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Show 74 the abolition of slavery are futile; that to expect men to sacrifice interest to duty is a proof of insanity; that, as long as slavery is a good pecuniary speculation, the South will stand by it to the death ; that whenever slave labor shall prove a drug, it will be abandoned, and not before. It is vain, we are told, to talk, reason, or remonstrate. On this ground some are anxious to bring East India cotton into competition with the Southern, that, by driving the latter from the market, the excessive stimulus to slave breeding and the profits of slave labor may cease. And is this true ? Must men be starved into justice and humanity ? Have truth, and religion, and conscience no power? One thing we know, that the insanity of opposing moral influence to deep-rooted evils, has at least great names on its side. The Christian faith is the highest form of this madness and folly, and its history shows that "the foolishness of God is stronger than men." What an insult is it on the South and on human nature, to believe, that millions of slave-holders, of all ages, sexes, and conditions, in an age of freedom, intelligence, and Christian faith, are proof against all motives but the very lowest. Even in the most hardened, conscience never turns wholly to stone. Humanity never dies out among a people. After all, the most prevailing voice on earth is that of truth. Could Emancipation be extorted only by 75 depreciation of slave labor, it would indeed be a good; but how much happier a relation would the master establish with ·the colored race, if from no force but that of principle and kindness he should set them free? Undoubtedly at the South, as elsewhere, the majority are selfish, mercenary, corrupt; but it would be easy to find there more than "ten righteous," to find a multitude of upright, compassionate, devout minds, which, if awakened from the long insensibility of habit to the evils of slavery, would soon overpower the influences of the merely selfish slave-holder. We are told, indeed, by th~ South, that slavery is no concern of ours, and consequently that the less we say of it the better. What! shall the wrongdoer forbid lookers on to speak, because the affair is a private one, in which others must not interfere? Whoever injures a man binds all men to remonstrate, especially when the injured is too weak to speak in his own behalf. Let none imagine, that by seizing a fellow-creature and setting him apart as a chattel, they can sever his ties to God or man. Spiritual connexions are not so easily broken. You may carry your victim ever so far, you may seclude him on a plantation or in a cell. But you cannot transport him beyond the sphere of human brotherhood, or cut him off from his race. The great bond of humanity is the last to be dissolved. Other |