Discussions, Vol. IV: Secular

This volume of Dr. Dabney's "Selected Discussions," is the last of the four orig'inally contemplated. Though it is called •'Secular/' because a large proportion of the articles are of a secular character; yet doubtless it will be all the more appreciated because of the greater variety given in the addition of a goodly number of religious articles and poems.

thought in which to delve: he who has all has a reservoir

of intellectual and spiritual food seldom equaled in the

writings of any one man.

Review of "Wilson's Slave Power in America,"' . - . 248

Economic Effects of the Former L-a.bor System of the Southern United St.\tes. ..... 354

The Influence of False Philosophies upon Ch.\racter and >.uicli our fathers left us, we have not been able to bequeath to you. As memory reYerts to my youth, when I stood where you now stand, it presents a contrast which might well seal my lips with grief and shame. Then my honored father and grandfather were just going oft the stage, the one a soldier of the first war which won our independence, and the other of the second war which confirmed it, both examples of that citizen boidiery which had been the glory of America, plain, simple, unpretending, but incorruptible. And Virginia the.i stood. v» ith untarnished escutcheon, poor indeed from the burdens of two wars, and the legislative exactions of her partners in the Union, clad mostly in homespun, but still the "great and unterrified commonwealth" which extorted this tribute from Cornwallis in his hour of victory: ''mother of Statesmen and States," whose humblest citizen knew no master except God and the law of his own State's election, whose banner had never trailed before a conqueror, by whom no federal obligation had ever been dishonored, and no creditor ever defrauded of one penny; with a credit as solid as gold in the emporiums of trade; the firm and prudent mediator between federal power and the too impatient spirit of her sisters. Thus did our fathers transmit Virginia to our guardianship, the warrior-virgin, like the Pallas-Athene of Phidias, as she stood before the Parthenon, flashing the radiance of her golden helm and full-orbed shield across the Saronic gulf and Aegina and Salamis, to far off Maegara and Argos.

had received from them the sacred injniictioii to preserve it. We had witnessed its beneficent results. Of all men it was our duty to feel ourselves most bound by the maxim of the Roman republican, IVon\fas est de Republica desperare. The changes had silently taken place, which rendered our fathers' system too giood for those who were to execute it; and yet it would have 'been treason to truth and right for us to despair of the better possibility, until the impossibility stood sternly revealed. Thus the task which duty and Providence assigned us was. to demonstrate by our own defeat, after intensest struggle, the unfitness of the age for that blessing we would fain have preserved for them. Hard task, and hard destiny to attempt the impossible! but one which has often been exacted l)y a mysterious Providence from the votaries of duty. Yet it gives us this hard consolation, that inasmuch as the survival of our old sys.tem had become impracticable, failure in the effort to preserve it might be incurred without dishonor.

they met in c-onventioa to devise a ^'closer union." As such they debated and accepted or rejected the terms proposed therefDr (for some ^States at first did exercise their unquestioned sovereignty in rejecting the new union.) By their several and sovereign acts they created a central federated government, with limited powers strictly defined, and deputed to this common agent certain powers over their own citizens, to be impartially exercised for the equal behoof of all the partners. All other powers, including that af judging and redressing vital infractions of this federal compact, they jealously and expressly reserved to themselves or to their people. To the outside world they were to be one, to each other they were to be still equals and independent partners. Each State must be a republic, as distinguished from a monarchy or oligarchy, but in all else it was to be mistress of its own internal forms and regulations. The functions of the general government were to be few and defined, its expenditures modest, and its burdens in time of peace light. Such was the form, of government instituted for themselves by our free forefathers; and well fitted to their genius and circumstances, as communities of farmers, inhabiting their own homes, approaching an equality of condition, and having upon the whole continent no one city of controlling magnitude or wealth.

1. I would place as the first of these adverse conditions the silent substitution, under the same nomenclature, of another theory of human rights, in contrast with, and hostile to, that of our fathers. Those wise men did indeed believe in a certain equality of all men; bur it was that which the British constitution (whose principles they inherited) was wont to express by the maxim: that every British citizen "was equal before the law." The particular franchises of the peer and the peasant were very uneijual. but in this important respect the two men were '*e(iual before the law," that the peasant's smaller franchises were protected toy the same law which shielded the peer's larger one. This is the equality of the golden rule, the equality of that Bible which ordained the constitution of human society out of superiors, inferiors and equals; the equality of the inspired Job (ch. 31: 13-15) who in the very act of asserting his right to his slave, added: -Did not he that made me make him? If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or my maidservant when they contended with me. what then shall I do when God riseth up?" This is the equality which is thoroughly consistent with that wide diversity of natural cai)acities. virtues, station, sex, inherited possessions, which inexorable fact discloses everywhere and by means of which social organization is possible. But in place of this, the equality taught by Hampden. Yane. Pym. Melville, and the Whigs of 1776. our modern politician now teaches, under the same name, the equality of the Jacobin, of the ''Sans culotte," which absurdly claims for every human the same specific powers and rights. Yes. your Greeley teaches, as the equality of Republicanism, the very doctrine of the frantic Leveller Lilburn. whose book these great English Republicans caused mot your tyrannical Stuart but the commonwealth's-men) to be burned in London by the common hangman I