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Among all the proofs of matchless impudence in practical villany, slavery and slavites furnish that example which defies any comparable similitude. The Americans who have been constantly kidnapping, and robbing, and torturing their defenceless fellow citizens, for sixty years past, demand compensation for abandoning that traffic which, by the supreme law of the United States is piracy, when perpetrated in another form, and in a different climate.

In all the annals of crime, where the iniquity has been perpetrated by only one or a few felons, no obdurate effrontery equal to that of American slave-holders has once been recorded. Who ever heard of a robber, or a forger, or a plundering assassin standing up in a Courthouse, and boldly admitting and justifying his theft and bloodshed. Not only denying the propriety of his arrest, and denouncing all his pretended trial as irrelevant; but also defending the legality of his claim to the property which he had purloined, and demanding compensation for the value which had been taken from him, with a full guaranty against all future interruption in his honest employ. The Court in compassion might pronounce such a man a fit resident for the Lunatic Asylum, but they could not accept his defence of the robbery and murder. This, however, is childlike innocence when contrasted with the audacious turpitude of American men-stealers.

On the face of the globe, American slavites have now no counterparts except in two distinct bodies of men. the gangs of banditti who watch the passes of the Alps, the Appenines, &c., to pilfer all they can seize, and to obtain which booty, they will shoot or stab one or twenty opponents without concern or remorse. But when the gentlemen have terminated the affray; those humane and merciful people will restore your wife and children and your baggage which to them may be useless, for a sufficient compensation-and will also give you a token to preserve you from all further alarm and plunder; only provided that you agree to pay a certain sum to any of their honourable professional brethren, who in future may meet you within their domains. We are always reviling this system, because it places in jeopardy every stranger who

visits Italy, or Spain, or France. Our denunciations may be spared; for our own civilized land-pirates kidnap a thousand where those more honourable mountain bandits grasp but one. Our felons are always stealing without excuse; whereas those half starving outcasts of the European world only plunder and kill when sensuality, or hunger, or opposition, or their satanic religion, Popery, enforces them.

The other allies of the American "brokers in the trade of blood" are those proverbially amiable and self-denying philanthropists, the exemplary hordes of wandering Arabs. In them the family likeness is complete; for they feel no puling reserves; they profess no canting scruples; but fearlessly maintain their simple code of laws in all their authority. Whatever promotes their interest or enjoyment is expedient, and that which is expedient is right, provided power can obtain it; and then as one of their American confederates adjudges, "the majority are justly entitled to divide the spoil." These Ishmaelites in two respects are exactly like the western caitiffs. They will release from captivity, their " worn out, damaged, diseased and aged slaves," and let them "return to their own country," if they can be paid their claim in sequins or dollars. Thus their American accomplices will liberate and transport to their Botany bay in Africa, the creatures whom they have previously starved and tortured to death's door. This is their republican and Christian benevolence! The Arabs also declare, that their mode of life has been prolonged through a hundred generations, and custom is law. Just such is the defence of the man-stealers in Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia. "Our fathers stole Africans, and we will kidnap Americans. Blessed be the Lord God!" say these impious servants of the devil, our ancestors could only procure a few score thousands; but since the declaration of Independence, we have caught about ten times as many in proportion; and we will never abandon our glorious trade and employment." Yet these are the men, who are always boasting of their Christianity and their republicanism. Not only Mohammed, but even Satan himself can advance just as good a claim, and exhibit equally honest pretensions to be either one or the other.

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"I would rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Democratic Christian!"

Legislatures have obstructed the emancipation of slaves. Thus slave-holders elect men to enact iniquitous laws, and exonerate themselves by the legislative proceedings. Every voter for a public officer, who will not destroy the system, is as culpable as if he participated in the evil, and is responsible for the protraction of the crime. If a slave cannot be liberated in one state, he may in another, and it is an individual's duty to exonerate himself. No human law should be obeyed when it contravenes the divine command; but slavery is the combination of all iniquity, and therefore every man is obligated not to participate in its corruption.

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In all cases obedience to the divine will combines the most certain safety. God will protect those who act in conformity with his commands: and as no plea can avail for the continuance of slavery one moment; the most secure mode to be absolved from danger, is to cease to do evil and learn to do well." The national difficulty is not from emancipation, but from servitude. Slave pedlars say that if the coloured people were free, the property and lives of the white inhabitants would be jeoparded. They know that this excuse for their sin is impudent mendacity. Some slaves probably are so vitiated, that at first they might commit a few petty depredations, but they would soon be corrected by the restraints of the civil law. Besides, as the southern coloured citizens have never witnessed any practices in their tyrants but oppression and robbery, it would be preposterous not to anticipate, that the uninstructed inferior would act like them, whom he has seen honoured and beloved in proportion to the quantum of his theft. A white person in the southern states, who is not a man-thief is despised. If he has kidnapped twenty, he is a gentleman; but if he has stolen a hundred, he is a nabob.

How shall we expel the evil? Colonization is not only totally impracticable; but it is merely a swindling scheme to obtain money upon fraudulent pretexts! Eject slave-holders from all public offices; and exclude all men-stealers from the

church of Christ! All other measures are futile. Every plea and excuse in support of slavery being therefore invalid, originating in depravity, sustained by corruption, and productive of all diversified ungodliness, no Christian consistently can allege them, to extenuate or justify that "mysteryof iniquity."

SLAVERY AND SLAVEHOLDERS.

The ensuing essay was written originally for the prize which was offered by the late President of the N. E. AntiSlavery Society, for the best concise discussion upon that subject. The convention to whom was confided the examination of the comparative merits of the pieces which might be submitted to their inspection, never assembled, and consequently no award was made. In an abridged form modified for the purpose, it has been delivered as an oration, both in Boston and Providence, and not without effect, in aid of the cause of truth and freedom.

To no part of this picture of slavery will there probably be more objections. It is anticipated that every base epithet which slavites and their accessaries so well know how to employ, will be applied to this faithful exhibition of the natural effects of slavery upon the slave-holders; but no reply will be made to any caviller, unless he is a preacher, and signs his own name; and unless omitting all irrelevant topics, he confines himself to the pages which he may venture to condemn.

Time and labour now are too precious to be wasted in boyish fencing with a blunt lath, and shooting, children like, with pop guns. The present contest is a war for the extermination of slavery. We have drawn "the two-edged sword of the spirit," and have cast away that vile scabbard, "the fear of man that bringeth a snare," in which, alas! it has been too long buried to the hilt; and we defy all preachers of every denomination to point out any essential inaccuracy in the ensuing delineations.

The manuscript of this essay, was submitted to a most competent judge in the southern states, who expressed unqualified approbation of the fidelity with which the effects of slavery herein are described. When it was announced in Boston, after the meeting was dissolved, a minister of that city remarked to me," Although your delineations are doubtless correct, as I have witnessed them during several years in Carolina; yet I doubt, that they will mislead. They are not introduced as isolated cases, but as generally descriptive of slavery." I replied, "Certainly. I have given you a picture of slavery, as I saw it for nearly seven years in Virginia. There are doubtless some exceptions; but they are so 'few and far between,' that the number of them is altogether unimportant. Oblige me by running your mental survey for a moment over the field which you know." He paused as if in deep thought, and presently added, "It is best to say nothing about it."

There was present at the same meeting in Boston, an old penitent slave-trader, who had commanded a ship for kidnapping Africans, and who had sailed from Charleston in that piratical traffic, I think, not less than twenty years. He not only declared aloud that the descriptions were correct, but that the only fault was in their deficiency; and also publicly stated frightful circumstances, which he affirmed at that period were notorious in Carolina as the day. One only of those public facts that he narrated, could it possibly be placed before our northern ladies, would make every female ear tingle; and would raise a storm of Christian enthusiasm, which all the Neros and Domitians in Columbia and Milledgeville, in vain would attempt to appease.

THE NATURAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY ON THE SLAVEHOLDERS.

All our principles respecting slavery, are comprised in the following fundamental axioms of reciprocal justice and philanthropy.

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