doubt, moral guilt has been incurred by the
infliction of pain on these animals, with no adequate benefit to be
expected. I do no disparagement to the dignity of human nature, even in
its humblest form, when I say that on the very same foundation, with the
difference only of circumstance and degree, rests the right of the
civilized and cultivated man, over the savage and ignorant. It is the
order of nature and of God, that the being of superior faculties and
knowledge, and therefore of superior power, should control and dispose
of those who are inferior. It is as much in the order of nature, that
men should enslave each other, as that other animals should prey upon
each other. I admit that he does this under the highest moral
responsibility, and is most guilty if he wantonly inflicts misery or
privation on beings more capable of enjoyment or suffering than brutes,
without necessity or any view to the greater good which is to result. If
we conceive of society existing without government, and that one man by
his superior strength, courage or wisdom, could obtain the mastery of
his fellows, he would have a perfect right to do so. He would be morally
responsible for the use of his power, and guilty if he failed to direct
them so as to promote their happiness as well as his own. Moralists have
denounced the injustice and cruelty which have been practiced towards
our aboriginal Indians, by which they have been driven from their native
seats and exterminated, and no doubt with much justice. No doubt, much
fraud and injustice has been practiced in the circumstances and the
manner of their removal. Yet who has contended that civilized man had no
moral right to possess himself of the country? That he was bound to
leave this wide and fertile continent, which is capable of sustaining
uncounted myriads of a civilized race, to a few roving and ignorant
barbarians? Yet if any thing is certain, it is certain that there were
no means by which he could possess the country, without exterminating or
enslaving them. Savage and civilized man cannot live together, and the
savage can be tamed only by being enslaved or by having slaves. By
enslaving alone could he have preserved them.[235] And who shall take
upon himself to decide that the more benevolent course, and more
pleasing to God, was pursued towards them, or that it would not have
been better that they had been enslaved generally, as they were in
particular instances? It is a refined ph