slaves to become fiends,
the wonder could not be great. Nothing more assimilates a man to a
beast, says the learned Montesque, than being among freemen, himself a
slave; for slavery clogs the mind, perverts the moral faculty, and
reduces the conduct of man to the standard of brutes.

What right then have you to expect greater things from these poor
mortals? You would not blame a brute for committing ravages upon his
prey, nor ought you to censure a slave, for making attempts to regain
his liberty even at the risque of life itself.

Ye mercenary Portuguese, ye ambitious French, and ye deceitful
Britons, I again call upon you to take these things into your
consideration; it is time, a remorse of conscience had seized upon
you; it is time, you were apprised of your danger: Behold the
thousands that are annually lost to your governments, in the
prosecution of an unlawful and iniquitous trade.

View the depredations that you commit upon a nation, born equally free
with yourselves; consider the abyss of misery into which you plunge
your fellow-mortals, and reflect upon the horrid crimes you are hourly
committing under the bright sunshine of revealed religion.--Will you
not then find yourselves upon a precipice, and protected from ruin,
only because you are too wicked to be lost?

What Empire, or what State can have the hope of existing, which
prosecutes a trade, that proves a sinking fund to her coffers, and to
her subjects, tramples the human species under foot, with as much
indifference as the dirt, and fills the world with misery and woe?

Let not a blind hardness of opinion any longer bias your judgments,
and prevent you from acting like Christians.

View the Empires amongst the ancients; behold Egypt in the time of
Secostris, Greece in the time of Cyrus, and Rome in the reign of
Augustus; view them all, powerful as enemies, patterns of virtue and
science, bold and intrepid in war, free and independent; and now see
them sacrificed at the shrine of luxury, and dwindled into
insignificance. When in power, they usurped the authority of God, they
stretched out their arms to encompass their enemies, and bound their
captives in iron chains of slavery.

Vengeance was then inflicted, their spoils became the instruments of
pride, luxury and dissipation, and finally proved the cause of their
present downfall.

Then look back at home; view your degeneracy from the times of Louis
the 14th and Charles the 2d, and if a unive