A contest, not of brutal violence, but of reason.

A contest between those, who felt deeply for the happiness and the honour of their fellow-creatures, and those, who, through vicious custom and the impulse of avarice, had trampled under-foot the sacred rights of their nature, and had even attempted to efface all title to the divine image from their minds.
Of the immense advantages of this contest I know not how to speak.

Indeed, the very agitation of the question, which it involved, has been highly important.

Never was the heart of man so expanded.

Never were its generous sympathies so generally and so perseveringly excited.