the plain good sense of mankind. Even
among his most enthusiastic admirers, it has merely excited a
good-natured smile at what they could not but regard as the strange
hallucination of a benevolent heart.

_A wrong desire in one relation of life is not a reason for a wrong act
in another relation thereof._ A man may desire the estate, he may desire
the man-servant, or the maid-servant, or the wife of his neighbor, but
this is no reason why he should abandon his own man-servant, or his
maid-servant, or his wife to the will of another. The criminal who
trembles at the bar of justice may desire both judge and jury to acquit
him, but this is no reason why, if acting in the capacity of either
judge or juror, he should bring in a verdict of acquittal in favor of
one justly accused of crime. If we would apply the rule in question
aright, we should consider, not what we might wish or desire if placed
in the situation of another, but what we _ought_ to wish or desire.

If a man were a child, he might wish to be exempt from the wholesome
restraint of his parents; but this, as every one will admit, is no
reason why he should abandon his own children to themselves. In like
manner, if he were a slave, he might most vehemently desire freedom; but
this is no reason why he should set his slaves at liberty. The whole
question of right turns upon what he _ought_ to wish or desire if placed
in such a condition. If he were an intelligent, cultivated, civilized
man,--in one word, if he were fit for freedom,--then his desire for
liberty would be a rational desire, would be such a feeling as he
_ought_ to cherish; and hence, he should be willing to extend the same
blessing to all other intelligent, cultivated, civilized men, to all
such as are prepared for its enjoyment. Such is the sentiment which he
should entertain, and such is precisely the sentiment entertained at the
South. No one here proposes to reduce any one to slavery, much less
those who are qualified for freedom; and hence the inquiry so often
propounded by Dr. Wayland and other abolitionists, how we would like to
be subjected to bondage, is a grand impertinence. We should like it as
little as themselves; and in this respect we shall do as we would be
done by.

But suppose we were veritable slaves--slaves in character and in
disposition as well as in fact--and as unfit for freedom as the Africans
of the South--what _ought_ we then to wish or desire? Ought we to desire
freedom?