Both
parties among the Northern members of the Society, those who approved the
former action of the Publishing Committee, and those who approved the new
policy recommended in the resolutions, those who favored silence and those
who favored speech on the subject of Slavery, claimed the victory, while
the Southern brethren, as usual, refused to be satisfied with anything
short of unconditional submission. The word Compromise, as far as Slavery
is concerned, has always been of fatal augury. The concessions of the
South have been like the "With all my worldly goods I thee endow" of a
bankrupt bridegroom, who thereby generously bestows all his debts upon his
wife, and as a small return for his magnanimity consents to accept all her
personal and a life estate in all her real property. The South is willing
that the Tract Society should expend its money to convince the slave that
he has a soul to be saved so far as he is obedient to his master, but not
to persuade the master that he has a soul to undergo a very different
process so far as he is unmerciful to his slave.
We Americans are very fond of this glue of compromise. Like so many quack
cements, it is advertised to make the mended parts of the vessel stronger
than those which have never been broken, but, like them, it will not stand
hot water,--and as the question of Slavery is sure to plunge all who
approach it, even with the best intentions, into that fatal element, the
patched-up brotherhood, which but yesterday was warranted to be better
than new, falls once more into a heap of incoherent fragments.
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