answer for it before God and man. "But their stupidity is not the only reason of our treating them with severity; for it is hard to say which is the greatest, this, or their stubbornness and wickedness." But do not these, as well as the other, lie at your door? Are not stubbornness, cunning, pilfering, and divers other vices, the natural necessary fruits of slavery, in every age and nation? What means have you used to remove this stubbornness? Have you tried what mildness and gentleness would do? What pains have you taken, what method have you used to reclaim them from their wickedness? Have you carefully taught them, "that there is a God, a wise, powerful, merciful Being, the Creator and Governor of heaven and earth; that he has appointed a day wherein he will judge the world, will take an account of all our thoughts, words, and actions; that in that day he will reward every child of man according to his works: that then the righteous shall inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; and the wicked shall be cast into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels?" If you have not done this, if you have taken no pains nor thought about this matter, can you wonder at their wickedness? What wonder if they should cut your throat? and if they did, whom could you thank for it but yourself? You first acted the villain in making them slaves, whether you stole them or bought them. You kept them stupid and wicked, by cutting them off from all opportunities of improving either in knowledge or virtue; and now you assign their want of wisdom or goodness as the reason for using them worse than brute beasts! V. I add a few words to those who are more immediately concerned. 1. To Traders. You have torn away children from their parents, and parents from their children; husbands from their wives; wives from their beloved husbands; brethren and sisters from each other. You have dragged them who have never done you any wrong, in chains, and forced them into the vilest slavery, never to end but with life; such slavery as is not found among the Turks in Algiers, nor among the heathens in America. You induce the villain to steal, rob, murder men, women, and children, without number, by paying him for his execrable labor. It is all your act and deed. Is your conscience quite reconciled to this? Does it never reproach you at all? Has gold entirely blinded your eyes, and stupified your heart? Can you see, can you feel no harm therein? Is it doing as you would be done to? Make the case your own. "Master," said a slave at Liverpool, to the merchant that owned him, "what if some of my countrymen were to come here, and take away Mistress, and Tommy, and Billy, and carry them into our country, and make them slaves, how would you like it?" His answer was worthy of a man"I will never buy a slave more while I live." Let his resolution be yours. Have no more any part in this detestable business. Instantly leave it to those unfeeling wretches, "who laugh at human nature and compassion." Be you a man; not a wolf, a devourer of the human species! Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy. Is there a God? You know there is. Is he a just God? Then there must be a state of retribution; a state wherein the just God will reward every man according to his works. Then what reward will he render to you? O think betimes! before you drop into eternity! Think now. "He shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy." Are you a man? Then you should have a human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no sympathy? no sense of human wo? no pity for the miserable? When you saw the streaming eyes, the heaving breasts, the bleeding sides, and the tortured limbs of your fellow creatures, were you a stone or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? Had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the great God deal with you, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands. At that day it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for you. But if your heart does relent; resolve, God being your helper, to escape for your life. Regard not money! All that a man hath, will he give for his life. Whatever you lose, lose not your soul; nothing can countervail that loss. Immediately quit the horrid trade; at all events be an honest man. 2. To Slaveholders. This equally concerns all slaveholders, of whatever rank and degree; seeing men-buyers are exactly on a level with men-stealers! Indeed you say, "I pay honestly for my goods; and I am not concerned to know how they are come by." Nay, but you are: you are deeply concerned to know they are honestly come by: otherwise you are partaker with a thief, and are not a jot honester than he. But you know they are not honestly come by: you know they are procured by means nothing near so innocent as picking pockets, house-breaking, or robbery upon the highway. You know they are procured by a deliberate species of more complicated villany, of fraud, robbery, and murder, than was ever practised by Mohammedans or Pagans; in particular, by murders of all kinds; by the blood of the innocent poured upon the ground like water. Now it is your money that pays the African butcher. You therefore are principally guilty of all these frauds, robberies, and murders. You are the spring that puts all the rest in motion. They would not stir a step without you: therefore the blood of all these wretches who die before their time lies upon your head. "The blood of thy brother crieth against thee from the earth." O whatever it costs, put a stop to its cry before it be too late; instantly, at any price, were it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from blood guiltiness! Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, and thy lands at present are stained with blood. Surely it is enough; accumulate no more guilt: spill no more the blood of the innocent. Do not hire another to shed blood; do not pay him for doing it. Whether you are a Christian or not, show yourself a man! Be not more savage than a lion or a bear! Perhaps you will say: "I do not buy any slaves; I only use those left by my father." But is that enough to satisfy your conscience? Had your father, have you, has any man living a right to use another as a slave? It cannot be, even setting revelation aside. Neither war nor contract can give any man such a property in another as he has in his sheep and oxen. Much less is it possible, that any child of man should ever be born a slave. Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air: and no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature. If, therefore, you have any regard to justice, to say nothing of mercy, or of the revealed law of God, render unto all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is due, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men, and see that you invariably do unto every one, as you would he should do unto you. O thou God of love, thou who art loving to every man, and whose mercy is over all thy works; thou who art the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and who art rich in mercy unto all; thou who hast formed of one blood, all the nations upon the earth; have compassion upon these outcasts of men, who are trodden down as dung upon the earth! Arise, and help these that have no helper, whose blood is spilled upon the ground like water! Are not these also the work of thine own hands, the purchase of thy Son's blood? Stir them up to cry unto thee in the land of their captivity; and let their complaint come up before thee; let it enter into thine ears! Make even those that lead them captive to pity them and turn their captivity. O burst thou all their chains in sunder; more especially the chains of their sins: thou Saviour of all, make them free, that they may be free indeed! "The servile progeny of Ham, Seize as the purchase of thy blood; The dark Americans convert, And shine in every Pagan heart!" ADAM CLARKE. Isaiah lviii, 6.-Let the oppressed go free. How can any nation pretend to fast, or worship God at all, or dare profess that they believe in the existence of such a Being, while they carry on what is called the slave-trade: and traffic in the souls, blood, and bodies of men! O ye most flagitious of knaves and worst of hypocrites! cast off at once the mask of religion, and deepen not your endless perdition by professing the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, while you continue in this traffic! 16. /1 THOMAS SCOTT. Exodus xxi, 'He that stealeth a map, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hands, he shall surely be put to death." Stealing a man in order to sell him for a slave, whether the thief had actually sold him, or whether he continued in his possession. He who stole any one of the human family, in order to make a slave of him, should be punished with death. The crime would be aggravated by sending them away into foreign countries to be slaves to idolaters. Deuteronomy xxiv, 7.-"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him, then THAT THIEF SHALL DIE."-Every man is now our brother, whatever be his nation, complexion or creed. How then can the merchandise of men and women be carried on, without transgressing this commandment, or abetting those who do? A man may steal, or purchase of those who do steal, hundreds of men and women, and not only escape with impunity, but grow great like a prince. According to the law of God, whoever stole cattle restored four or five fold; whoever stole one human being, though an infant or an idiot, must die. 1. Timothy i, 10.-" Men-stealers."-Men stealers are inserted among those daring criminals against whom the law of God directed its awful curses. Persons who kidnapped men to sell them for slaves. This practice seems inseparable from the other iniquities and oppressions of slavery; nor can a slave-dealer by any means keep free from that atrocious criminality, if the receiver be as bad as the thief. They who encourage that unchristian traffic by purchasing that, which is thus unjustly acquired, are partakers in their crimes.-Macknight.-That is the only species of theft which is punished with death by the laws of God. James ii, 12, 13.—“So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. "For he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy, and mercy rejoiceth against judgment." On this verse Dr. Scott makes the following remarks "All who are not taught to show mercy to others, must expect to be dealt with according to the severity of justice in respect of their eternal state. What then must be the doom of the cruel oppressors and iniquitous tyrants of the human species? But the hard-hearted, selfish, implacable, and oppressive professor of Christianity, has the greatest cause to tremble; for if he shall have judgment without mercy, who hath shown no mercy,' the meanest slave that ever was whipt and worked to death, must be considered as happy, compared with his haughty cruel tyrant, and this shall sufficiently appear, when the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.'"* Revelation xviii, 13.—“Slaves and souls of men.”—Not only slaves, but the souls of men are mentioned as articles of commerce, which is beyond comparison, the most infamous of all traffics that the demon of avarice ever devised; almost infinitely more atrocious, than the accursed slave-trade. Alas! too often, injustice, oppression, fraud, avarice, or excessive indulgence are connected with extensive commerce; and to number the persons of men, with oxen, asses, sheep and horses, as the stock of a farm, or with bales of goods, as the cargo of a ship, is no doubt a most detestable and anti-christian practice.-Scott's Commentaries on the Bible. JAMES BEATTIE. It is well observed by the wisest of poets (as Atheneus, quoting the passage, justly calls), Homer, who lived when slavery was common, and whose knowledge of the human heart is unquestionable, that "When a man is made a slave, he loses from that day the half of his virtue." And Longinus, quoting the same passage, affirms, "Slavery, however mild, may still be called the poison of the soul, and a public dungeon." And Tacitus remarks, that "Even wild animals lose their spirit when deprived of their freedom." All history proves, and every rational philosopher admits, that as liberty promotes virtue and genius, slavery debases the understanding and corrupts the heart of both the slave and the master, and that in a greater or less degree, as it is more or less severe. So that in this plea of the slave-monger, we have an example of that diabolical casuistry, whereby the tempter and corrupter endeavors to vindicate or gratify himself, by accusing those whom he himself has tempted or corrupted. Slavery is inconsistent with the dearest and most essential rights of man's nature; it is detrimental to virtue and to industry; it hardens the heart to those tender sympathies which form the most lovely part of human character; it involves the innocent in hopeless misery, in order to procure wealth and pleasure for the authors of that misery; it seeks to degrade into brutes beings whom the Lord of heaven and earth endowed with rational souls, and created for immortality; in short, it is utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, humanity, and conscience. It is impossible for a considerate and unprejudiced mind to think of slavery without horror. That a man, a rational and immortal being, should be treated on the same footing with a beast or piece of wood, and bought and sold, and entirely subjected to the will of another man, whose equal he is by nature, and whose superior he may be in virtue and understanding, and all for no crime, but merely because he was born in a certain country, or of certain parents, or because he differs from us in the shape of his nose, the color of his skin, or the size of his lips; if this be equitable, or excusable, or pardonable, it is vain to talk any longer of the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil. It has been said that negroes are animals of a nature inferior to man, between whom and the brutes, they hold, as it were, the middle place. But though this were true, it would not follow that we have a right either to debase ourselves by a habit of cruelty, or to use them ill; for even beasts, if inoffensive, are entitled to gentle treatment, and we have reason to believe that they who are not merciful will not obtain mercy. Besides, if we were to admit this theory, we should be much at a loss to determine whether the negro does really partake so much of the brute, as to lose that right of liberty which, unless it be forfeited by criminal conduct, is inherent in every human, or at least in every rational being. And further, in the same proportion in which black men are supposed to be brutes, they must be supposed incapable of moral notions, and consequently not accountable for their conduct, and therefore to punish them as criminals must always be, in a certain degree, both absurd and cruel. But, I think that our planters know both negroes and mulattoes too well to have any doubt of their being men. The very soil becomes more fertile under the hands of freemen. Liberty and property," says the intelligent Le Poivre, "form the basis of abundance and good agriculture. I never observed it to flourish where those rights of mankind were not firmly established. The earth which multiplies her productions with profusion under the hands of the freeborn laborer, 66 4 seems to shrink into barrenness under the sweat of the slave." The same sentiments are found in Pliny and Columella, who both impute the decay of husbandry, in their time, not to any deficiency in the soil, but to the unwise policy of leaving to the management of slaves those fields, which, says Pliny, "had formerly rejoiced under the laurelled ploughshare and the triumphant ploughman." Rollin, with good reason, imputes to the same cause the present barrenness of Palestine, which in ancient times was called the land flowing with milk and honey. In the ancient world. . . . the persons, the goods, the children of these slaves, were the property of their masters, disposed of at pleasure, and transferred, like any other possession, from one hand to another. No inequality, no superiority in power, no pretext of consent, can justify this ignominious depression of human nature, or can confer upon one man the right of dominion' over another. But not only doth reason condemn this institution as unjust; experience proved it to be pernicious both to masters and slaves. The elevation of the former inspired them with pride, insolence, impatience, cruelty, and voluptuousness; the dependant and hopeless state of the latter dejected the human mind, and extinguished every generous and noble principle in the heart.-Sermon. BISHOP WARBURTON. "From the free savages I now come to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol the god of gain. But what, then, say these sincere worshippers of mammon? They are our own property which we offer up. Gracious God! to talk, as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures, creatures endued with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of color, our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense! But, alas! what is there, in the infinite abuses of society, which does not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom. "In excuse of this violation it hath been pretended, that though indeed these miserable outcasts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are you, who pretend to judge of another man's happiness; that state, which |