James Elliot Cabot - A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson Vol. II, 1887

Page 62

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

432

more than a pair

of oars against the falling ocean

at Niagara.

"

And what

is

the amount of the conclusion in

New England acquiesce ? It is that the Creator of the negro has given him up to stand as a victim, a caricature of the white man which the men of

beside

him

his whip.

He

;

under his pack, to bleed under

to stoop

If that be the doctrine, then I say,

has given up his cause,

if

He

has also given up But it is not so the

mine, who feel his wrong. universe is not bankrupt ; still stands the old heart ;

firm in right

is

its seat,

and

And what

is

and knows

shall

be

;

that,

come what

justice is forever

will,

and

the reply to this fatal allegation

the

ever. ?

I

believe there is a sound facts

argument derived from collected in the United States and in the

West

Indies in reply to this alleged hopeless infe-

riority of the colored race. it.

I concern myself

But

now with

I shall not touch

the morals of the

system, which seem to scorn a tedious catalogue of particulars on a question so simple as this.

The

sentiment of right, which is the principle of civilization and the reason of reason, fights against this

damnable atheism. The Persians have a proverb: Beware of the orphan for, when the orphan is ;

Almighty is shaken Whatever may appear at the

set a-crying, the throne of the

from

side to side.

moment, however contrasted the fortunes of the black and the white, yet is the planter's an unsafe


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