impassioned eulogy: "Emancipation works well, far better than
could have been anticipated. _To me it could hardly have worked
otherwise than well._ It banished _slavery_, that wrong and curse not to
be borne. It gave _freedom_, the dear birthright of humanity; and had it
done nothing more, I should have found in it cause for joy. Freedom,
simple freedom, is 'in my estimation just, far prized above all price.'
_I do not stop to ask if the emancipated are better fed and clothed than
formerly._ THEY ARE FREE; AND THAT ONE WORD CONTAINS A WORLD OF
GOOD,[194] unknown to the most pampered slave." And again, he says,
"Nature cries aloud for freedom as our proper good, our birthright and
our end, and resents nothing so much as its loss."

In these high-sounding praises, which hold up personal freedom as "our
proper good," as "our end," it is assumed that man was made for liberty,
and not liberty for man. It is, indeed, one of the fundamental errors of
the abolitionist to regard freedom as a great substantive good, or as in
itself a blessing, and not merely as a relative good. It may be, and
indeed often is, an unspeakable benefit, but then it is so only as a
means to an end. The end of our existence, the _proper good_, is the
improvement of our intellectual and moral powers, the perfecting of our
rational and immortal natures. When freedom subserves this end, it is a
good; when it defeats this end, it is an evil. Hence there may be a
world of evil as well as a world of good in "this one word."

The wise man adapts the means to the end. It were the very hight of
folly to sacrifice the end to the means. No man gives personal freedom
to his child because he deems it always and in all cases a good. His
heart teaches him a better doctrine when the highest good of his child
is concerned. Should we not be permitted, then, to have something of the
same feeling in regard to those whom Providence has placed under our
care, especially since, having the passions of men, with only the
intellects of children, they stand in utmost need of guidance and
direction?

As it is their duty to labor, so the law which compels them to do so is
not oppressive. It deprives them of the enjoyment of no right, unless,
indeed, they may be supposed to have a right to violate their duty.
Hence, in compelling 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