4. "Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them."

Can the slave-holder pretend that he does this to his slave? If so, he will be willing to give the only convincing proof of his sincerity, by changing condition with his slaves for a while.' If there must be slaves, as he pretends, let him alternate with the black man; one be slave one year, and the other the next. I'll engage that the black man will consent.

Here, then, is as much opposition to slavery, as there could, from the nature of the case, be. But christianity will not have done its perfect work, in this respect, when slavery is abolished. There are other violations of this principle of love, justice and equality, that must melt away. Abolition will not have done its work till it hath destroyed the distinction between the kitchen and the parlor. The day is not far distant when this last evil will be regarded as quite as unjustifiable and as inconsistent with christianity as slavery now is. God speed the happy day.

After Constantine, when christianity became the religion of the em-, pire, christian captives were not made slaves. The slave-market must be supplied from the captives of heathen nations and tribes.

The nothern tribes had practiced the same policy, of making slaves of their captives, long before they were known to the Roman conquerors, as Greece and Rome had done.

The clergy, during the period from this time to the Reformation, never ceased to inveigh against the evils and hardships of slavery, and to labor for its abolition. We find them urging, stoutly, that no master should have power to punish or correct his slave, without regular process in the courts of justice. Pope Alexander III. declared that "Nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty." The clergy broke open the slave-markets of Bristol, Hamburgh, Lyons and Rome, to set the slaves free. Leo X. declared that "not the christian religion only, but nature herself, cries out against slavery," and Paul III. imprecated curses, in two separate briefs, on those who should enslave Indians, or any other class of men.

After christianity was fairly established in its connection with the state, then was presented another feature of slavery. The Christians seemed to feel, that in consequence of the peculiar relation which they supposed they sustained to God, they had a right to enslave all who were not believers in Christ. In the wars in which the Christians were engaged with the Mahometans especially, the Christians seemed to have no doubt that it was right to make the followers of the Impostor, as they called him, slaves. They pretty generally regarded it as a duty to carry on war against the unbelievers. In the wars of Ferdinand and Isabella, against the Moors of Grenada, it was considered a matter of public and religious rejoicing when they had succeeded in killing, and especially in making slaves, of the followers of Mahomet.

III. We have now arrived at a new and most important era in the history of slavery. Hence, afterward, the character of slavery among European nations, and their descendants, is materially and essentially

different from what it was before. I wish to call your attention particularly to this fact, as it deserves the most serious consideration, and is most significant, in meaning, to the friend of the slave. We have arrived at the origin of negro slavery; and that species of slavery rests upon a foundation entirely different from that of any other species.

Before this time, slaves were taken in war. They were a part of the lawful conquest. After this time, they were kidnapped in time of peace. Before this time, nations took their equals in fair and lawful combat, on the battle field. Their motive was not so much avarice as glory. Slaves were the trophies of war. A man kept them, not so much for the sake of enriching himself, as for insignia of his nobility and consequence. But after this period the case was very different. The innocent and helpless natives of Africa were hunted and kidnapped, as one hunts the deer of the mountain. They were carried to serve the avarice of masters too lazy to work for themselves. It now became man-stealing. The motive that actuated those who enslaved their fellow-men now became very much lower than it had been before. It was that base, unprincipled avarice, that sacrifices every thing to self. They engaged in reducing men to slavery for the sake of the profits of slavery. They bought and sold human flesh for gain. A motive so grovelling as this had not actuated the enslavers of the human race before. The difference between any of the kinds of slavery that existed before, and negro slavery, is the same as the difference between war and secret murder, in times of peace; it is the same as that between a duel, where the parties consent to risk their lives in equal combat, and midnight robbery, where the foot-pad murders the traveller for his money; it is the same as the difference between winning one's money at the gaming table, and stealing it in some secret and well laid plan of thievery.

It was now held that Africans were an inferior race, made so by their Creator, for the purpose of being slaves to us, their superiors.

We must expect that after this the character of slavery will be different, and much worse than before. Man, moved by avarice, in what he has persuaded himself is right, or rather has determined to do, whether right or wrong, is deaf to the calls of mercy and humanity. He will hardly hesitate before any extreme of suffering and cruelty. The thorny recollections of past injustice and wrong will embitter his hate for his victim, and, drunkard-like, he will drown the past in the greater cruelties of the present. O, what an epoch in the world's history was this! One portion of the great family of man, the most civilized, the most enlightened, the most highly favored of God, their common Father, the followers of his only begotten and dearly beloved Son, the professors of the only true religion, to whose care God had committed the reformation and salvation of the world, deliberately and coolly doomed their unfortunate brethren, for whose benefit they had been entrusted with so many blessings by their heavenly Father, to slavery; to drag out a miserable life, in toil, and groans, and all the unmitigated horrors of bondage. What mercy can we hope for the poor, defenceless African, now? Who shall deliver him from the cruelties of a master more dreadful than the wild beasts of his native forest? for into such hands he must sometimes fall. O ye thunders of Almighty God, why do ye sleep! Ye rocks, hills and mountains, why do ye stand in silence and see the

chains fastened upon the innocent, defenceless sons of God, your Creator and theirs! Ye surrounding deserts, why do ye not overwhelm the enslaving demons with your drifting sands! Old Ocean, how can you keep quiet! why not open and let down the slavers as they sail over your tranquil bosom! Man will not defend his brother man, and why, ye elements, why will not you? O Africa why did not you sink at once to a watery grave, where the weary are at rest, and the wicked cease from troubling?

This change in the character of slavery is enough to convince me that it has arrived at its last stage. The darkest hour is the last before the day dawns. The men into whose hands slavery has now fallen, with their views and motives, will carry it to such extremes as to call forth an opposition that will exterminate the evil. It is a doctrine of reason, and confirmed by the experience of all history, that when any institution or practice, which is not founded on the principles of truth and justice, has fallen into the hands of low, avaricious men, they always carry it so far as to shock and rouse the slumbering moral sentiment of the more virtuous and well-principled, till they commence an opposition to the evil which ends in its extinction.

I will give but two illustrations out of the hundreds that history affords. The sale of indulgences by the Pope of Rome, which was first introduced as a mere matter of convenience, was at last seized upon by the cupidity of Leo X. as a means of raising money to defray the expense of the extensive building in which he was engaged. His avaricious motives carried the evil so far, as to call forth Luther and the Reformation. The only other case I shall cite is that of England in taxing the Colonies. She had practiced upon the unjust principle of taxation without representation, until her avarice carried it so far as to arouse the inhabitants of the Colonies, as one man, to throw off the yoke which they had long worn, but had now become more heavy and galling.

This is now most obviously the case with slavery. It has fallen into the hands of avaricious men. The tendency of public opinion is towards liberty and equality, true democracy. Here slavery stands in this age, in the sunny days of liberty, intelligence and religion; having sailed down the current of time, like some ice-berg that has floated from the frozen regions of its northern home, into the tropics, where every thing around is opposed to it, and it to every thing. Those who are interested in retaining it still longer, draw tighter and tighter the bands of slavery, lest its diminished form slip out; not considering that the bands are so tight already as to be bursting and falling off.

The tribes of Africa have been accustomed to make slaves of the captives taken in war, from the earliest times of which we have any information. Slavery existed among the tribes of Africa, just as it had done among the tribes of Europe. Equals enslaved equals. But African slaves were not introduced into Europe until A. D. 1440.

Soon after the Portuguese conquests in the Barbary states, the love of gain and hatred for the infidels induced the Portuguese to visit western Africa. They sailed so far south as Cape Blanco. Antony Gonzalez, the leader of the expedition, took some of the natives and brought them home. They were not, however, treated as slaves, but rather as strangers, who were required to give information of their native country. They

were finally carried back, and their fellow-countrymen gave the Portuguese gold and African slaves in exchange. This was the first introduction of negro slavery into Europe; "and mercantile cupidity," says Bancroft, "immediately observed that negroes might become an object of lucrative commerce. New ships were despatched without delay." Spain also engaged in the traffic, and even claimed the honor of having first introduced it.

In 1492, Columbus discovered America, and carried back with him to Spain five hundred native Indians, for slaves. But these Indians were liberated by the humanity of Isabella. The same cupidity, however, that had so eagerly engaged in the African slave-trade, immediately commenced to take the natives of America for its victims. But they were not good slaves; they were too shy to be easily caught, so the project was finally abandoned. But the discovery of the new world opened an extensive slave-market. Thither the slavers directed their course, and by this means Europe has been saved being overrun by a slave population, as we are. The different nations engaged in the profitable traffic. This they seemed to do remorselessly. Nations have no conscience.

The cultivation of sugar was now successfully begun in Hispaniola. It was found that one negro could do as much work as four Indians, and the mild and tender-hearted Las Casas returned from Hispaniola to plead with the Spanish court to relieve the Indians; and since he saw that they would have some slaves, he proposed that the more hardy Africans, who he had seen were better able to bear the burden, should be substituted for the Indians. This was in 1517, and the emperor, Charles V. granted a patent to certain persons to supply the Spanish islands with slaves. But even now there were some who opposed the slave-trade as unjust and iniquitous. Among them was Soto, the confessor of Charles V. Cardinal Ximines, whatever he might have thought of the justice of slavery, opposed the introducing of negroes into the Spanish islands, as impolitic. His predictions proved true. Hayti, the first spot to receive African slaves, was the first spot of successful resistance to the whites; and the first to establish a government of free blacks in the western world.

In 1562, Sir John Hawkins fraudulently carried a cargo of slaves to Hispaniola. This was the first of Englishmen's engaging in the traffic. The profits of such commerce attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth. The English, ever bent upon gain, encouraged the business.

In 1645, Thomas Keyser and James Smith, the latter a member of the church in Boston, sent out a ship to Guinea, to trade for negroes.' This, I believe, was the first instance of any of the inhabitants of the Colonies engaging in this nefarious traffic. But Massachusetts could not approve of such injustice. The cry was raised against Keyser and Smith, as malefactors and murderers. After advice with the elders, the representatives ordered the negroes to be restored to their native country at the public charge.

In Virginia, there had from the first existed a species of servitude, brought over from England. The servant stood to his master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge the costs of his emigration, by the employment of his powers for the benefit of the creditor. This soon

gave rise to oppression and cruelty. Persons in England decoyed the

unwary into coming over here, and then sold them for four, five and six times the cost of emigration. The condition of these apprenticed servants was limited to a certain time, and the laws favored their early enfranchisement.

In August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war entered James river, and landed twenty negroes. This is the epoch of the introduction of African slavery among the English Colonies. The increase was at first slow. But the increasing demand for laborers, and the superiority in point of profit of the negro slaves over any other kind of laborers, tended to increase the number of slaves.

From that period negro slavery extended itself to nearly or quite all of the states. Massachusetts was the first to abolish it. That was the only state, in 1788, when the constitution was adopted, whose laws did not tolerate slavery. The northern states have, however, gradually abolished it, so that now it does not exist north of Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. It was declared, by an ordinance of congress, on the 13th of July, 1787, recommended by Thomas Jefferson, that "there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the territory north of the Ohio river, after that time, except as a punishment for crimes.'

Negro slavery still exists in this republic in the District of Columbia, all the southern states and territories; and to that we will direct our attention.

I now proceed to speak of the political relation between slavery and our country; and consider the position that the constitution assumed towards that institution.

Yet

When the convention assembled at Philadelphia, in May, 1787, the laws of every state except Massachusetts tolerated slavery. In this state of things it could not well be that the constitution proposed by such an assembly should not recognize slavery in some form or another. nothing is clearer than that the heroes and patriots who had just been so much engaged in the struggle for their own liberties, expected that negro slavery would soon cease, and be out-rooted from our republic. During this struggle they had "remembered those in bonds as bound with them." They could not well raise their hands and hearts to pray God to assist them, without resolving, as soon as they should have succeeded in their cause, to commence a course of measures that should result in freedom for every man in the country, whether black or white. Persecuted sects always preach toleration; and so the oppressed preach universal freedom.

Accordingly the delegates, in framing the constitution which they hoped and expected would be perpetual, and remain as the bond of union between the different states long after slavery should be abolished, carefully avoided using the word "slave," as though they would blot out every thing that could tell to future generations that a nation of freemen, who had declared that "all men are born free and equal," and who had pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" to maintain that doctrine, had still continued to contradict that doctrine by their most solemn declarations, and still held their fellow-men in a bondage far more galling and degrading than that which they had shed so much blood to free themselves from. The great men of that day had been roused, by the exciting scenes in which they had been engaged, above that stupidity,

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