the Potomac, to the Sabine river, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, there are to the best of our knowledge not twelve men exclusively devoted to the religious instruction of the negroes. In the present state of feeling in the South, a ministry of their own color could neither be obtained NOR TOLERATED.

But do not the negroes have access to the Gospel through the stated ministry of the whites? We answer No; the negroes have no regular and efficient ministry; as a matter of course, no churches; neither is there sufficient room in white churches for their accommodation. We know of but five churches in the slave holding States built expressly for their use; these are all in the State of Georgia. We may now inquire if they enjoy the privileges of the Gospel in their own houses, and on our plantations? Again we return a negative answer. They have no Bibles to read by their own firesides-they have no family altars; and when in affliction, sickness, or death, they have no minister to address to them the consolations of the Gospel, nor to bury them with solemn and appropriate services."

In a late number of the Charleston (S. C.) Observer, a correspondent remarked: "Let us establish missionaries among our own negroes, who, in view of religious knowledge, are as debasingly ignorant as any one on the coast of Africa; for I hazard the assertion, that throughout the bounds of our synod, there are at least one hundred thousand slaves, speaking the same language as ourselves, who never heard of the plan of salvation by a Redeemer."

The editor, instead of contradicting this broad assertion, adds: "We fully concur with what our correspondent has said respecting the benighted heathen among ourselves."

Such is American slavery-a system which classes with the beasts of the field, over whom dominion has been given to man an intelligent and accountable being, the instant his Creator has breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Over this infant heir of immortality, no mother has a right to watch-no father may guide his feeble steps, check his wayward appetites and train him for future usefulness, happiness and glory. Torn from his parents, and sold in the market, he soon finds himself laboring among strangers under the whip of a driver, and his task augmenting with his ripening strength. Day after day and year after year, is he driven to the cotton or sugar-field, as the ox to the furrow. No hope of reward lightens his toil-the subject

of insult, the victim of brutality, the laws of his country afford him no redress-his wife, such only in name, may at any moment be dragged from his side-his children, heirs only of his misery and degradation, are but articles of merchandisehis mind, stupified by his oppressors, is wrapped in darkness— his soul, no man careth for it-his body, worn with stripes and toil, is at length committed to the earth, like the brute that perisheth.

This is the system which the American Anti-slavery Society declares to be sinful, and ought therefore to be immediately abolished; and this is the system which the American Colonization Society excuses, and which, it contends, ought to be perpetual, rather than its victims should enjoy their rights in "the white man's land."

To one whose moral sense has not been perverted, it would seem a temerity bordering on blasphemy, to contend that such a system can be approved by a just and holy God, or sanctioned by the precepts of his blessed Gospel, Slavery, we are told, is not forbidden in the Bible; but who will dare to say that cruelty and injustice, and compulsory heathenism are not?

We are often reminded, that St. Paul exhorts slaves to be obedient to their masters; but so he does subjects to their rulers. If, in the one instance, he justified slavery, so did he despotism in the other. The founder of Christianity and his apostles, interfered not with political institutions, but laid down rules for the conduct of individuals; and St. Paul in requiring masters to give their servants that which is just and equal, virtually condemned the whole system of slavery, since he who receives what is just and equal cannot be a slave. If it was right in the time of St. Paul to hold white men as slaves, would it be wrong to do so now? If slavery is lawful now, it must have been lawful in its commencement, since perseverance in wrong, can never constitute right. Let it be explained how free men with their posterity, to the latest generation, can now be lawfully reduced to slavery, and forever kept in ignorance of the duties and consolations of Christianity, and we will unite with those who justify American slavery.

CHAPTER II.

PROPOSED OBJECTS AND MEASURES OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY-CENSURE OF ABOLITIONISTS.

THE next great principle maintained by the Society is, that slavery being sinful, it ought immediately to cease. Admitting the premises, the conclusion seems irresistible. Sin is opposition to the will of our Creator and Supreme Lawgiver. His wisdom and goodness are alike infinite, and if slavery be inconsistent with his will, it must necessarily be inconsistent with the welfare of his creatures. Reason and revelation, moreover, assure us that God will punish sin; and therefore to contend that it is necessary or expedient to continue in sin, is to impeach every attribute of the Deity, and to brave the vengeance of omnipotence.

These principles lead the Society to aim at effecting the following objects, viz:

1st. The immediate abolition of slavery throughout the United States.

2d. As a necessary consequence, the suppression of the American slave trade.

3d. The ultimate elevation of the black population to an equality with the white, in civil and religious privileges.

But principles may be sound and objects may be good, and yet the measures adopted to enforce those principles, and to attain those objects, may be unlawful. Let us then inquire what are the measures contemplated by the Society.

Slavery exists under the authority of the State Legisla. tures, in the several states; and under the authority of Con gress in the District of Columbia, and in the United States' territories.

The members of the Society are all represented in Congress, and the Constitution guaranties to them the right of petition. They will therefore petition Congress to exercise the power it possesses, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and the Territories. But the Society is not represented in the State Legislatures, and therefore petitions to them might be deemed officious, and would not probably lead to and advatageous re

sult. The Society will therefore use the right possessed by every member of the community, the right of speech and of the press. They will address arguments to the understandings and the consciences of their fellow citizens, and endeavor to convince them of the duty and policy of immediate emancipation. Legislatures are with us, but the mere creatures of the people, and when the people of the slave States demand the abolition of slavery, their Legislatures will give effect to their will, by passing the necessary laws.

4

The means by which the Society will endeavor to secure to the blacks an equality of civil and religious privileges, are frankly avowed to be the encouragement of their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and the removal of existing prejudices against them. To prevent any misapprehensions of the real design of the Society, The Constitution expressly declares that the Society will never "in any way countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights, by resorting to physical force."

Such are the principles and designs of those who are now designated as Abolitionists, and never since the settlement of the country, has any body of citizens been subjected in an equal degree, to unmerited, and unmeasured reproach.

We have seen with what kind of temper Colonizationists speak of free negroes, and we may well question, when we call to mind the obloquy they have heaped upon Abolitionists, whether the latter are not in their opinion the greater nuisances. Much as the free negroes have suffered from the charges of the Society, still there have been limits to the invectives hurled against them. No chancellor has adjudged them to be “reckless incendiaries." No counsellor, learned in the law, has charged them with being guilty of "a palpable nullification of that Constitution which they had sworn to support."t No honorable Senator has denounced them as fanatics, increasing injury and sealing oppression." The chairman of the Executive Committee of the New-York Colonization Society never asserted that their DESIGN was "beyond a doubt to foment a servile war in the South."§ Nor did even the New

*Speech of Chancellor Walworth of New-York. + Speech of D. B. Ogden, Esq. of New-York.

Hon. Mr. Frelinghuysen, of the Senate of the United States. § Commercial Advertiser, 9th June, 1834.

York Courier and Enquirer ever propose, that the city authorities should inform them, that they must prosecute "their treasonable and BEASTLY plans at their own peril;" in other words, that they should not be protected from mobs.* Nor, finally, has any city corporation accused them of holding sentiments, demoralizing in themselves, and little short of treason towards the government of our country."†

But Abolitionists are neither astonished nor dismayed at the torrent of insult and calumny that has been poured upon them, as though some strange thing had happened unto them. They remember that Wilberforce and his companions experienced similar treatment, while laboring for the abolition of the slave trade; and they remember also the glorious triumphs they achieved, and the full though tardy justice that has been done to their motives. A few brief reminiscences may be both in

teresting and useful.

In 1776, the British House of Commons rejected a resolution, that the slave trade "was contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man." Yet that trade is now piracy by act of Parliament.

In 1788, on a bill being introduced into the House of Lords, to mitigate the horrors of the trade, Lord Chancellor Thurlow ridiculed "the sudden fit of philanthropy that had given it birth," and Lord Chandos predicted "the insurrection of the slaves, and the massacre of their masters, from the agitation of the subject."

In 1789, on a motion of Mr. Wilberforce, that the house would take the trade into consideration, a member pronounced the attempt to abolish it "hypocritical, fanatic, and methodistical," and contended that Abolition must lead to "insurrections, massacre and ruin."

In 1791, Col. Tarleton, in the House of Commons, speaking

* Courier and Enquirer, 11th July, 1834. The same paper of the 27th Dec. 1834, contains the following.-" We do say, and say in all the earnestness of conviction, that no meeting of Abolitionists should ever be suffered to go on with its proceedings in the United States. Whenever these wretched disturbers of the public peace, and plotters of MURDER, RAPINE, AND A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION, have the impudence to hold a meeting, it is the duty of the rational citizens-always a vast majority in every place to go to that meeting, and there, by exercising the right of every American citizen, make the expression of their disapprobation and disgust, loud enough, and emphatic enough, to render it impossible for treason to go on with its machinations. Let sedition be driven from its den, as often as its minions congregate."

† Resolutions of the Corporation of the City of Utica.