SLAVERY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 46, 8 March 1889, Page 27

SLAVERY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

(Written for the New York Freeman's Journal by Pbo»EB3OH T. F. GALWh.Y.) IN the Catholic Annual for 1889, that scholarly and graceful writer, Monsignor Kobert Seton, who delights in the thorough and c >necientious study of the more refined curiosities of mediaeval and eaily modern history, defends the famous Spanish-American, Bishop Bartholomew de Las Casas, from the charge of having favoured the introduction of negro slavery into America He says . " The imputation rests upon the unsuppoited testimony of Herrerd, writing thirty years afcer the death of Las Casas, whose fierce contemporaries, with the brilliant, powerful, and determined Sepulveda at their head, are absolutely silent upon the matter. The fact is that the English were the first, or among the very first, who traded in black slaves ; and a ehameful memorial of this inhuman traffic was perpetuated in the family of Sir John Hawkins, who, partly by purchase, partly by i'oice, obtained in 1362 a cargo of 300 negroes on tne coast of Guinea, which he carried to Hispanioia, and sold to tne Spaniards. Tt, is piratical seaman was knightei by Queen Elizabeth, who. moreover, in sanction of his abominable enterprise, male him an express rojalgrintof the followiLg crest, a Demi moor in his proper colour, bound with a cord . ' Forced from home and all its pleasures, Afro's coast I oft forlorn ; To increase a stranger's treasures, O'er the raging billows borne. Men from England bju^ht and sold me. Paid my price in paltry gold But. slave though they have enrolled me, Minds are never to be sold. '— Cotritrr. A few facts with regard to slavery in America are suggestive hi themselves. The first is that iv the Span sh- \mericin countries slavery was never so degrading to the slave as it was in the United States, where it owed its origin to Engrhbh Protestant*, for the influence of the Catholic religion id Spauifch-America caused the slaveholders tv respect the marriage- le among their slaves. This is a point of very great importance, uf course. The Catholic Church has always been unjielding in this matter, and the mo=t ignor-mt slave who had a Catholic for vis master could tl erefore depend on his own dignity as a man being protected in this regard at least. Ihe family relations of the slaves in Cat'iolic countries bemg thus assured by t .c sanction of the dominant religion, there was a gr jwvo of self-respect from generation among these descendants of African savages. Not only that. In thesj countries master and save took part in the same religious services, confessed to the same priests, received the Sacrament of Comimnion together at the t-arnc altai-iaii, were confirmed by the same bishop, and, when dead, were buried m the same God s acre, both master and sUve bem^ taugut that they w^u'd meet as brothers in Christ befoie the bame tribunal of God at the end ot the lr ear hly career. Is it nece^ary to point out how d fferent was all this m our own country down to our own day, d jwn to 18GI ? Even now the white Epibcoual aus oi South Caio n.a are fcaul to Le divided because a few ye.l'ius Ctiristians among tiiem d< '•ire ti> ace >rd equal relig ous piivi ce o 'es tj persons whose skins are more or less darkei tLao their own ' But let us look at sliveiy as it existed in the S .u'hern States up to tLe Civil War. Befoie going i'uitner, uuwevui , one remark it> necessary. Sj tar as the manure-tie am w\i the siUm's ot the S/uth was concerned, evm though American l.iw did cot r cognise it in the least, it was respected by ta'hohc Siaveholiiei- 1 , juit as now Catholics do not make use of divorce even though the hws of all the States recoguifcC divorce. This was au lNbtance of where Catholic blateholders obeyed God rather than man. It is true that there were Protestants also who. in ordinary cncumßtanco*, treated the marriage

of their slaves as of serious momeit, but they were exceptions. Tha rule was to look at the marriagj of slaves as a matter of temporary convenience both to master and slave. At partition sales of estates for the purposes of inheritance, foreclosures of mortgages, bankruptcies and the like, ne^ro man and wife, and mother and children, were separated with no more compunction of conscience on the parts of sellers and buyers than would be expected now at the breaking up or division of a Kentucky stockfarm Chancellor James Kent, in his " Commentaries on American Law," gave a perfectly impartial, unprejudiced compeniium of the American law prevailing in his day, and in his discussion of the " Rights of Persons," he sets oat in a very clear form the legal standing of slaves in the United States. First of all. let it be remembered that most of the slaveholders of the South wera not only professed Protestants, but actual church members, and that the principal Protestant tenet has always been that it is necessary to " read the Bible " in order to be a good Christian, and then the full wickedness of slave law as made and administered under Protestant influences will be apparent. In volume 11. of Kent's " Commentai ies " (seventh edition), page 279, we find in a foatnote : " Iv Georgia, by an Act in 1829, no person is permittel to teach a slave, a negro, or free person of colour, to read or write. So, ia Virginia, by statute, in 1830, meetings of free negroes, to le^rn reading or writing, are unlawful, and subject them to corporal punishment ; and it is unlawful for white persons to assemble with free negroes or slaves, to teach them to read or write. Tne prohibitory Act of the Legislature of Alabama, passed in the session of 1831-2, relative to instruction to be given to the slave, or free coloured population, or exhortation or preaching to them, or any mischievous influence attempted to be exercised over them, is sufficiently penal. Laws of similar import are presumed to exist ia the other slave-holding States ; but in Louisiani the law on the subject is armed with ten* fold seventy. It not only forbids any person teaching slaves to read or write, but it declares that any person using; language, in any public discourse, from the bar, bench, stage, or pulpit, or any other place, or in any private conversation, or making usa of any signs or actions, having a tendency to produce discontent among the free coloured population, or insubordination among the slaves, or who shall be knowingly instrumental in bringing into the State any paper, book, or pamphlet, having the like tendency, snail, on conviction, be punishable wUh imprisonment or death, at the discretion of the court. " With re?ard to Louisiana, it must be remembered that these penal slave laws cim« into existence after the original Catholic settlers, of French and Spanish origin, had been completely outnumbered by the Protestant immigrants from Virginia, the Carolina*, Georgia, and Tennessee, who poured into the State subsequent to the battle of New Orleans. Allowance must, of cours<\ be made for the circumanstances. What K°nt remarked of all this Bl»ve legislation was undoubtedly true • " The evils of domestic slavery are inevitable ; but tne responsibility does not rest upon the present genera'ion, to whom the institutioj descended by inheritance, provided they have endeavoured by all reasonable means to arrest or mitigate the evil." But tbe capital point, after all, and one which Kent, who was merely interested in expounding the law as it was in his day, was professionally bound to overlook, was this, namely, that, with some comparatively few exceptions, there was no disinterested tendency among Protestants either to abohs i slavery or to mitigate the condition of the slaves. On the contrary, the repressive character of the laws on slavery was growing in intensity fioai je.ir to year, provoked, no doubt, by the agitation uf abolitions' s who had nothing much to lose by their agitation. Tie Fugitive Slave law of 1850, which made the legal establishment of the Federal G )vernment a vast machine for detecting and retunvnjr fugitive slaves to their masters, wa9 followed within four years by the rjp ■ A of the Missouri C itnpromisa Ast, thus not only permitting, but practically encouraging the extension of slave territory. The pulpits of Southern Protestant churches resounded with harangues in which slavery was not merely defended but actually glorified. The Bible, which, by the laws forbidding reading and writing to the slaves, was presumed not to be intended for the benefit of the slave, was qu ited by these Protestant preachers in support of the institution which Hie Frotestant pirate, Sir John Ha* kins, bad introduced to America. Do we blame the Southern people ljr having held slaves ? Not at all. We do not blame them for it any more than wa blame so many excellent men and women for being Protestants. In both cases it has been an inheritance. The people of the North held slaves as long as they found it profitable to do so. Just in front of where Harper's publishing house now stands in New York city, a number of negroes were burnt to death in the beginning of the last century, for a supposed conspiracy to revolt and gain their freedom. They were vaguely charged also with nnphcition in a •' Popish plot." Some day, perhaps, the coloured people of New York will set up a monument in Franklin Square to commemorate these martyrs of their race. Kent sums up tne legal condition of slaves in the United States in these words (vol. 2, seve ith edition, page 278): " Their condition is more analagous to that of the slaves of the ancients, than to that of the villeins of feudal time^, both in respect to the degradation uf the slaves and the dominion and power of the master." Tue italics in all the^e q iota f ions 1 torn Keut are ours. From IGG"> to 1083, what arc known in colonial history as the •• Duke s Law?," that is to say tl c laws enacted by the much vilified Jamen, Dukeof York, afterwards James 11. of England, were in force in the colony of New York. The4e laws forbade "a Christian to a slave, except a pert^on adjudged thereto by authority, or such as hava willingly sold themselves thereto.' Tnj first charter of New York, under which these Duke's Laws weie enacted and enforced, was brought over by a Catholic, the first Governor of New York, that wise and chaiitable-minded Irishman, Thomas Dougan. But Prot< stantism overthrew the 1 ' Duke's Laws,"' and introduces agiin into New Voik a reign or ttrror of bigoted suspicion and ill-will. " In the year 170(5,'' says Kent (vol. 2, page 280). " it was declared by statute that no slave should be a witness for or against any freraian, in any matter, civil or criminal. The consequence of this was, that a slave

found alone could be beaten with impunity by any freeman, without cause." That was shortly after the burning of the negroes in what is now called Franklin Square, for implication in the Buppoßed " Popish plot." What does all this show ? It shows, incidentally, that Protestantism, so far as it is purely Protestant, is not and cannot be a civilising force, that Protestantism is a check to the action of the Christian principles which a large proportion of sincere Protestants undoubtedly believe in and desire to practise. For more than 200 years the slavery which has been planted in North America by English pirates, such as Hawkins, and bis fellows, had degraded the dignity of millions of human beings for whom Christ died, and what is of special interest in this study, the slave legislation of our country up to 1861 was of a kind far less humane, very far less Christian, than that enacted in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. Infict it was not Christian, for, as Kent tells us, the condition of the slaves of the United States in our own day was " more analogous to that of the ancients than to that of the villeins of feudal times." What the "slaves of the ancients" were we shall see in time. The only nation in America that has never recognised slavery ia the only nation in America that was not only settled by Catholics, but Bettled under Catholic ecclesiastical direction. That is Canada, whose chief city, Montreal, was laid out under the legal right and authority reposed in a body of priests, the Society of St, Sulpice.