Note 11 — Chapter VI

Better, far better, said the organ of the clerical appellants in 1837, that slavery should remain perpetual, than that the existing institutions with which it is so intimately interwoven, should be disturbed. To most minds comes this moment of distrust of the principles of righteousness—want of faith in God. Orange Scott, who then stood firm, has in this last crisis, deserted the cause, moved by the same temptation. When he sees Church and State shaken by the advent of righteous and free principles, “upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity—the sea and waves roaring—men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the earth,” he says—“Slavery is the least evil of the two.” With propriety might he be asked, with what feelings would the slave of the Louisiana sugar cauldron contemplate the utter destruction of the civil and ecclesiastical arrangements by which he is crushed, soul and body? Would he say better, far better that slavery should remain perpetual as “the least evil of the two?” Yet we are commanded to remember those in bonds as bound with them. However deep may be our attachment to institutions, we must do right, in the faith that righteousness can destroy no good thing.