Disproportionate Punishment.

Mr. Douglass: Dear Sir:—And so in the Southern States of Republican America, immortal man is bought and sold, aye, and bred, too, for sale, in like manner, with oxen, sheep, and swine; for $500, $600 or $700 a yellow-skinned planter can purchase a dark-skinned fellow-creature, and drive him with a whip, into his rice swamps, or cotton-fields, to work under fear of the lash, for the tyrant who calls himself his owner.

But this impersonation of dollars, having the faculty of locomotion, is so little satisfied with his condition, that a propensity to escape from it, is strong upon him; but if he attempts it, and is captured, his doom is intolerable; and should any compassionate Samaritan give him shelter, or food in his flight, republican laws and republic magistrates inflict upon him, as the penalty for humanity, several years' incarceration in a dungeon. —In other than slaveholding countries, it is the study of legislators, so to apportion punishment to the offense, that it may be commensurate only. The principle of Christian legislation, is justice, tempered with mercy; that of slave State law is, injustice made grievous by cruelty.

Let us now suppose a case, in some respects, analogous in American eyes. A butcher has oxen, to the value of $600, confined in his slaughter-house, and the terrified animals, not liking the smell of blood, nor the aspect of things around them, burst open the gate and escape. The keeper of a toll-bar, perceiving the approach of the flying animals, either throws open the gate, or omits to shut it; the bulls rush onward to a river, and are drowned: by which the butcher suffers the loss of his dollars. Now, if the toll-collector be taken before a magistrate, for facilitating the escape of the cattle, what punishment would be awarded? In England, I doubt if

he would be punished at all, and at the most, very slightly. But in one important feature, the cases are not parallel, for the butcher was unquestionably, the rightful owner of the property. But is the planter's right to his "peculiar institution" property, unquestionable? Mark the character of that man who answers yea.

Slaveholding is in such hideous keeping in all its parts, and so brutalizes every person and thing in contact with it, that it must be the invention of that being "who fills the dark places of the earth with cruelty." The very atmosphere of slave States, is pestilential: law, mercy, morals and religion, are blighted by their foul miasma; and of what loathsome and heterogenous materials is a slaverholder made of. He is craven, as well as cruel; indeed, his fear instigates his cruelty; he bullies and quails: he is terror-stricken by the voice of a reading negro; but he is seldom scarred by this. Vengeance falls upon the head of man or woman, that dares to teach a slave to read that book which the slaveholders' ministers aver is the sanction for their "peculiar institution."—This prohibition is their condemnation, convicting them of planter-pleasing hypocrisy. It proves that they "love darkness rather than light, because the slaveholder's deeds are evil." These pseudo messengers of God, bleach from the reproval of the interdict, indeed, they apologise for the restriction. And what is the crime that three millions of men have committed to be held in this ignominious bondage, by the 270,000 oppressors?—Their sin is, having a sable skin, and hair of wool, consequently "black sheep." They have the hue of the Ethiopian church, whose soul was of such value, that the Holy Spirit caused Philip to be the instrument of its salvation; and when the beautiful rite of baptism had been performed, a miracle was wrought upon Philip to signalize the event.—But then Ethiopians are so abominable in the sight of Americans, that their treatment

is worse than that of the animals that perish. Their bodies are lacerated, their minds debased, their morals polluted, and their souls periled.

But indignation carries me away from the main object of this letter, which was to display the iniquity of disproportionate punishment, for disobedience to unjust laws. The slaveholder, aware of the detestation in which his deeds are held, by all right-minded men, causes these laws to be enacted "in terorem," from the same motives that impel despots to erect bastiles, and the Romanists, their inquisitions.

Yours, most cordially, E. B.Burritt, Elihu

Elihu Burritt (1810—79), the “learned blacksmith,” taught himself several languages and various sciences while working in a smithy. Born into poverty in New Britain, Connecticut, Burritt made a career of advocating pacifism, temperance, cheap international postage, and abolitionism. A tireless champion of world peace, Burritt joined the American Peace Society in the early 18403 and in 1846 went to England, where he formed the League of Universal Brotherhood, disseminated peace propaganda through his “Olive Leaf Mission,” and helped organize two international peace congresses. Opposed to the American Civil War because of his pacifism, Burritt determined to undermine slavery by boycotting slave-grown produce, and he later urged schemes for compensated emancipation. During his career he edited several reform newspapers, the most notable being the Christian Citizen (1844—51). Elihu Burritt, The Learned Blacksmith: The Letters and Journals of Elihu Burritt, ed. Merle E. Curti (New York, 1937); Peter Tolis, Elihu Burritt, Crusader for Brotherhood (Hamden, Conn., 1968); Shepperson, “Free Church and American Slavery,” 133; DAB, 3:328.