Slavery. By William E. Channing [pp. 268-306]

Slavery.
either just or unjust, but become the one or the other ac cording to circumstances; and their morality is not deter mined by the degree in which they encroach upon the natural
rights of men, but on the degree in which they promote or
retard the progress of human happiness and virtue. In this
country we believe that the general good requires us to deprive the whole female sex of the right of self-government.
They have no voice in the formation of the laws which dispose of their persons and property. When married, we
despoil them almost entirely of a legal existence, and deny
them some of the most essential rights of property. We
treat all minors much in the same way, depriving them of
many personal and almost all political rights, and that too
though they may be far more competent to exercise them
aright than many adults. We, moreover, decide that a majority of one may make laws for the whole community, no
matter whether the numerical majority have more wisdom
or virtue than the minority or not. Our plea for all this is, that
the good of the whole is thereby most effectually promoted.
This plea, if made out, justifies the case. In England and
France they believe that the good of the whole requires that
the right of governing, instead of Wing restricted, to all adult
males, as we arbitrarily determine, should be confined to that
portion of the male population who hold a given amount of
property. In Prussia and Russia, they believe with equal
confidence, that public security and happiness demand that
all power should be in the hands of the king. If they are
right in their opinion, they are right in their practice. The
principle that social and political organizations are designed
for the general good, of course requires they should be allowed to change, as the progress of society may demand.
It is very possible that the feudal system may have been well
adapted to the state of Europe in the middle ages. The
change in the condition of the world, however, has gradually
obliterated almost all its features. The villain has become
the independent farmer; the lord of the manor, the simple
landlord; and the sovereign leige, in whom, according to the
fiction of the system, the fee of the whole country vested, has
become a constitutional monarch. It may be that another
series of changes may convert the tenant into an owner, the
lord into a rich commoner, and the monarch into a president.
Though these changes have resulted in giving the people the
enjoyment of a larger amount of their rights than they formerly possessed, it is not hence to be inferred that they
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