Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of
its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority.
To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to
contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness! If this
ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of
substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the
necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule;
otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as
many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor.
We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the
thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at
the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders
there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior
profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust
of dominion--the passion for power and superiority. To manage this
passion is the heaviest charge of policy--to provide that the offices
which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and
worthily.
Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently
such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a
few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others.
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