LETTER X.
Dear Charles,—No: “it is not so surprising that there
should be fears about your becoming a member of a Moral
Suasion Society.” Have you yet to learn that these affairs
go in clusters? Begin where you choose, either at the
centre, or any point in the circumference of modern abolitionism,
and you will go the entire circle—in other words,
the whole figure.
The real out-and-outers, who originate certain moralities,
are very often persons who, in various ways, run opposition
lines against puritanism, and even against the Scriptures
themselves. Hence such persons affect to get up something
double-gilt and very glittering, and therefore very attractive;
and they are desirous to pass, if not for puritans or Christians,
yet for something as good, and, perhaps, a little better
—splendid philanthropic artists, and with confidence in man!
And no wonder their pretensions are admitted, for they have
patent contrivances for changing the spots of leopards, and
washing Ethiops white! and the world all run mad after
pills, potions, lotions, plasters, not only for the beautifying
of the physical man, but also of the moral and spiritual.
I am not deeply read in their slang and cant, yet I have
heard their whine about the dignity of that human nature
which my Bible says is “deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked;” about confidence in men, when that book
teaches me to “cease from man, and not put confidence in
princes;” about our equal tendency, “when every thought
of the imagination of the heart from youth up is evil;”
about the efficacy of persuasion, irrespective of a divine
efficiency, when “we hate the light, and as did our fathers,
always resist the Holy Ghost;” about the grandeur of our
morals and good works, when we are often “whited sepulchres
without,” and filthy graves within.
True to their proton pseudos, as you learned clerks call it,
—belief in the native goodness of man,—they give us
scheme after scheme, some impracticable, some insane, others
worse,—all based on the wondrous potency of moral suasion
and circumstance; and all, more or less, eschewing
force and punishment. These self-complacent philanthropists
all begin at the centre, and in due time, by a thousand
radiating paths, thrust their meek visages out of the grand
circumference.
Others, like my reverend friend,—come, do not wince,
Charley,—very good sort of folks, and with no evil intention,
caught by the seeming truth, and confounded by the glare of
a dozen common-places, streaming like light before their
eyes, and adroitly flourished on the wheel, attach themselves,
in an unluckly moment, to some point on the circumference,
intending to stand there. But once within the influence of
the wheel, away they whirl, through all the kindred moralities
of modern abolitionism. An active fellow may, indeed, occasionally
leap off at a tangent, or may be he is hurled off; but
usually the good sort of folks do once at least go the entire
circumference—nothing save one whole revolution satisfies.
Sometimes, for instance, a man will begin with an ultra-peace
society. There are made to glare with a strange light
some very plain matters ever believed by wise and good persons,
such as, war is a great evil—peace a great blessing,
—revenge demoniacal, and the like: and from these plain
principles, after a good deal of argument, and parade, and
flourish, comes forth, by some sort of logical legerdemain,
the most preposterous conclusion, that self-defence is sinful!
A man sometimes begins with such a society; and soon
he becomes an anti-slavery man, in the worst sense of the
term, and ready in defence of his abstraction to cut the
throats of all the slaveholders, and coolly to dissolve the
Union itself!—an intemperate temperance man, so tee-total
as to give up even tea; and so fierce for humanity as to
slander and revile any one who, at his own table, should,
once in a year, drink one thimblefull of wine!—an anti-renter
prepared to give landlords lead for gold, and gunpowder
for flour!—a universalist!—an anti-hanger!—a
moral persuader abolishing all rods from families, and ferules
from school-rooms!
Let a man get the whirl fairly into his system, and he
will go it, like a mammoth humming-top moved by steam!
Do not misunderstand these remarks, Charles; for I do think
men of your cloth may join some moral societies, and ought,
perhaps, to join others; as, for instance, certain peace and
temperance societies. But I am well satisfied that the clergy
should never commit, or rather abandon themselves to mere
phases of morality. That will put the whirl into you; and
you will become, almost of necessity, a giddy fanatic; or if
you get violently thrown from the wheel, you stand a chance
of being deemed crack-brained the rest of your life, and your
influence becomes for ever impaired.
Hence I am not at all surprised to learn that my old
townsman, Solomon Lacsuck, so dislikes Mr. Birchem, the
new schoolmaster, elected by your trustees. But your village
can never recover from the bad effects following from
Mr. Smoothey's administration, who was recommended to
your board by the Moral Suasion Society, till a return to the
old rod-enforced discipline. I am glad you had firmness to
resist the rigmarole about corporal chastisement in schools;
and that you had common sense enough to know that legislators
do not
ex officio possess a knowledge of the art and
mystery of school-keeping. That is a kind of government
beyond the abilities of most representatives elected by majorities;
and our venerable law-makers would be still more
venerable, if they would stick to their own last, and let
Birchem stick to his. And so ought we to be unmoved by
the humdrum of a thousand lecturers and editors, many of
whom would be benefitted by a judicious switching themselves,
and who owe the little wisdom they really do possess
to the honest scourging of their schoolmaster.
Were not the matter too serious for sport, it would be
very edifying to behold some theoretical schoolmen practising
in certain schools on the sugar-plum and do-it-my-little
dearee-system: or on the more plausible system of mere appeal
to the moral sense, or the sense of honor in pupils. As
far as my observation extends, young ladies and gentlemen
are very much like sinners of mature age, and they often
not only sin wilfully and deliberately, but even con mucho
gusto, against both honor and conscience, and all the utilities
at the same time. The sense of honor, and the moral sense
of most pupils, resides in the palm of the hand, or even lower
down; and the rod and the ferule is the moral persuader to
touch that sense.
Some pupils are malicious and scornful; some are profane,
indecent, lying, quarrelsome, and even thievish; and
not a few are desperately addicted to crooked pins, shoemaker's
wax, paper fly boxes, and all the instruments and doings
of idleness and fun: and most are in all and every respect
as crooked as a grape-vine, as knotted as a crab-stick, as
prickly and rough as a thorn-tree, and sour as vinegar, and
with “folly bound up in the heart.”
Mr. Smoothey is competent now, I presume, to deliver a
course of lectures on the miraculous efficiency of oil and
milk in the training and government of the young. The
Secretary of the Moral Persuaders says that Smoothey is
not appreciated, and, that in contradiction to your folks of
Somewhersburg, he will affirm that Smoothey taught the alphabet
in twenty-six lessons, and the and-per-se in two;
which feat he accomplished by small cakes baked for the
purpose in shape of the letters, and eaten at proper intervals
on every successive day! Others say, however, that while
that was, indeed, true enough, yet when he attempted to
teach syllabication without the gingerbread, the thoughtless
and ungrateful urchins would not learn. Hence the master
deserted our little darlings, and put off with his cake-bag to
your village.
He was, at first, very popular, as he never spake a cross
word in the school-room; and he had a scheme for the nicest
adjustment of disagreement among the larger pupils on principles
of law and honor; but, at last, the dishonorable and
lawless—and these were a very respectable minority—made
him a king log: and so much time was wasted by working
the complex machinery, that little or no improvement
was made in the several studies. The school became a
miniature house of lords, of which he, however, was neither
governor nor chief speaker; and all made very considerable
attainments in self-conceit, self-importance, and impertinence,
and entertained great contempt for brutal pedagogues that
dealt in oil of birch or strap-grease.
Under special and favorable circumstances, and especially
where family government has been uniform and judicious,
a preceptor may teach and govern with no resort to the rod
and its cognates; although even then, corporal chastisement
must be deemed possible; but most commonly, resort must
be had to such chastisement.
With some children in all schools, and in many schools
for a time, mere kindness and tenderness, and appeals to common
sense and virtuous feelings and sentiments will do wonders
in reforming and governing; but he that hopes, by
shedding tears over the generality of bad and disobedient
scholars, to win them to his purpose, must have a good fountain
head of tears, and a tear-pump that works remarkably
easy; and then he will discover, after the exhausting of his
well, that most will remain as idle and vicious as ever, and
with contemptuous feelings toward an inefficient and weeping
master. Charles, you cannot cry folly out of a child's heart
—all experience teaches that it must be done by the rod of
correction.
Charles, I rather suspect, from some hints in your letters,
that my crudities are read to certain of your friends out
there. Well, as you like; but do not show this to poor Smoothy,
unless you do think it would do him some good.
