No legislation, not that of all countries or worlds, could make him So. Let this be laid down, as a first, fundamental truth. Let us hold it fast, as a most sacred, precious truth. Let us hold it fast against all customs, all laws, all rank, wealth, and power. Let it be armed with the whole authority of the civilized and Christian world.

I have taken it for granted that no reader would be so wanting in moral discrimination and moral feeling, as to urge that men may rightfully be seized and held as property, because various governments have so ordained. What! is human legislation the measure of right? Are God's laws to be repealed by man's? Can government do no wrong? What is the history of human governments but a record of wrongs? How much does the progress of civilization consist in the substitution of just and humane, for barbarous and oppressive laws? Government, indeed, has ordained slavery, and to government the individual is in no case to offer resistance. But criminal legislation ought to be freely and earnestly exposed. Injustice is never so terrible, and never so corrupting, as when armed with the sanctions of law. The authority of government, instead of being a reason for silence under wrongs, is a reason for protesting against wrong with the undivided energy of argument, entreaty, and solemn admonition.

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There is, however, there must be, in slaveholding communities a large class which cannot be too severely condemned. There are many we fear, very many, who hold their fellow-creatures in bondage, from selfish, base motives. They hold the slave for gain, whether justly or unjustly they neither ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have no faith in the principles which will diminish a man's wealth. They hold him, not for his own good or the safety of the state, but with precisely the same views with which they hold a laboring horse, that is, for the profit which they can wring from him. They will not hear a word of his wrongs; for, wronged or not, they will not let him go. He is their property, and they mean not to be poor for righteousness' sake. Such a class there undoubtedly is among slaveholders; how large their own consciences must determine. We are sure of it; for under such circumstances human nature will and must come to this mournful result. Now, to men of this spirit, the explanations we have made do in no degree apply. Such men ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged humanity and indignant virtue. Slavery, upheld for gain, is a great crime. He, who has nothing to urge against emancipation, but that it will make him poorer, is bound to immediate emancipation. He has no excuse for wresting from his brethren their rights. The plea of benefit to the slave and the state avails him nothing. He extorts, by the lash, that labor to which he has no claim, through a base selfishness. Every morsel of food, thus forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than gall. His gold is cankered. The sweat of the slave taints the luxuries for which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong doer of whom I speak, to live as the slave, to clothe himself in the slave's raiment, to eat the slave's coarse food, to till

his fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of a wantonly injured fellow-creature.

I know it will be said, "You would make us poor." Be poor, then, and thank God for your honest poverty. Better be poor than unjust. Better beg than steal. Better live in an almshouse, better die than trample on a fellow-creature and reduce him to a brute, for selfish gratification. What! have we yet to learn that "it profits us nothing to gain the whole world, and lose our souls ?"

Let it not be replied, in scorn, that we of the North, notorious for love of money, and given to selfish calculations, are not the people to call others to resign their wealth. I have no desire to shield the North. We have, without doubt, a great multitude, who, were they slaveholders, would sooner die than relax their iron grasp, than yield their property in men to justice and the commands of God. We have those who would fight against abolition, if by this measure the profit of their intercourse with the South should be materially impaired. The present excitement among us is, in part, the working of mercenary principles. But because the North joins hands with the South, shall iniquity go unpunished or unrebuked? Can the league of the wicked, the revolt of worlds, repeal the everlasting law of heaven and earth? Has God's throne fallen before Mammon's? Must duty find no voice, no organ, because corruption is universally diffused? Is not this a fresh motive to solemn warning, that, everywhere northward and southward, the rights of human beings are held so cheap, in comparison with worldly gain?

JAMES G. BIRNEY.

I. It would, in my judgment, produce great effect on the slaveholders, to promulgate at the North, the doctrine, that it is their duty immediately to emancipate their slaves. Many of them, doubtless, would be deaf to this admonition of Christian friendship, and repel it as officious and intermeddling; but I believe it would find access to the best consciences of the South, and that its tendency would be, still further to arouse consciences that are already a good deal agitated.

II. The most effectual mode of preserving tranquillity among the slaves of the South will be, a knowledge of the fact, that efforts of a peaceful and Christian character are making in their behalf. Just in proportion as such efforts are urged, and give hope to the slaves, that the time of their deliverance draws nigh, will be their patient continuance in their present state-lest an act of indiscretion in them defeat what has been already gained, mortify and disappoint their friends, and discourage them from making renewed exertions. I doubt not that the tranquillity of the British West Indies, so far as it was preserved for the last ten years, was secured by the influence of the philanthropists in the mother country. The slaves with whom I

have conversed on the subject of the present efforts have, without exception, looked upon their sober and peaceful demeanor as an essential contribution on their parts to their success.

III. I consider all schemes of gradual emancipation as utterly unfit to meet the present evils, and to avert the dangers which threaten from the continued existence of slavery. They are all, in the first place, inoperative on the master-they let go his conscience, by not insisting on immediate repentance for present sin. In the second place, they produce no good effect on the heart and mind of the slave. Founded on expediency, or policy, as all such plans must be from their very nature, the slave will feel no respect for the motive which originates them. He will consider that nothing has been done from a regard to his rights or his interests, but all for the advantage and benefit of the master. The master, uninfluenced by Christian principle in the act of emancipation, would not, in all probability, follow his freedman with Christian effort for his moral and intellectual improvement-the freedman feeling no respect for the motives of the master in giving him his liberty, would naturally, as it appears to me, reject his influence. Thus they would be left unbound by any tie that would lead to continued kindness on the one side, and respect and grateful recollections on the other. Any plan of emancipation, however gradual it might be, would be better than perpetual slavery ; but surely it is the great desideratum of any plan, that it leave the parties friends, as freemen. None will effect this which is not founded on Christian principle-and there can be none, so far as I am enabled to see, which so fully recognises Christian principle as its basis, as that which urges immediate emancipation.

IV. There would be no danger of personal violence to the master from emancipation, brought about by Christian benevolence. Such an apprehension is the refuge of conscious guilt. Emancipation, brought about on the principle above mentioned, I hesitate not to say, would, in most instances, where the superior intelligence of the master was acknowledged, produce on the part of the beneficiaries, the most entire and cordial reliance on his counsel and friendship. I do not believe that I have any warmer friends than my manumitted slaves-none, I am sure, if sacrifices were called for, who would more freely make them, to promote my happiness.

The injustice which the slave feels as done him in taking the avails of his labor, leads him to take clandestinely, what he persuades himself he is entitled to. He has comparatively no character to lose, no ultimate object, for the attainment of which, the building up of a good character would contribute. As a freeman, character would be essential to him—his earnings would be his; his house, his furniture, his comforts would be his-his wife, his children would be his; the apprehension of forcible separation would depart, and he would have every motive that ordinarily influences men to build up a good name for worth and honesty. The depredations on the masters' property by slaves, I should suppose, are tenfold what they would be by the same slaves made freemen.

V. The slaves, if emancipated on any terms, would be able to provide for themselves and their families. If they should be kindly treated by their former masters, and Christian benevolence should make the same efforts for their improvement, that are made in many places for the improvement of the distant heathen-they would not only provide for themselves, but with such opportunities, become good citizens. I have made frequent inquiry as to the number of paupers among the colored people of Kentucky, amounting to nearly five thousand-I have, as yet, heard of but one. I think it is a rare thing, so far as I have had opportunity of observing, in slave states, to see free colored persons arraigned in courts, to answer to criminal accusations. My own manumitted slaves, at the end of the first year of their employment on wages, will have used but half the amount they are to receive. They have not fallen into disorderly or vagrant habits; but have manifested—at least the younger ones-an increased desire for knowledge, and for attendance on the Sabbath schools, and the common ministrations of the sanctuary. To delay emancipation, in order to attain the greatest good it is believed will result from it, is, in my judgment, but to accumulate the difficulties now in the way, and to delay to a remoter period its full consummation.

VI. Having emancipated my slaves from a full conviction, that the bondage in which I was holding them was sinful, I conceive I have no greater right to ask for compensation from any quarter, than I would have in any other case, where a similar conviction would lead me to return to my neighbor any property to which he had an unquestionable right, and which I by superior power had withheld from him. The claim of "compensation," it seems to me, can be fairly sustained only on the ground, that slaveholding is not sinful. Would not the Ephesian converts, who at once abandoned their "curious arts," and burned the “books” which contained instructions in them, have been as equitably entitled to compensation as the slaveholder, who abandons a property equally condemned by God's law, and commits to the flames the charter by which he has hitherto supported his groundless claims?

VII. It has been my opinion, from the best and most impartial observation I could make, that the principles, measures, and doctrines entertained, pursued and inculcated by the advocates of "colonization," so far from having any "visible influence upon the system of slavery" for its removal, have rather tended to confirm and strengthen it. These propositions-that slavery may be innocently continued till the slaves can be removed and comfortably provided for in Africa -the danger to the colony, of removing many to it very soon-its slow growth, the great comparative increase of the slave population -have removed each particular slaveholder's duty so far in advance of him, that in the distant haze, it becomes scarcely a discernible point. Beside this, it has tended in a great degree, as I believe, to raise up and strengthen prejudice against the free colored people of our country. The whites, who are under the influence of this prejudice, think the free colored people ought to remove from the country

of their birth, because they (the whites) wish it, and not because it is a desirable thing to those who are called upon to act.

I have thus answered, much more briefly, however, than I would under other circumstances, your several inquiries. I trust what I have done may contribute somewhat to the advancement of the great cause of humanity in which so many Christian heads and hearts are now so deeply interested. But have not you, and the particular Church of which you are members, long since purified yourselves from all participation in the sin of slaveholding? To your honor be it said, you were the first to cleanse your skirts from this foul stain. But is there nothing more for you to do? Will you, who can speak as having authority, in no wise rebuke your neighbor, but suffer sin to be upon him? Will you, who, having purified yourselves, and are, therefore, unrebukable, sit quietly by, clothed in the heavenly armor of innocence, and behold undisturbed a system shooting up into giant size, and acquiring giant power for destruction-for destruction not only of its victims, but of those who lead the victims to its bloody altars? May I not persuade myself you will not?-Reply to Queries of some Friends, 1835.

JAMES T. WOODBURY.

We can vote slavery down in Columbia and in our territories. "But," it is objected, "it will dissolve the Union." Mr. Birney says, the South never will do it, for they cannot support themselves, and we are more liable to go there and fight, to keep their slaves in subjection. The slaves, if they are freed, will not come here, their labor is wanted in the South. The South do not hate the black skin with which God has covered them, as we do. "But O they smell bad." No bad smell while they are slaves; they are about the persons of their masters and mistresses, and nurse their children, and do not scent them with the bad smell,-but as soon as they are free-bad smell.

"GENIUS OF UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION."

Much has been said by the advocates and apologists of slavery, about the danger of emancipation-that it would be accompanied or followed by insurrections, massacres, and servile war. Now no sane man desires to turn loose upon society, a horde of ignorant men, either white or black, without the salutary restraints of law. We wish to see the assumed right of property in human flesh abolished, and the laws made for the protection, as well as for the government and restraint, of every man of every nation and color. To place every man under the protection of the law, and to abolish that licentiousness and tyranny which are now tolerated, would be to restore society to