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Show lQ friends of justice, liberty, and humanity, accuse them of grievous wrongs. It is vain to talk . of the prescription of two hundred years. Within this space of time, great changes have taken place in the code, by which the commonwealth of nations passes sentence. The doctrine of human rights has been expounded. The right of the laborer to wages, the right of every innocent man to his own person, the right of all to equality before the laws, these are no longer abstractions of speculative visionaries, no longer innovations, but the established rights of humanity. Before the tribunal of the civilized world, and the higher tribunal of Christianity and of God, the slaveholder has to answer for stripping his brother of these recognised privileges and immunities of a man. Multitudes, on both sides of the ocean, looking above the distinction of nations, standing on the broad ground of a common nature, protest in the face of heaven and earth against the wrong inflicted on their enslaved brother. Let the South understand, that it is not your voice, or mine, or that of a small knot of enthusiasts, which they have to silence. You and I are nothing, but as we represent those great principles of justice and charity, with which the human heart is everywhere beginning to beat. Everywhere the slaveholder is accused; everywhere he is judged. It is strange, that the South should tell us; that the increasing protest at the North against slavery, is the greater wrong, because slavery is one of their institutions. As if an evil lost its deformity, by becoming an institution, that is, an established thing, held up by laws and public force. One would think, that the circumstance of its being so rooted, of its having gained this fearful strength, were the very reason for vigorous opposition. A few straggling in· dividuals, given to a bad course, might be overlooked for their insignificance. But when a community, openly, by statutes, by arms, adopts and upholds an enormous wrong, 13 then good men, through the earth, are bound to unite against it, in stern, solemn remonstrance. The greater the force combined to support an evil, the greater the force needed for its subversion. Crime is comparatively weak, until it embodies and "sanctifies" itself in institutions. In~ dividuals, seizing on and enslaving their brethren, would be put down by the spontaneous, immediate reprobation of society. It is the perpetration of this wron~ by communitics, which makes it formidable ; and, I confess, that here~ if anywhere, a justification may be founU for organized as· sociations against slavery. This evil rests on associated strength, on the prostitution of the powers of the state. ~egarded as an institution, which combined millions uphold, tt seems to have a strength, a permanence, against which individual power can avail nothing ; and hence, it may be said, strength is to be sought in associations. The argu· ment does not satisfy me ; for I believe, that, to produce moral changes of judgment and fee1ing, the individual, in the long run, is stronger than eombinations; but I do feel, that slavery, entrenched behind institutions, is, on that very account, to be assailed with all the weapons of reason, of moral suasion, of moral reprobation, which good men can wield. Less mercy should be shown it, because it is an institution. The notion, which I have combated, that slavery is to be treated with respect because it is a public ordinance, is one of many proofs, that, even yet, there is but a faint consciousness of the existence of an everlasting and immuta~ ble rule of right. Multitudes, even now, know no higher authonty than human government. They think, that a number of men, perhaps little honored as individuals for ~ntclligcnce and virtue, are yet competent, when collected ~nto a legislature, to create right and wrong. The most tmmoral institutions thus gain a sanctity from law. To the laws we are indeed bound to submit, in the sense of ab- 2 |