8. Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. Ps. lxxii, 1.

9. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence; and precious shall their blood be in his sight. Ps. lxxii, 12.

10. Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked. Ps. lxxxii, 3.

spectable people at the South and West are SLAVEHOLDERS!! Now can any candid observer fail of seeing that these very respectable, kind and Christian ENSLAVERS of the human species, stand just as much in the way of the final abolition of slavery, and the domestic slave-trade in this country, as the respectable and Christian DISTILLERS and RUM-DRINKERS do in the way of the temperance reformation?

How frequently the opposers of slavery are now tauntingly asked, "why do you not send your agents to the South, where slavery exists?" We answer, for the very same reason that temperance agents do not spend their strength in preaching to the intemperate. We know that all successful action in the anti-slavery cause, as well as in the temperance cause, must be carried on by those who are not "partakers with" such as commit the evils which it is intended to remove,

8. He shall break in pieces the oppressor. This is said of Christ; and so far as Christianity has prevailed in other civilized countries, it has already annihilated slavery, and broken the iron arm of the oppressor.

10. Deliver the poor. We shall see in the course of these chapters, that there are as many commands in the

11. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy 'countenance; in thy name shall they rejoice all the day; and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. Ps. lxxxix, 15.

11. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. Ps. cii, 6.

13. Deliver me from the oppression of man, so will I keep thy precepts. Ps. cxix, 134.

Bible to a third person to deliver the oppressed out of the hand of the oppressor as there are commands to the oppressor to let the oppressed go free.

11. The joyful sound. The sound of the trumpet, on the morning of the first day of the jubilee. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, on the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto ALL THE INHABITANTS thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. Lev. XXV, 9. Hence it appears that on the arrival of this joyful day, all the inhabitants of the land of Judea were free, and every one received again his forfeited or lost possessions.

13. So will I keep thy precepts. Hence the sin of oppression; it incapacitates the oppressed from obeying all the precepts of God. How can those females in this land fulfil, or how may they be expected to fulfil, all of God's commands, when they are not permitted to read them, and when they have no protection, either in the laws or in public sentiment, for their purity or persons? They may be compelled to submit to the beastly lusts of any white man, by the stroke of the cowhide, or to avoid death, without the possibility of any redress! How can those slaves who are husbands, (in the sight of God,) and who are fathers also, fulfil that command which makes it their duty to love their wives, and provide for their families, when they are torn from their

14. I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the right of the poor. Ps. cxl, 12.

15. The LORD looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind; the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down; the LORD loveth the righteous; the LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow; but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. Ps. cxlvi, 7.

CHAPTER VI.

God has threatened his displeasure against all such as forbear to deliver the poor and the needy from the hands of those who oppress them.

1. The poor is hated even of his own neighbor; but the rich hath many friends. He that despiseth

wives and children, and sold into a distant part of the country? The command of God makes it their duty to bring up their children “in the knowledge and discipline of God," but they are not suffered either to read the Bible themselves, or to teach their children to read it! God commands all children to honor their parents, and obey them in the Lord, but the children of more than a million of parents in this land are prohibited, and hindered from doing this, by the laws of the States where they live; and the same laws prohibit all colored persons, whether slaves or free, from worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. The statutes of Virginia ordain that any free person of color, whether ordained or not, for preaching or exhorting at any religious meeting, may be seized by any person without a warrant, and punished with thirty-nine lashes; and any free person of color attending such a meeting may be seized and punished in a like manner. laws are in force in the other slave States; so true it is, that civil and religious liberty generally stand or fall together.

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his neighbor, sinneth; but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he. Prov. xiv, 20.

2. He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his maker; but he that honoreth him hath mercy on the poor. Prov. xiv, 31.

3. He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich shall surely come to want. Prov. xxii, 16.

1. Hated even of his own neighbor. Are not the enslavers of this land the neighbors of those whom they enslave? Are they not indebted to the slaves for their living, and in fact generally all the substance they possess? and yet who hates the slaves and the race of which they form a part, if the enslavers do not?

He that despiseth his neighbor, sinneth. Hence it is clearly proved, that to indulge any kind of prejudice against one who has committed no crime, merely because he is poor, or differs from us in complexion, is a sin against God; and this sin becomes the more aggravating as it deprives him of any of the rights or privileges to which he is entitled by the dictates of reason and religion.

2. Reproacheth his Maker. The poor are Christ's representatives on earth; and if it is a sin against God to despise and oppress one who is poor in the ordinary course of Providence, or one who has become so through some unavoidable calamity, how much more wicked must it be to make men poor by oppressing them? Surely, if it is a sin and a reproach against God to oppress such as are already poor, it must be a greater sin, and more of an insult to the Infinite Being, to make men poor, and to enact laws and enforce them, for the very purpose of keeping them not only poor, but degraded and ignorant.

3. To increase his riches. And for what other purpose are the poor slaves oppressed and kept in bondage, but to increase their masters' riches? But it is really difficult for one who never was "a broker in the trade of blood," to determine how any man, especially how any Christian, can enjoy the riches which he knows were earned by others,

4. Rob not the poor, because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the gate; for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them. Prov. xxii, 22.

under the stroke of the cart-whip, perhaps, and by those, too, who were never paid one penny as an equivalent for their labors!

4. Because he is poor. It is because the slaves are poor, and unable to assert and defend their rights, that their masters compel them to labor, and then take the fruits of their unrequited toil. This, God calls robbing them because they are poor; and shall we call it by any other name?

Neither oppress the afflicted in the gate. Courts of justice were usually held in the gates of cities in the east; hence, the text means that the poor and afflicted should have a fair and impartial hearing when they appeared at the court for judgment in any case.

In twelve of these United States no person of color, whether male or female, can be heard as an evidence in a court of justice against a white person. And another law,

which is general among the slave States, prevents the slave or any person for him, from commencing a suit at law, in certain cases, unless he first give security for the costs of court; and if the action should be tried and should fail, the costs are doubled! If this be not oppressing the poor in the gate, reader, what is?

Here is a "master," who, for some slight offence, strikes the child of a slave in the presence of fifty other persons of color who are slaves, and who see the "master" inflict the blow which causes the instant death of the child. But for the parents who look on and see their offspring gasp in death, there is no redress; the deed not being witnessed by any white person, it is passed over in silence, and so, indeed, such atrocities often are, when they occur under the eye of the whites. A slave may be compelled to see the person of his daughter or wife abused, as they often are, without being suffered to speak one word, or to move a finger in their defence. And will not the Great God plead the cause of such?