their fellow-labourers, that slavery was abolished, and not by considerations of policy or mere humanity. In our own country, it may be doubted whether any considerable progress has been made in determining whether slavery is to continue or not, by mere political considerations. The convictions of the great mass of our fellow-citizens in the slaveholding part of our country in regard to the evils of slavery, are not more decided than were those of Jefferson, and though since his views were so firmly expressed there has been an opportunity of observing the effects of the system for half a century, yet slavery has a hold on the country at large not less tenacious than it had then. It is indeed not difficult to show the impolicy of the system. It is easy to show the superior prosperity of those portions of our country where it does not exist. It is easy to point to the exhausted soil; the wasted fields; the diminished population and wealth; the compara tive destitution of schools, colleges, and churches; the ignorance, degradation and corruption of morals which slavery engenders; and it is easy to fortify all this by the splendid declamation of Southern statesmen themselves about the impoverished condition of their country,* but still almost no

*The following eloquent remarks by two Southern gentlemen in Congress, furnish at the same time a mournful description of the effects of slavery on the condition of a country; show the comparative influence of freedom and slavery; and illustrate the argument which might be derived from the tendency of slavery, to show that God does not approve of the system. The first extract is from a speech of the Hon. Mr. Clowney, of South Carolina. He says:

"Look at South Carolina now, with her houses deserted and falling to decay, her once fruitful fields worn out and abandoned for want of timely improvement or skilful cultivation; and her thousands of acres of inexhaustible lands still promising an abundant harvest to the industrious husbandman, lying idle and neglected. In the interior of the state where I was born, and where I now live, although a country possessing all the advantages of soil, climate and health, abounding in arable land, unreclaimed from the first rude state of nature, there can now be found many

advance is made towards admitting that the system is evil. Almost no efforts are put forth to remove it. No conclusions against it are derived from the disapprobation which the God of Providence is placing upon it by these results of the system, and if the inquiry is ever settled it must be by bringing it to a standard which all will admit to have authority to determine great questions of morals.

4. Great reforms on moral subjects do not occur except under the influence of religious principle. Political revolutions, and changes of policy and of administration, do indeed occur from other causes, and secure the ends which are desired. But on subjects pertaining to right and wrong; on those questions where the rights of an inferior and downtrodden class are concerned, we can look for little advance except from the operation of religious principle. Unless the inferior classes have power to assert their rights by arms, those rights will be conceded only by the operations of conscience, and by the principles of religion. There is no great wrong in any community which we can hope to rectify by

neighbourhoods where the population is too sparse to support a common elementary school for children. Such is the deplorable condition of one of the oldest members of this Union, that dates back its settlement more than a century and a half, while other states, born as it were but yesterday, already surpass what Carolina was or ever has been in the happiest and proudest day of her prosperity."

The other extract is from a speech of the Hon. Mr. Preston, of South Carolina.

"No Southern man can journey (as he had lately done) through the Northern States, and witness the prosperity, the industry, the public spirit which they exhibit-the sedulous cultivation of all those arts by which life is rendered comfortable and respectable, without feelings of deep sadness and shame as he remembers his own neglected and desolate home. There, no dwelling is to be seen abandoned-not a farm uncultivated. Every person and every thing performs a part toward the grand result; and the whole land is covered with fertile fields, with manufactories, and canals, and railroads, and edifices, and towns, and cities. We of the South are mistaken in the character of these people when we think

new considerations of policy, or by a mere revolution. The relations of slavery, are not reached by political revolutions, or by changes of policy or administration. Political revolutions occur in a higher region, and the condition of the slave is no more affected by a mere change in the government than that of the vapours in a low, marshy vale is affected by the tempest and storm in the higher regions of the air. The storm sweeps along the Apennines, the lightnings play and the thunders utter their voice, but still the malaria of the Campagna is unaffected, and the pestilence breathes desolation there still. So it is with slavery. Political revolutions occur in high places, but the malaria of slavery remains settled down on the low plains of life, and not even the surface of the pestilential vapour is agitated by all the storms and tempests of political changes. It remains the same deadly, pervading pestilence still. Under all the forms of despotism; in the government of an aristocracy or an oligarchy; under the administration of a pure democracy or the forms of a republican government, and in all the changes from one to the other, slavery remains still the same. Whe

of them only as pedlars in horn flints and bark nutmegs. Their energy and enterprise are directed to all objects, great and small, within their reach. The number of railroads and other modes of expeditious intercommunication knit the whole country into a closely compacted mass, through which the productions of commerce and of the press, the comforts of life and the means of knowledge, are universally diffused; while the close intercourse of travel and of business makes all neighbours, and promotes a common interest and a common sympathy. How different the condition of these things in the South! Here the face of the country wears the aspect of premature old age and decay. NO IMPROVEMENT IS SEEN GOING ON, nothing is done for posterity. No man thinks of any thing beyond the present moment."

It is true that these gentlemen attribute these effects to the tariff, but the facts in the case are the things of chief importance here. Other persons see different causes at work than the tariff, and the period will arrive when the true cause will be seen by all the inhabitants of the slaveholding states.

ther the master is hurled from the throne, or rides into power on the tempest of revolution, the down-trodden slave is the same still, and it makes no difference to him whether the master wears a crown or appears in a plain republican garb; whether Cæsar is on the throne or is slain in the Senate house. Slavery, among the Romans, remained substantially the same under the Tarquins, the Consuls, and the Cæsars; when the tribunes gained the ascendency, and when the patricians crushed them to the earth. It lived in Europe when the Northern hordes poured down on the Roman empire, and when the Caliphs set up the standard of Islam in the Peninsula. It lived in all the revolutions of the middle ages-alike when spiritual despotism swayed its sceptre over the nations, and when they began to emerge into freedom. In the British realms it has lived in the time of the Stuarts, under the Protectorate, and for a long time under the administration of the house of Hanover. With some temporary interruptions, it lived in the provinces of France, through the Revolution. It lived through our own glorious Revolution; and the struggles which gave liberty to millions of the Anglo-Saxon race did not loosen one rivet from the fetter of an African, nor was there a slave who was any nearer to the enjoyment of freedom after the surrender at Yorktown, than when Patrick Henry taught the notes of liberty to echo along the hills and vales of Virginia. So in all the changes of political administration in our own land, the condition of the slave remains unaffected. Alike whether Federalists or Republicans have the rule; whether the star of the Whig or the Democrat is in the ascendant, the condition of the slave is the same. The pæans of victory when the hero of New Orleans was raised to the presidential chair, or when the hero of Tippecanoe was inaugurated, conveyed no note. of joy, no intimation of a change, to the slave; nor had he any more hope, nor was his condition any more affected when the one gave place to his successor, or the other was borne to the grave. And so it is now. In the fierce con

tests for rule in the land; in the questions about changes of administration, there are nearly three millions of our fellowbeings who have no interest in these contests and questions, and whose condition will be affected no more, whatever the result may be, than the vapour that lies in the valley is by the changes from sunshine to storm on the summits of the Alps or the Andes.

The reason of this is, that these questions of revolution do not go into these humble vales of life. It is only religion that finds its way down and effects changes there; and the only hope, therefore, of producing revolutions on this great subject is, by bringing the principles of the Bible to bear upon it. The suggestions, therefore, in the argument which I propose to conduct, will not refer to the political bearings of slavery, but to the naked question whether the institution is in accordance with the Bible. I should feel myself incompetent to go into a proper examination of the former question; I may accomplish some good if I can do any thing to determine what is truth in regard to the latter.

5. The appeal will be made solely to the Bible, because it is by such an appeal that the advocates of slavery endeavour to defend the system. In popular speeches; in sermons; in the solemn acts of Presbyteries, synods, conventions, conferences, and assemblies; in formal treatises in defence of slavery, in pamphlets and reviews, the appeal is constantly made to the Sacred Scriptures. In popular illustrations of Scripture, in newspaper articles, in learned commentaries, and in the formal opinions of erudite professors at the North and the South, such a melancholy general expression of opinion that the Bible lends its sanction to slavery prevails, that it has come almost to be regarded as a settled matter. A few selections from those opinions will illustrate the propriety of an appeal to the Bible, and will show that the prevailing method of interpreting the Bible on this subject is such as to call for an examination of the meaning of the Scriptures, involving whatever talent may