White Slavery InThe Barbary States.BYCHARLES SUMNER.
Fabula narratur.
HORACE.
And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do suchthings, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment ofGod?
EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, Chap. ii. v. 3.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO:
JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON.
LONDON:
LOW AND COMPANY.
1853.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
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GEO. C. RAND, PRINTER, CORNHILL.
White Slavery In The Barbary States.
History has been sometimes called a gallery, where, in living forms, arepreserved the scenes, the incidents, and the characters of the past. Itmay also be called the world's great charnel house, where are gatheredcoffins, dead men's bones, and all the uncleanness of the years thathave fled. As we walk among its pictures, radiant with the inspirationof virtue and of freedom, we confess a new impulse to beneficentexertion. As we grope amidst the unsightly shapes that have been leftwithout an epitaph, we may at least derive a fresh aversion to all theirliving representatives.
In this mighty gallery, amidst a heavenly light, are the images of thebenefactors of mankind—the poets who have sung the praise of virtue,the historians who have recorded its achievements, and the good men ofall time, who, by word or deed, have striven for the welfare of others.Here are depicted those scenes where the divinity of man has been mademanifest in trial and danger. Here also are those grand incidents whichattended the establishment of the free institutions of the world; thesigning of Magna Charta, with its priceless privileges of freedom, by areluctant monarch; and the signing of the Declaration of Independence,the annunciation of the inalienable rights of man, by the fathers of ourrepublic.
On the other hand, in ignominious confusion, far down in this dark,dreary charnel house is tumbled all that now remains of the tyrants, thepersecutors, the selfish men, under whom mankind have groaned. Herealso, in festering, loathsome decay, are the monstrous institutions orcustoms, which the earth, weary of their infamy and injustice, hasrefused to sustain—the Helotism of Sparta, the Serfdom of ChristianEurope, the Ordeal by Battle, and Algerine Slavery.
From this charnel house let me to-night draw forth one of these. It maynot be without profit to dwell on the origin, the history, and thecharacter of a custom, which, after being for a long time a byword anda hissing among the nations, has at last been driven from the world. Theeasy, instinctive, positive reprobation, which it will receive from all,must necessarily direct our judgment of other institutions, yettolerated in equal defiance of justice and humanity. I propose toconsider the subject of White Slavery in Algiers, or perhap