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Show 56 torn from Africa, and grew old under our parental roofs. Our ancestors committed a deed now branded as piracy. Were they, therefore, the offscouring of the earth ? 1-Vere not some of them among the best of their times? The administration of religion in almost all past ages has been a violation of the sacred rights of conscience. How many sects have persecuted and shed blood! Were their members, therefore, monsters of depravity? The history of our race is made up of wrongs, many of which were committed without a suspicion of their true character, and many from an urgent sense of duty. A ttl an born among slaves, accustomed to this relation from his birth, taught its necessity by venerated parents, associating it with all whom he reveres, and too familiar with its evils to see and feel their magnitude, can hardly be expected to look on slavery as it appears to more impartial and distant observers? Let it r:ot be said that when new light is offered him he is criminal in rejecting it. Are we all willing to receive new light? Can we wonder that such a man should be slow to be convinced of the criminality of an abuse sanctioned by prescription, and which has so interwoven itself with all the habits, employments, and economy of life, that he can hardly conceive of the existence of society without this all-pervading element? May he not be true to his convictions of duty in other relations, 57 though he grievously err in thi'? If, indeed, through cupidity and selfishness, he stifle the monitions of conscience, warp his judgment, and repel the light, he incurs great guilt. If he want virtue to resolve on doing right, though at the loss of every slave, he incu rs great guilt. But who of us can look into his heart ? To whom nre the secret workings there revea led? Stillmore. There are masters who have thrown off the natural prejudices of their posi tion, who see sbvery as it is, and who hold the slave chiefly, if not wholly, from disinterested consid erations; and these deserve great praise. They deplore and abhor the institution; but believing that partial emancipation, in the present condition of society, would bring unmixed evil on bond and free, they lhink themselves bound to continue the relation, until it shall be dissolved by comprehensive and sys tematic measures of the state. There are many of them who would shudder as much as 've at red ucing a freeman to bondage, but who are appalled hy what seem to them the perils and difficulties of liberating multitudes, born and brought up to that condi· tion. There are many, who, nominally holding the slave as property, still hold him for his own good and fm· the public order, and would blush to retain him on other grounds. Are such men to be set down among the unprincipled? Am I told that by these remarks I extenuate slavery? I reply , |