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Show 132 TOIL AND TRUST. denounced without stint the formal _::cribe, the hollow Pharisee, an · tho greedy moncy·cbangcr, he chose for his sphere of exertion the society of publicans and sinners. 4. Anti·slavery 1nen seek to set slaves against their masters, at the risk of the lives and happiness of both. This impression, which is much the most common, is, at the same time, the least founded in truth of all. No evidence, worthy of a moment's credit, has ever been produced, implicating any class of them in a suspicion of the kind. Nothing proves the absence of all malignity towards the slaveholders more clearly than this. If they sought really to injure them, what could be moTe easy than to stimul<lte disaffection along so extensive a line of boundary as that of the slave States? Probably few of them entertain any doubt of the abstract 1·ight of the slave to free himself from the condition in which be is kept against his own con· sent, in any mamier practicable. IIow easy then the step from this opinion to an act of encouragement I That it bas never been taken furnishes the most con· elusive proof of the falsity of the popular impression, and of the moderations of the anti·slavery men, who TOIL AND TRUST. 133 seck only, in the moral convictions of the masters, for the source of freedom to the slaves. But though it be true that all these. common im· prcssions arc delusions strewn in the way of antislavery men to impair the clfect of their exertions, it by no means follows that they should be induced by them to assume a moderation which encourages sluggishness. No great movement in human affairs can be made without ze::tl, energy, and perseverance. It must he animated by a strong will, and tempered by a benevolent purpose. Such is the shape which the anti·slavery reform is gradually assuming. Its motto, then, should be, as was said in the beginning: "TOIL AND 'l'RUST." QuiNCY, 10 July, 1853. |