GROWTH OF AMERICAN PORTENTS.
TirEnE has been another week of what is called "no particular news" from America ; the mail bringing, nevertheless, indica- tions of a march of opinion, and a profusion of signs of the times which more than fill up in interest the space that events are wont to occupy in the mind of Europe. The harvest of comments on our debate on the Slave-trade is still coming in ; and the Fourth of July celebration (held this year on Monday the 5th,) afforded the best possible opportunity for all manner of citizens to utter their impressions of the present state of affairs. Last week we contemplated Virginia,—once the leading State of the Union. There is now something more to be told about her : but first we must look at Massachusetts, always the first of the States in intelli-
cozy!, in religious profession, and in the old English tone of li- . A more remarkable spectacle than New England generally, and Massachusetts in particular, presented on the day of the great national celebration has scarcely been witnessed within this aentnry,—by those at least who know how to read the signs of the times' and can combine what is before their eyes with the news from all parts of the country.
We need not spend our space on the orators who said this year in a slightly varied form what they and their clique say every
yea their r, in praise of the. Union and the Constitution, and in glorif- cation of the pohtical greatness. It is observable, however, that the old-fashioned style of complacency is now dashed with a good deal of discontent : that the " sublime fundamental truths" of the Declaration of Independence are now here and there called " glittering generalities," " impractical abstractions," and so on because the anti-slavery leaders claim those items of the Declare.' tion on behalf of citizens of all complexions. Intermixed with this kind of scepticism among the Everetts, Choates, Ho].meses Websters, Hillards, &c., we this year perceive that the speaker; entertain the gravest apprehensions from what they call the gee.. graphical difficulty,—sectional conflict. Mr. Everett could go to is grave happy if he could first see a return of the day when all the great men cooperated, when Washington, the Virginian, un- sheathed his sword at Cambridge, and when South Carolina sent her rice to feed the northern armies. Mr. Choate adjures the daemon of political strife to "take any form but that" of sectional conflict ; and so on. But Mr. Everett knows very well that in those days of union, the black race were citizens, serving with the whites in the ranks, and messing with them in the camp: and Mr. Choate is perfectly aware that when the fundamental principle of any polity is in danger there is no use in exhorting the citizens to hold their tongues about it, and forget it, and leave things to take their course. Such advice in a democratic republic is simply absurd in the world's eyes, while all good citizens feel it an insult. The tropes and fustian of the two orations of Mr. Choate and Mr. Holmes are not stuff that will live. More vital was some speak- ing which was going on in two or three places a few miles off.
Our first interest may naturally be in discovering what was said by the principal speakers about the slave-trade controversy : and it is amusing to see how various the opinions are. The one point of agreement on all hands seems to be that there will be no war between their country and ours. While one calls the British government pro-slavery from its desire of peace and cotton ; and another thinks that we, the people of England, shall always keep our Ministers up to the mark, when fairly appealed to ; and a third fears that we are drifting away from our old interest in the matter, and feeling what the Times newspaper speaks ; and a fourth is confident that the Times is not the organ of England just now,—all seem equally certain that there can be no war, from the clear and deliberate intention of American citizens that there shall be none for such a cause as the Slave-trade. On the subsidence of the first emotions roused by our debates, doubts were arising as to whether England had made any concession at all ; whether it might not still be hoped that, in fulfilment of the intention of the treaty, the cruisers of each nation would ascer- tain, by visit or effectual inquiry of some sort, whether the flag of any other nation was abused.
All speculations as to the meaning of British speakers were, however, cast into the shade on the 5th of July by the magnitude of some proposals made by some American orators of long-proved clearness of principle, and sobriety of judgment. Our readers are probably aware that the liberal opposition of New England consists of two political and one non-political element. The latter is composed of the abolitionists, "pure and simple " ; led by men who have given up their professional and social prospects rather than take the oath of allegiance to a constitution which, by a single clause, admits and patronizes slavery. Another sec- tion consists of men who see a way to a denial that that clause means what it is understood to mean, or that it does not bind any citizen to return a fugitive slave if he can interpret it in another way. The remaining section admit the "natural sense" of the clause, but say that it is so wicked that every good citizen may except it in his own mind when taking the oath, or avowedly by the course of his public life. The anti-slavery members of Con- gress belong, of course, to one of these two last sections, as the nonjurors are shut out from political life at Washington alto- gether. In this position of affairs, the claim is now brought forward that Massachusetts shall have such a constitution of her own as shall at once bring on and determine the argument of her relation to the Union. All the sections of anti-slavery citizens are at this moment invited and urged to join forces to obtain a law that every human being touching the soil of the state is free of course,—that no question can be entertained, under any form, of the liberty of any person whatever, or, as they put it, "whether a man is a man." To this practical point th.e efforts of the leading reformers are now directed ; and we see it proposed, gravely and earnestly, and by one of the most practical and active and distinguished citizens in the state, that, as so.ou after the passage of that law as any fugitive slave shall arrive who is young enough for the purpose, the State shall adopt and educate him, in order to make him Governor of the State. The hopelessness of wise action under pressing danger from mere speaking in Congress, or through mere political leaders, has sug- gested this proposal. Action which all the world must mark, and which nobody in the world can mistake, is the thing wanted ; and by this particular act, the world, and especially the southern states, would see that old Massachusetts was in earnest in the
claim that all orders of us in the republic should be included
within the provisions of the It will be remembered. that Massachusetts is already out of the pale of the union, through the incompatibility of her Personal Liberty Law with the Federal Constitution. We observe that John Mitchell, who is a great pet of the south at present, declares in a newspaper that many of the most intelligent southern men declare the union to be in point of fact, dissolved ; and that the two sections need. only the smallest concussion to fall asunder, and show that they are cleft through, in a truer than the Munchausen sense. If Massachusetts desires the concussion, in order that the infection of southern vice and misery should not contaminate the better half, the appointment of a Toussaint L'Ouverture, or of any in- telligent man of his race, to the Governor's chair for a year, would serve the purpose as well as any other overt act that could be devised. Stranger things have been done ; for there is a rational giv)iind for the scheme. It may possibly be promoted by the ourse taken by some southern newspapers which, finding it isle possible to conceal the successes of free, in comparison with slave-labour, are now trying to degrade the white labourer to the level of the "niggers," to obviate the certain consequences of the elevation of the negro to the rank of a free labourer. Some de- scriptions of Yankees by such writers are before us in which the working men of New England, (and all are working men there,)are described as the natural helots of the Republic, awaiting the prac- ideal enslavement to the south which will save them from them- selves. There is affectation in this, of course ; but affectations show the tendency of the time.
There is no end to such phenomena just now : but we must leave the doings of the white citizens, and glance for a moment at the proceedings of the coloured people. Some decisions in the Virginian Courts, which set aside all emancipation by will in which any sort of choice of condition is left to the slave, (on the ground that a chattel can have no will or choice,) open the pros- pect of an increased amount of emancipation during the owner's life-time ; a tendency rapidly accelerated at present by the spread of free-labour settlements in the state. Our recent account of this new feature in Virginian life, and of her preparations for joining the north, in case of an option becoming necessary, is em- phatically confirmed by the latest arrivals of newspapers. How, then, do the negroes take this change of prospect and of social rank, which brings them and the whites so much nearer than they ever were before ?
We find the answer in the report before us of an adjourned meeting of the coloured citizens of New Bedford, (Massachusetts) held on the 16th of June. The preamble and resolutions of this meeting are very striking. The first assumes, for reasons given, that the free citizens of their colour are a mark for persecution by the Federal Government because their presence in the country is a perpetual menace to slavery ; and they declare that the persecu- tion takes three forms—the enslavement of free blacks ; their de- portation from the country ; and finally their extirpation as a class of citizens. The resolutions affirm that the loyalty, courage, and self-sacrifice of their class, in all times of trouble, and their peaceable character throughout the history of the Republic, entitle them to claini the footing of citizens, and to denounce the Bred Scott decision,—which they do in terms of the requisite strength. They attribute this decision to the laches of the lead- ing clergy and statesmen, who have tacitly or openly denied, in regard to them, the equal Fatherhood of God, and the blessings which grow out of that relationship. They declare that the more they are persecuted, the less will they yield ; and that, so far from accepting expatriation, (to Liberia, it is understood,) they will remain in their native republic, and stand by its rights and liberties as faithful citizens should. They avow their gratitude to all who countenance or assist them in holding this ground ; profess an eternal hostility to slavery ; urge it upon all clergymen, professional men, and educated and wealthy citizens of their race to induce combination, and promote a correspondence between all towns and villages where any of their class reside; invite all such towns and villages to hold public meetings, and send up petitions and memorials to Congress without relaxation till their griev- ances are redressed ; exhort to union on certain leading points in the first place, that there may be no waste of strength ; and end by calling a mass-meeting of their order, to be held at New Bedford on the 2d of August.
The large amount of property now held in the great cities by the free coloured ship-owners, house proprietors, merchants and others will do more to preserve these resolutions from ridicule than the strength of their substance and the moderation of their language. When slavery is oozing away all along the frontier, and the descendants of a former generation of slaves are urging their claims in this style, we must agree with them that they have seen the beginning of the end. We doubt whether there is a man of intelligence in the whole country, who does not believe it, and who will not hereafter claim to have done so.
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