Delusions of Fanaticism [pp. 42-61]

DELUSIONS OF FANATICISM.
lions per annum: with order preserved everywhere throughout the whole extent, without the bayonet; a peaceful, religious, and progressive people, dwelling amnid the monumenrts of the highest civilization, and bridling all its agencies
into their service, knowing above all that the "fear of God is
wisdom, and the fear of man is folly "-such a people, such a
land, will have independence in the Union or independence
out of the Union.
ART. V. —DELUSIONS OF FANATICISM.*
WE will consider in this paper, both ancient and modern
philanthropy, and the sensible conservatism of the one and
the fanatic delusions of the other, with their relations to
slavery, and then enter on the main theme that tempts our
inquiry.
It is worthy of remark, that philanthropy first suggested
the enslavement of the African in the New World, and was
also the first to suggest his emancipation; and that, though its
motives in both instances were pure, its kindness was mistaken, and destructive to civilization. Las Casas recommended it as a relief to the Indian, and thie learned and benevolent
of his time saw in the slave-trade the means of developing
the resources of the rich glebes and mines of tropic continents,
that could be worked only by compulsory labor, and of evangelizing races who were wasting in cannibal broils and idle festivities, the strength that was given them to increase the
earth's productions and cheapen the comforts of the poor.
Neither reason nor humanity, through other than mistaken
motives, would ever sanction the monstrous doctrine, that the
ranks of barbarous hordes should stand with presented arms,
and exclude from their shores the starving millions who were
willing to toil, from fertile and unappropriated continents that
heathen laziness had suffered to grow up in a tangled wild of
forests. Mlan has but a given quantity of soil capable of pro.
ducing the necessaries of life. If a part of this lies under a cli.
mate whose wealth can be elaborated only by compulsory
labor, that race. best fitted for the work by physical powers,
and rendered worthless for everything else by contracted intellects, must be employed by force. The limit to earth's resources, and the want of limtnit to man's reproduction is the
cause of human selfishness, and it is the duty of Christians to
* Copyrighted for the writer.
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