Hilaire Belloc Quotes
If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.
Belloc, Hilaire. The Servile State. T.N. Foulis, 1912, p. 17.
He was the Russian Reformer who ended serfdom and gave land to the peasants and then was assassinated. Ironically, both Alexander II and Lincoln were assassinated—because of their reform efforts—Lincoln for going too far; the Czar for not going far enough. See the Nickname that was given to the Czar: {622809}.
A few years later he had a clearer idea of what was to be done. However, the additional factor of the Civil War played a big part in driving his Emancipation Proclamation. See {609360}
Baldwin was a young lawyer at the time. He represented a shipload of ex-slaves who had taken over their Spanish slave ship and landed in America. The Spanish claimed, the ship owners and some of the crew all claimed the “property.”
Baron Brougham and Vaux
In this case, the Pope was obeyed on the issue of slavery. However, Papal injunctions against slavery have not always had the desired effect. See {617632}
This quotation illustrates the strong abolitionist tendency in the Ohio Territory. Under this clause, escaped slaves from Southern states would not be returned by the state authorities. Even more insulting to the slave enthusiasts of the South, if a Southerner brought any slaves into Ohio with them as was common for Southerners traveling with their personal slaves or horse team drivers, those slaves would be free. An interesting aspect of this clause of the Ohio Constitution was that the beginning was, word for word, copied from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. See {618100}.
What was particularly interesting about this quotation is that Pinkney was a political leader of Maryland, a slave state. He saw the injustice and immorality of slavery but like many others of our founding fathers assumed that ending slavery would infringe on the property rights of the slave holders. Others argued that there can be no right to deny others their basic rights—property and wealth are subordinate to natural rights. See {632258} and {632259} for more on this point.
Note that Lincoln did not justify the emancipation proclamation on moral or humanitarian grounds, but on the grounds of military necessity.
In April, 1784, the Continental Congress passed a series of laws that Jefferson had drafted for the NorthWest territory—Ohio then being the west and the states that would develop there. However, the quotation is the clause that the Southern States blocked and hence did not become law, as the Soothers states cared little about the status of the area regarding slavery, but feared that the new states wold become a sanctuary for runaway slaves. It was another case where Jefferson attempted to end slavery. It also was yet another example of the unwieldiness of the Continental Congress to manage the new nation which led up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Ironically, as a price for union, the Southern States demanded and obtained a disproportionate representation in the New House of Representatives by having 60 percent of their slaves counted inzallocating congressional seats. The senate also worked in their favor as there were enough Southern states to block any attack on slavery in the Senate. There was no democratic way to eliminate slavery and the Civil War resulted. However, Jefferson’s proposed law was passed by the last Continental Congress in June, 1787. The difference was that there was also added a proviso that required the return of all runaway slaves from the new territory and states which was lacking in the earlier attempt.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was a British-French writer and historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford South from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds. Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship.
