Therefore, in
the spirit of Christian love, it belongs to Christian men to speak to
each other with great fidelity. It has been said that you know little or
nothing about slavery. O, happy men, that you are ignorant of its
enormities. [Hear, hear!] But you do know something about it. You know
as much about it as you know of the widow-burning in India, or the
cannibalism in the Fejee Islands, or any of those crimes and sorrows of
paganism, that induced you to send forth your missionaries. You know it
is a great wrong, and a terrible obstacle to the progress of the gospel;
and that is enough for you to know to induce you to act. You have as
much knowledge as ever induced a Christian community in any part of the
world to exert an influence in any other part of the world. Slavery is a
relic of paganism, of barbarism; it must be removed by Christianity; and
if the light of Christianity shines on it clearly, it certainly will
remove it. There are thousands of hearts in the United States that
rejoice in your help. Whatever expressions of impatience and petulance
you may hear, be assured that these expressions are not the heart of the
great body of the people. [Cheers.] A large proportion of that country
is free from slavery. There is an area of freedom ten times larger than
Great Britain in territory.[C] [Cheers.] But all the power over the
slave is in the hands of the slaveholder. You had a power over the
slaveholder by your national legislature; our national legislature has
no power over the slaveholder. All the legislation that can in that
country be brought to bear for the slave, is legislation by the
slaveholders themselves. There is where the difficulty lies. It is
altogether by persuasion, Christian counsel, Christian sympathy,
Christian earnestness, that any good can be effected for the slave. The
conscience of the people is against the system--the conscience of the
people, even in the slaveholding states; and if we can but get at the
conscience without exciting prejudice, it will tend greatly towards the
desired effect. But this appeal to the conscience must be
unintermittent, constant. Your hands must not be weary, your prayers
must not be discontinued; but every day and every hour should we be
doing something towards the object. It is sometimes said, Americans who
resist slavery are traitors to their country. No; those who would
support freedom are the only true friends of their country. Our fathers
never intended s