- ernment, which desired all people to have equal opportunities,
rich or poor, and which, while sitting in the Capitol could see every day the manacled slave driven past the door to market? Custom, as it so often does, had blunted the sensibilities of these Senators: they remained untouched and unmoved. It needed a young, fresh, open mind like that of Garrison to show them the way. He was only twenty-six, but he saw clearly what much older men did not see, that in the long run the moral point of view is the only point of view, that right or justice is the only thing to work for, and all other issues are of no account at all. But it does not, perhaps, seem to us now a very wonderful thing that Garrison should have been so shocked and horrified at what he saw and heard about slavery. What strikes us as incredible now is that there were many thousands of people, and quite humane, kind people too, who defended it. It was the custom of the country and part of the Constitution. Many people didn't trouble to reason about it; indeed, they believed that were slavery abolished the country would be ruined—they would have no cotton, no corn, no tobacco, because there would be no laborers to till the soil or to harvest the crops. The black men and women did the work for nothing. But so short-sighted and stupid were commercial people generally, that they could not see that slavery, besides being a moral wrong, was also a mistake economically. In the long run it was more expensive, because the work
