e poor African, it is to
be feared, would have no better notions of equality and freedom, and no
better views of duty to God or man, than his teachers themselves have.
Such, then, being the state of things, ask us not to prepare the slave
for his own utter undoing. Ask us not--O most kind and benevolent
Christian teacher!--ask us not to lay the train beneath our feet, that
_you_ may no longer hold the blazing torch in vain!

Let that torch be extinguished. Let all incendiary publications be
destroyed. Let no conspiracies, no insurrections, and no murders be
instigated. Let the pure precepts of the gospel and its sublime lessons
of peace be everywhere set forth and inculcated. In one word, let it be
seen that in reality the eternal good of the slave is aimed at, and, by
the co-operation of all, may be secured, and then may we be asked to
teach him to read. But until then we shall refuse to head a conspiracy
against the good order, the security, the morals, and against the very
lives, of both the white and the black men of the South.

We might point out other respects in which men are essentially equal, or
_have equal rights_. But our object is not to write a treatise on the
philosophy of politics. It is merely to expose the errors of those who
push the idea of equality to an extreme, and thereby unwisely deny the
great differences that exist among men. For if the scheme or the
political principles of the abolitionists be correct, then there is no
difference among men, not even among the different races of men, that is
worthy the attention of the statesman.

There is one difference, we admit, which the abolitionists have
discovered between the master and the slave at the South. Whether this
discovery be entirely original with them, or whether they received hints
of it from others, it is clear that they are now fully in possession of
it. The dazzling idea of equality itself has not been able to exclude it
from their visions. For, in spite of this idea, they have discovered
that between the Southern master and slave there is a difference of
color! Hence, as if this were the only difference, in their political
harangues, whether from the stump or from the pulpit, they seldom fail
to rebuke the Southern statesman in the words of the poet: "He finds his
fellow guilty of a skin not colored like his own;" and "for such worthy
cause dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey." Shame and confusion
seize the man, we say, who thus d