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Show 38 better principles is a pious but a very hopeless task. For eighteen hundred years the world has enjoyed the light of Christianity, and yet we are daily witnesses of its feebleness to restrain the exce::;ses of human passion . !-l ow many generations of slaves are to pass away in moral discipline before the descendants of the present are to be competent to freedom ! CHAPTER VI. If the object is impracticable, which our author proposes, the book is useless. If Slavery be the law of our national existence it is idle to urge its abolition. But we are pressed with a strong moral obligation. \V 0 are bound it is said to use every virtuous influence for the abolition of slavery . " vVe are bound to encourage a manly religious discussion of it. , I wholly deny these propositions . I see no obligation to interfere with the domestic laws of the South in regard to Slavery any more than with the internal affai1·s of any private domicil in the country. \Ve have not made those laws and we cannot repeal them. If there are slaves there they do not belong to us. \Ve cannot give them freedom. If Slavery be a great sin it does not lie upon our consciences. There are other sins which it would be well to remove. The re are sins at home qni te enough to give occupation to all om thoughts, energies and prayers. \Vhy not first purify ourselves. Why not shake off that narrow contracted bigotry which deifys ourselves, and which may be seen even among some of the most iibe ral religionists ? \Vhy not endeavor to get rid of that priesdy tendency to domination which is not confined to the Vatican ? Are we to preach up a general crusade against sin ! IV e may find a world of labor on our hands, and much that is quite 39 as honible and quite as immoveable as domestic Slavery. I am at a loss to ascertain why this s in of other people, in which we have no agency, bears so heavily on our hearts, llllless, like the mother of C ucldie Head rig, in Old i\lonality, we are ready to exclaim-" \Vith this auld and brief breath will 1 tes1 ify against the backsliclings, defections, defalcations, and declinings of the land, against the gt icvances aud the causes of \Vra th " ! But it seems to me, if we arc bound to talk so much, we may be obliged to do something. \Ve must do what we can to give efficacy to our preaching. \Ve mus t not ease our consciences altogether at the expense of ot her people . \Ve mnot profess our willingness to share the loss which will fall on our dear friends at tile South, when they take our c;ratuitous advice and give libeny to their slaves. Are we ready to do this ! \Ve must refuse, certainly, to share the gains of these mandestroye rs and opp1·essors of human rights. If they have stolen the labor of the African, we may not be receivers of the spoil. vV e must taste none of the sugar, eat none of the rice, wem· none of the cotton, purchase at no price any other article which is the product of slave labor. \Vhen the Heverend teacher has acted on his own principles, and proves to us that in this respect he keeps himself unspotted from the sin of Slavery, he may have some better right to read us the lectm ·e, which, as one having authority, he has so assumine:ly bestowed upon us. ' I hold this duty of abstinence to be the imperative duty of the moral abolitionist. H e who sees the tears of the slave on his cotton, or finds his blood in his sugar, should as religiously abstam from the one and the other as a J ew from pork or a Mussulman from wine. If this little personal sacrifice is somewhat startling, if we are not quite ready to stop the mills at Lowell at the command of this fanciful morality, or close half the commerce of the world in devotion to our new faith, it behooves us to look |