Public Morality, Old and New
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PUBLIC MORALITY, OLD AND NEW.
A correspondent sends us a communication, very well written, but too long for our columns, the burden of which is that modern morality, as shown by governments or individuals, is a far inferior article to ancient primitive morality. This is rather a deep and dry subject, but we think the very reverse of our correspondent. The great antique governments, as our American Chancellor Kent well remarks, seem to have had no conception of the moral obligations of justice and humanity between nations, and there was no such thing in existence as international law. They regarded strangers and enemies as nearly synonymous, and considered foreign persons and property as lawful prizes. Their laws of peace and war were barbarous and deplorable. So little were mankind accustomed to regard the rights of persons or property, or to perceive the value and beauty of public order, that, in the most enlightened ages of the Grecian republic, piracy was regarded as an honorable employment. There were powerful Grecian States that avowed the practice of piracy; and the fleets of Athens, the best disciplined and most respected naval force in all antiquity, were exceedingly addicted to piratical excursions.
The Hebrews were probably one of the bloodiest disposed races ever upon the earth, delighting in fanatical punishments and revenge. The Romans were a sublime band of cut-throats. And it was the received opinion that Greeks, even as between their own cities and states, were bound to no duties, nor by any moral law, without compact; and that prisoners taken in war had no rights, and might lawfully be put to death, or sold into perpetual slavery, with their wives and children.
No, no, friend; the Christian religion has not held sway over large parts of the civilized world for fifteen centuries, for nothing.