A more marvellous inconsistency in the book before us is this. The Doctor declares “that cruelty is not the habit of the slave States in this country.” “He might have affirmed just as truly,” said Mr. Garrison, “that idolatry is not the habit of pagan countries.” What is cruelty? The extremest is the reducing of a human being to the condition of a domesticated brute, a piece of mere property. The Doctor himself has said as much in another part of this volume, see the 26th page in his excellent chapter on “Property.” Having described what man is by nature, he adds, “The sacrifice of such a being to another’s will, to another’s present, outward, ill-comprehended good, _is the greatest violence which can be offered to any creature of God_. It is to cast him out from God’s spiritual family into the brutal herd.” “No robbery is _so great_ as that to which the slave is _habitually_ subjected.” “The slave _must_ meet cruel _treatment_ either inwardly or outwardly. Either the soul or the body must receive the blow. Either the flesh must be tortured or the spirit be struck down.” No Abolitionist, not even Mr. Garrison, has set forth more clearly the extreme cruelty, inseparable from holding a fellow-man in slavery one hour.
Still Dr. Channing objected to our primal doctrine,--“immediate emancipation.” But could there have been a more obvious inference than this, which an upright mind would unavoidably draw from a consideration of the rights of man, the evils of slavery, and the unparalleled iniquity of subjecting a human being to such degradation. I ask, could there have been a more obvious inference than that any, every human being held in such a condition ought to be _immediately released_ from it? It is plain to me that Dr. Channing himself drew the same inference that Elizabeth Heyrick,[H] of England, and Mr. Garrison had drawn, although he rejected the trenchant phrase in which they declared that inference. Having exhibited so faithfully and feelingly the wrongs and the evils of slavery, he says, on the 119th page of this book: “What, then, is to be done for the removal of slavery? _In the first place_, the slaveholder should solemnly disclaim the right of property in human beings. The great principle that man cannot belong to man should be distinctly recognized. The slave should be acknowledged as a partaker of a common nature, as having the essential rights of humanity. This great truth lies at the foundation of every wise plan for his relief.” Would not any one suppose, if he had not been forbidden the supposition, that the writer of these lines intended to enjoin the _immediate_ emancipation of the enslaved? Surely, he would have _the first thing_ that is to be done for their relief done immediately. Surely, he would have the foot of the oppressor taken from their necks _at once_. He would have the heavy yoke that crushes them broken without delay. Surely, he would have the _foundation_ of the plan for the removal of slavery laid _immediately_. He would not, could not counsel the slaveholder to postpone a day, nor an hour, the recognition of the right of his slave to be treated as a fellow-man. There is a remarkable resemblance between what Dr. Channing here says ought to be done _in the first place_, and what the Abolitionists had from the beginning insisted ought to be done _immediately_.