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Show 78 LIBERTY AND ST~AVERY. only to become the victims-the most deba•eu and hopeless victims-of every evil way? We answer, N 0 ! Even the spil'it of abolitionism itself has, in the person of Dr. Wayland, declared that such treatment would, in all probability, be the greatest of calamities. We feel sure it would be an infinite and remediless curse. And as we believe that, if we were in the condition of slaves, such treatment would be so great n.nd so withering a curse, so we cannot, out of a feeling of love, proceed to inflict this curse upon our slaves. On the contrary, we would do as we so clearly see we ought to be done by, if our conditions were changed. Is it not amazing, as well as melancholy, that learned divines, who undertake to instruct the benighted South in the great principles of duty, should entertain such superficial and erroneous views of the first, great, and all-comprehending precept of the gospel? If their interpretation of this precept were correct, then the child might be set free from the authority of the father, and the criminal from the sentence of the judge. All justice would be extinguished, all order overthrown, and boundless confusion introduced into the affairs of men. Yet, with unspeak:;ble self-complacency, tr.ey come with such miserable A R-0 U )I ENTS OF ADOL IT IONISTS. 79 interpretations of the plainest truths to instruct those whom they concei,,e to be blinded by custom and the institution of sbvery to the clearest light of hea\·en. They tell us, "Thou shouldst love thy neighbor as thyself;" and they reiterate these words in our cars, just as if we had never heard them before. If this is all they have to say, wby then we would remind them that the meaning of the precept is the precept. It is not a mere sound, it is sense, which these glorious words are intended to convey. And if they can only repeat the words foe us, why then they might just as well send 11 host of free negmcs with good, stmng lungs to be our instructors in moral science. § Vill. Tlw eighth fallacy of the abolitionist. An argument is drawn from the divine attributes against the institution of slavery. One would suppose that a decla1·ation from God himself is some little evidence as to what is agreeable to his attributes; but it seems that moral philosophers have, now-a-days, found out 11 better method of aeriving at what is implied by his perfections. Dr. Wayland is one of those who, setting aside the word of God, nppcal to his attributes in fa,-or of the immc- |