have several
remarks to offer. In the first place, perhaps every one is not so good a
driver as Lord Eldon. It is certain, that acts of Parliament have been
passed, through which the most slippery of rogues have not been able to
make their escape. They have been caught, tried, and condemned for their
offenses, in spite of all their ingenuity and evasion.

Secondly, a "principle" is just as easily evaded as a "precept;" and, in
most cases, it is far more so. The great principle of the New Testament,
which our author deems so applicable to the subject of slavery, is this:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Now, if this be the great
principle intended to enlighten us respecting the sin of slavery, we
confess it has been most completely evaded by every slave State in the
Union. We have, indeed, so entirely deceived ourselves in regard to its
true import, that it seems to us to have not the most remote application
to such a subject. If any one will give our remarks on this great
"principle" a candid examination, we think he will admit that we have
deceived ourselves on very plausible, if not on unanswerable, grounds.
If slavery be a sin,--_always and everywhere_ a monstrous
iniquity,--then we should have been far more thoroughly enlightened with
respect to its true nature, and found evasion far more difficult, if
the New Testament had explicitly declared it to be such, and commanded
all masters everywhere to emancipate their slaves. We could have driven
a coach-and-four neither through, nor around, any such express
prohibition. It is indeed only in consequence of the default, or
omission, of such precept or command, that the abolitionist appeals to
what he calls the principles of the gospel. If he had only one such
precept,--if he had only one such precise and pointed prohibition, he
might then, and he _would_, most triumphantly defy evasion. He would
say, There is _the word_; and none but the obstinate gainsayers, or
unbelievers, would dare reply. But as it is, he is compelled to lose
himself in vague generalities, and pretend to a certainty which nowhere
exists, except in his own heated mind. This pretense, indeed, that an
express precept, prohibitory of slavery, is not the most direct way to
reveal its true nature, because a precept is so much more easily evaded
than a principle, is merely one of the desperate expedients of a forlorn
and hopeless cause. If the abolitionist would maintain that cause, or
vindicate h