is on 

 this ground that I justify the institution of sla- 

 ery. Not on the ground that society may divest 

 the slave of his natural right to personal free- 

 dom, but on the ground that he possesses no 

 such natural right, and the good of all is incom- 

 patible with his personal freedom. 



In the foregoing remarks, as well as in vari- 

 ous portions of my work on Liberty and Slave- 

 ry, I wish it to be remembered, that as I have 

 been reasoning with the abolitionist, so I have 

 used the terms liberty and freedom in his sense 

 of them, and not my own. In the true sense of 

 the word, liberty is, I admit, an inalienable 

 right ; and cannot be taken away by society. 

 For liberty is "the enjoyment of one's rights ;" 

 and every man certainly has a right to enjoy 

 these, be they more or less. 



But in this sense, slavery is not, as I have 

 endeavored to show, at all inconsistent with 

 liberty. For I have endeavored to show, that 

 the slave of the South have no right to perso- 

 nal freedom; and that consequently, in denying 

 it to them, no right is infringed, while great 

 good is accomplished. "As it is their duty to 

 labor," I have said, (p. 271) "so the law which 

 compels them to do so is not oppressive. It de- 

 prives them of the enjoyment of no right, unless, 

 indeed, they may be supposed to have a 

 right to violate their duty. Hence, in com- 

 pelling the colored population of the South to 

 work, the law does not deprive them of liberty in 

 the true sense of the word ; that is, it does not 

 deprive them of the enjoyment of any right. It 

 merely requires them to peform a natural duty." 



But in arguing the question of liberty and 

 slavery with the abolitionist, I have been com- 

 pelled to use these words in the sense which he 

 attaches to them. In this sense, I deem his pro- 

 positions false, his premises as well as his conclu- 

 sions. Hence, I am not able to agree with Mr. R., 

 that the premise of the abolitionists correct (p. 

 150) while his conclusion is false. "The aboli- 

 tionist," says he, "is right in maintaining that 

 life and liberty are inalienable rights, but wrong 

 in thence condemning slavery." He Is certain- 

 ly right in his premise, that liberty is an in- 

 alienable right, if he attaches the true idea to the 

 term liberty ; but nothing is farther from his 

 thoughts than this, as I suppose it will be ad- 

 mitted by Mr. R. himself. By liberty or free- 

 dom, the abolitionist means the power to act as 

 one pleases, or at least without the restraint or 

 control of a master. Such is his own meaning ; 

 and his premise is, I apprehend, as he under- 

 stands it himself, and not as it may be under- 

 stood by another. Hence I deem his premise 

 false. 



In the true sense of the term liberty, slavery 

 is not its opposite. Its opposite, its antago- 

 nistic principle, is license. By the institution 



