In the New England States the humanitarian tendency is strong as
a speculation, but only in relation to objects at a distance. It
is aided much by the congregational constitution of their
religion; yet it is weak at home, and is resisted practically by
the territorial division of power. New England means
Massachusetts, and nowhere is the subdivision of the powers of
government carried further, or the constitution of the
territorial democracy more complete, than in that State.
Philanthropy seldom works in private against private vices and
evils: it is effective only against public grievances, and the
farther they are from home and the less its right to interfere
with them, the more in earnest and the more effective for evil
does it become. Its nature is to mind every one's business but
its own. But now that slavery is abolished, there is nowhere in
the United States a social grievance of magnitude enough to
enlist any considerable number of the people, even of
Massachusetts, in a movement to redress it. Negro
enfranchisement is a question of which the humanitarians can make
something and they will make the most of it; but as it is a
question that each State will soon settle for itself, it will not
serve their purpose of prolonged agitation. They could not and
never did carry away the nation, even on the question of slavery
itself, and abolitionism had comparatively little direct
influence in abolishing slavery; and the exclusion of negro
suffrage can never be made to appear to the American people as
any thing like so great a grievance as was slavery.
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