In the excess of his benevolence, as a political propagandist, he has kindled a fire for the oppressed of the old world to gaze at with hope, and for crowned heads and dynasties to tremble at; but a due regard to the safety of his "peculiar institution," compels him to put out the eyes of his own people, lest they too should see it.

Calling on all the world to shake off the fetters of oppression, and wade through the blood of tyrants to freedom, he has been compelled to smother, in darkness and silence, the minds of his own bondmen, lest they too should hear and obey the summons, by putting the knife to his own throat .-- Proclaiming the truths of Divine Revelation, and sending the Scriptures to the four quarters of the earth, he has found it necessary to maintain heathenism at home by special enactments; and to make the second offence of teaching his slaves the message of salvation punishable with _death_! What marvel then that American slavery even on the _statute book_ assumes the right to transform moral beings into brutes:[A] that it legalizes man's usurpation of Divine authority; the substitution of the will of the master, for the moral government of God: that it annihilates the rights of conscience; debars from the enjoyment of religious rights and privileges by specific enactments; and enjoins disobedience to the Divine lawgiver: that it discourages purity and chastity, encourages crime, legalizes concubinage; and, while it places the slave entirely in the hands of his master, provides no real protection for his life or his person.
[Footnote A: The _cardinal principle_ of slavery, that a slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things, as an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law, in all the slave states.

(Judge Stroud's Sketch of Slave Laws, p.

22.)] But it may be said, that these laws afford no certain evidence of the actual condition of the slaves: that, in judging the system by its code, no allowance is made for the humanity of individual masters.

It was a just remark of the celebrated Priestley, that "_no people ever were found to be better than their laws, though many have been known to be worse._" All history and common experience confirm this.