DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA, to wit:

SEAL.

Be it remembered, That on the twenty-fifth day of January, in the forty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1817, JESSE TORREY, Jun. Physician, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Author, in the words following, to wit:

"A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States: with reflections on the practicability of restoring the moral rights of the Slave, without impairing the legal privileges of the possessor; and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Colour: including Memoirs of Facts on the interior Traffic in Slaves, and on Kidnapping. Illustrated with Engravings. By Jesse Torrey, jun. Physician. Author of a Series of Essays on Morals and the Diffusion of Knowledge."

In conformity to the act of the congress of the United States, intituled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled "An act supplementary to an act, entitled 'An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania.

TO the candid consideration of Philanthropists, Legislators, and Possessors of Slaves, the following Essay is respectfully submitted, by the Author, without offering any apology for pleading the cause of an injured and despised race of men, except the consciousness of being himself, A MAN.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

IT is generally acknowledged by men of candor and prudence, that persecution and intolerance add strength to error, and that corrosive irritating epithets tend to defeat the object of liberal discussion,-the conviction of truth. Nor can it produce any valuable end, for one frail member of the same fraternity, to attack another, with a volley of threats and predictions of the curses and vengeance of their common Father.

Possessors of Slaves have been frequently menaced with the visitation of some tremendous and sudden burst of Divine wrath. If such an instance has existed, it has occurred so seldom, and with such protracted forbearance, that they have generally regarded it as a casualty, and have not been deterred from persisting in the custom of retaining possession of their slaves. It is, however, an incontrovertible theorem, that the sentinels of Divine justice, are seldom trespassed upon, without regular and appropriate retribution, in some shape, and at some time or other.

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The Author will not be surprised if he shall be charged with presumption, in meddling with a subject which has already occupied the most profound reflections of the most eminent philanthropists and statesmen. He is sensible that an attempt, in the present epoch of moral advancement, to prove the injustice and cruelty of the African Slave Trade, is entirely unnecessary. Every truly civilized nation has already denounced and discarded it. But its effects, whether they partake of a like character with their cause or not, still exist. Domestic Slavery, however noxious a weed to the tree of liberty, has taken deep root in this highly favoured country;-and men become slaveholders and slaves by inheritance, without any exercise of their own wills, and are compelled, (for the present) to remain so, by the coercive mandates of human laws! And who shall we blame? Or is it not of more importance to seek an antidote to a dangerous disease, than to indulge in execrations against its authors?-As much as the melancholy condition of the slaves is to be deplored, but little less do their masters claim the sympathy of the philanthropist, who is capable of perceiving the certainty of specific moral effects, from specific moral causes.

The Author's chief solicitude is to convince the possessors of slaves, that the laws do not compel them to be tyrants, (as a worthy gentleman of that class of citizens has