powerful perpetrators and advocates of rapine and murder, and (of blacker guilt than either) slavery. Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, considered as a moral being, are above all expediency, all accidental consequences; for as sure as God is holy, and man immortal, there can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them. It is the very madness of mock prudence to oppose the removal of a poisonous dish on account of the pleasant sauces or nutritious viands which would be lost with it! The dish contains destruction to that, for which alone we wish the palate to be gratified or the body to be nourished.-The Friend, pages 49, 50. JAMES STEPHEN, Esq. Enough was known before; more than enough was incontrovertibly proved; nay, enough was always admitted or undenied, to make the legislative toleration of this slavery a disgrace to the British and Christian name. Iniquity, indeed, of every kind loses in human detestation what it gains in mischief, by wide unreproved diffusion, and by age. We sin remorselessly, because our fathers sinned, and because multitudes of our own generation sin, in the same way without discredit. But if ever those most flagitious crimes of Europe, slavetrade and colonial slavery, shall cease to be tolerated by human laws, and live in history alone, men will look back upon them with the horror they deserve; and wonder as much at the depravity of the age that could establish or maintain them, as we now do at the murderous rites of our pagan ancestors, or the ferocious cannibal manners of New Zealand. There is enough in the simplest conception of personal hereditary slavery, to revolt every just and liberal mind, independently of all aggravations to be found in its particular origin, or in abuses of the master's powers. But how much should sympathy and indignation be enhanced, when the cruel perpetual privation of freedom, and of almost every civil and human right, is the punishment of no crime, nor the harsh consequence of public hostility in war, but imposed upon the innocent and helpless, by the hand of rapacious violence alone and maintained for no other object but the sordid one of the master's profit, by the excessive labor to which they are compelled? Were our merchants to send agents to buy captives from the bandits in the forests of Italy, or from the pirates on the Barbary coast, and sell them here as slaves, to work for our farmers or manufacturers; and were the purchasers to claim, in consequence, a right to hold these victims of rapine and avarice, with their children, in bondage for ever, and to take their work without wages; what would it be but the same identical case we are contemplating, except that the captives were of a different complexion? Yet the bandits and pirates are hanged; and their vendees, in the case supposed, would have less to apprehend from actions or indictments for false imprisonment, than from the vengeance of indignant multitudes. It certainly, at least, would not be necessary, for the purpose of their deliverance, to prove to the British parliament or people, that the poor captives were overworked, under fed, driven with whips to their work, punished in a brutal way for every real or imputed fault, and by such complicated oppressions brought in great numbers prematurely to their graves. LORD NUGENT. The slave-trade finds no one bold enough now to defend even its memory. And yet when we hear the slave-trade reprobated, and slavery defended by the same persons, I must own I think the slavetrade unfairly treated. The abuse of defunct slave-trade is a cheap price for the abettor of living slavery to pay by way of compromise. But we cannot allow the Colonial party on these terms to cry truce with us, by stigmatizing the slave-trade. There is not one general principle on which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery itself. DR. LUSHINGTON. It has never been given by God to man to hold his fellow man in bondage. Every thing short of a total abolition of slavery he considered as unsatisfactory, and ending only in disappointment and discontent. The supporters of the abolition of slavery took their stand upon the eternal principles of truth and justice, and it would be next to blasphemy to doubt their success. ANDREW THOMPSON. Slavery is the very Upas tree of the moral world, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes, and all virtue dies. It must be cut down and eradicated; it must be, root and branch of it, cast into the consuming fire, and its ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven. It is thus you must deal with slavery. You must annihilate it,—annihilate it now, and annihilate it for ever. ROWLAND HILL. Slavery is made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty, and murder can invent; and men-stealers are the very worst of thieves. The most knavish tricks are practised by these dealers in human flesh; and if slaves think of our general character, they must suppose that christians are devils, and that christianity was forged in hell. GROTIUS. Those are men-stealers, who abduct, keep, sell, or buy slaves or freemen. To steal a man is the highest kind of theft. POPE LEO, X. Not only the christian religion, but Nature herself cries out against a state of slavery. J. P. CURRAN-H. GRATTAN-MISS EDGEWORTH. JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. "UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION."-I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil-which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION. HENRY GRATTAN. Liberty-and is this subject a matter of indifference ?-Liberty, which, like the Deity, is an essential spirit best known by its consequences-liberty, which now animates you in your battles by sea and land, and lifts you up proudly superior to your enemies-liberty, that glorious spark and emanation of the Divinity, which fired your ancestors, and taught them to feel like an Hampden, that it was not life, but the condition of living! An Irishman sympathizes in these noble sentiments-wherever he goes-to whatever quarter of the earth he journeys-whatever wind blows his poor garments, let him but have the pride, the glory, the ostentation of liberty! MARIA EDGEWORTH. Are we disposed to pity the slave-merchant, who, urged by the maniacal desire for gold, hears, unmoved, the groans of his fellowcreatures, the execrations of mankind, and that "small still voice," which haunts those who are stained with blood?-Practical Education. Granting it to be physically impossible that the world should exist without rum and sugar and indigo, why could they not be produced by freemen as well as by slaves? If we hired negroes for laborers, instead of purchasing them for slaves, do you think they would not work as well as now? Does any negro, under the fear of the overseer, work harder than a Birmingham journeyman, or a Newcastle collier; who toil for themselves and their families? The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done; the right should make the law. THOMAS MOORE. Who can, with patience, for a moment see In free confusion o'er Columbia's plains? Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck Than thus to live, where boasted Freedom waves The brute made ruler, and the man made brute! DANIEL O'CONNELL. The Americans, in their conduct towards the slaves, were traitors to the cause of human liberty, foul detractors of the democratic principle which he had cherished throughout his political life, and blasphemers of that great and sacred name which they pretended to recognise, For, in their solemn league and covenant, the Declaration of American Independence, they declared that all men (he used their own words) have certain "inalienable rights,"—these they defined to be, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To maintain these, they pledged themselves with all the solemnity of an oath, in the presence of Almighty God. The aid which they had invoked from heaven had been awarded to them, but they had violated their awfully solemn compact with the Deity, and set at nought every principle which they professed to hold sacred, by keeping two and a half millions of their fellow-men in bondage. In reprobation of that disgraceful conduct, his humble voice had been heard across the wide waves of the Atlantic. Like the thunder-storm in its strength, it had careered against the breeze, armed with the lightning of Christian truth. (Great cheering.) And let them seek to repress it as they may-let them murder and assassinate in the true spirit of Lynch law; the storm would wax louder and louder around them, till the claims of justice became too strong to be withstood, and the black man would stand up too big for his chains. It seemed, indeed-he hoped what he was about to say was not profanation as if the curse of the Almighty had already overtaken them. For the first time in their political history, disgraceful tumult and anarchy had been witnessed in. their cities. Blood had been shed without the sanction of law, and even Sir Robert Peel had been enabled to taunt the Americans with gross inconsistency and lawless proceed ings. He differed from Sir Robert Peel on many points. On one point, however, he fully agreed with him. Let the proud Americans learn that all parties in this country unite in condemnation of their present conduct; and let them also learn that the worst of all aristocracies is that which prevails in America-an aristocracy which had been aptly denominated that of the human skin. The most insufferable pride was that shown by such an aristocracy. He would continue to hurl his taunts across the Atlantic. These would ascend the Mississippi, they would descend the Missouri, and be heard along the banks of the Ohio and the Monongahela, till the black man would leap delighted to express his gratitude to those who had effected his emancipation. (Cheers.) And, Ob-but perhaps it was his pride that dictated the hope that some black O'Connell might rise among his fellow-slaves (tremendous cheers,) who would cry agitate, agitate, agitate (renewed cheering,) till the two millions and a half of his fellow-sufferers learned the secret of their strength-learned that they were two millions and a half. (Enthusiastic cheers.) If there was one thing which more than another could excite his hatred, it was the laws which the Americans had framed to prevent the instruction of their slaves. To teach a slave to read was made a capital offence. (Shame.) To be seen in company with a negro who could write was visited with imprisonment (shame,) and to teach a slave the principles of freedom, was punished with death. Were these human laws, it might be asked? Were they not laws made by wolves of the forest? No, they were made by a congregation of two-legged wolves-American wolves-monsters in human shape, who boast of their liberty and of their humanity, while they carry the hearts of tigers within them. (Cheers.) With regard to the attacks which had been made upon his countrymen by such men, he rejoiced at them. (Cheers.) These proved to him that the sufferings to which they had been subjected in the land of their birth, had not been lost upon them; but that their kindly affections had been nurtured into strength, and that they had ranged themselves on the side of the oppessed slave. (Cheers.)Speech in Glasgow, Scotland, Sept. 1836. JONATHAN SWIFT. ABI VIATOR, ET IMITARE, SI POTERIS, STRENUUM PRO VIRILI LIBERTATIS VINDICEM. (GO TRAVELLER, AND IMITATE IF YOU CAN, A STRENUOUS ADVOCATE OF HUMAN LIBERTY.) From the Epitaph of Dean Swift, Written by himself, and engraved on his monument in St. |