pped African. That time does not consecrate
wrong, is a fallacy which all history exposes; and which the best and
wisest men of all ages and professions of religious faith have
practically denied. The means, therefore, whatever they may have been,
by which the African race now in this country have been reduced to
slavery, cannot affect us, since they are our property, as your land is
yours, by inheritance or purchase and prescriptive right. You will say
that man cannot hold _property in man_. The answer is, that he can and
_actually does_ hold property in his fellow all the world over, in a
variety of forms, and _has always done so_. I will show presently his
authority for doing it.

If you were to ask me whether I am an advocate of slavery in the
abstract, I should probably answer, that I am not, according to my
understanding of the question. I do not like to deal in abstractions. It
seldom leads to any useful ends. There are few universal truths. I do
not now remember any single moral truth universally acknowledged. We
have no assurance that it is given to our finite understanding to
comprehend abstract moral truth. Apart from revelation and the inspired
writings, what ideas should we have even of God, salvation, and
immortality? Let the heathen answer. Justice itself is impalpable as an
abstraction, and abstract liberty the merest phantasy that ever amused
the imagination. This world was made for man, and man for the world as
it is. We ourselves, our relations with one another and with all matter,
are real, not ideal. I might say that I am no more in favor of slavery
in the abstract, than I am of poverty, disease, deformity, idiocy, or
any other inequality in the condition of the human family; that I love
perfection, and think I should enjoy a millennium such as God has
promised. But what would it amount to? A pledge that I would join you to
set about eradicating those apparently inevitable evils of our nature,
in equalizing the condition of all mankind, consummating the perfection
of our race, and introducing the millennium? By no means. To effect
these things, belongs exclusively to a higher power. And it would be
well for us to leave the Almighty to perfect his own works and fulfill
his own covenants. Especially, as the history of the past shows how
entirely futile all human efforts have proved, when made for the purpose
of aiding him in carrying out even his revealed designs, and how
invariably he has accomplishe