secure our true and only happiness.
All prosperity, not founded on it, is built on sand. If human affairs
are controlled, as we believe, by almighty rectitude and impartial
goodness, then to hope for happiness from wrong doing is as insane as to
seek health and prosperity by rebelling against the laws of nature, by
sowing our seed on the ocean, or making poison our common food. There is
but one unfailing good; and that is, fidelity to the everlasting law
written on the heart, and re-written and re-published in God's word.

"Whoever places this faith in the everlasting law of rectitude must, of
course, regard the question of slavery, first, and chiefly, as a moral
question. All other considerations will weigh little with him compared
with its moral character and moral influences. The following remarks,
therefore, are designed to aid the reader in forming a just moral
judgment of slavery. Great truths, inalienable rights, everlasting
duties, these will form the chief subjects of this discussion. There are
times when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man
can render society. The present is a moment of bewildering excitement,
when men's minds are stormed and darkened by strong passions and fierce
conflicts; and also a moment of absorbing worldliness, when the moral
law is made to bow to expediency, and its high and strict requirements
are decried or dismissed as metaphysical abstractions, or impracticable
theories. At such a season to utter great principles without passion,
and in the spirit of unfeigned and universal good will, and to engrave
them deeply and durably on men's minds, is to do more for the world,
than to open mines of wealth, or to frame the most successful schemes of
policy."

No man can refuse assent to these principles. The great question,
therefore, in relation to slavery is, what is right? What are the moral
principles which should control our opinions and conduct in regard to
it? Before attempting an answer to this question, it is proper to
remark, that we recognize no authoritative rule of truth and duty but
the word of God. Plausible as may be the arguments deduced from general
principles to prove a thing to be true or false, right and wrong, there
is almost always room for doubt and honest diversity of opinion. Clear
as we may think the arguments against despotism, there ever have been
thousands of enlightened and good men, who honestly believe it to be of
all forms of governmen