e that you have promoted the happiness of a single human
being?" I imagine that, if they considered conscientiously, they would
find it difficult to answer in the affirmative. If it were asked "can
you be sure that you have not been the cause of suffering, misery and
death to thousands,"--when we recollect that they probably stimulated
the exertions of the _amis des noirs_ in France, and that through the
efforts of these the horrors of St. Domingo were perpetrated--I think
they must hesitate long to return a decided negative. It might seem
cruel, if we could, to convince a man who has devoted his life to what
he esteemed a good and generous purpose, that he has been doing only
evil--that he has been worshiping a horrid fiend, in the place of the
true God. But fanaticism is in no danger of being convinced.[254] It is
one of the mysteries of our nature, and of the divine government, how
utterly disproportioned to each other are the powers of doing evil and
of doing good. The poorest and most abject instrument, that is utterly
imbecile for any purpose of good, seems sometimes endowed with almost
the powers of omnipotence for mischief. A mole may inundate a
province--a spark from a forge may conflagrate a city--a whisper may
separate friends--a rumor may convulse an empire--but when we would do
benefit to our race or country, the purest and most chastened motives,
the most patient thought and labor, with the humblest self-distrust, are
hardly sufficient to assure us that the results may not disappoint our
expectations, and that we may not do evil instead of good. But are we
therefore to refrain from efforts to benefit our race and country? By no
means: but these motives, this labor and self-distrust are the only
conditions upon which we are permitted to hope for success. Very
different indeed is the course of those whose precipitate and ignorant
zeal would overturn the fundamental institutions of society, uproar its
peace and endanger its security, in pursuit of a distant and shadowy
good, of which they themselves have formed no definite conception--whose
atrocious philosophy would sacrifice a generation--and more than one
generation--for any hypothesis.

FOOTNOTES:

[233] President Dew's Review of the Virginia Debates on the subject of
Slavery.

[234] Paulding on Slavery.

[235] I refer to President Dew on this subject.

[236] It is not uncommon, especially in Charleston, to see slaves, after
many descents and having