our terrestrial happiness, as it endangers our enjoyment of heavenly
bliss.

For who is there, unless innured to savage cruelties, that hear of the
inhuman punishments daily afflicted upon the unfortunate Blacks,
without feeling for their situations?

Can a man who calls himself a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie
up, thumb screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmercifully a poor
slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty? Or can any one be an
eye witness to such enormities, without at the same time being deeply
persuaded of its guilt?

I fear these questions may be answered in the affirmative, but I hope
by none of this respectable audience; for such men must be monsters,
not of the regular order of nature, and equally prone to murder, or to
less cruelties.

But independent of these effects, which the existence of slavery in
any country has over the moral faculty of man, it is highly injurious
to its natural oeconomy; it debars the progress of agriculture, and
gives origin to sloth and luxury.

View the fertile fields of Great Britain, where the hand of freedom
conducts the plowshare, then look back upon your own, and see how mean
will be the comparison.

Your labourers are slaves, and they have no inducement, no incentive
to be industrious; they are cloathed and victualled, whether lazy or
hard-working; and from the calculations that have been made, one
freeman is worth almost two slaves in the field, which makes it in
many instances cheaper to have hirelings; for they are incited to
industry by the hopes of reputation and future employment, and are
careful of their apparel and their instruments of husbandry, where
they must provide them for themselves, whereas, the others have little
or no temptation to attend to any of these circumstances.

But this, the prejudiced mind is scarce able to scan, the pride of
holding men as property is too flattering to yield to the dictates of
reason, and blindly pushes on man to his destruction.

What a pity is it, that darkness should so obscure us, that America
with all her transcending glory, should be stigmatized with the
infamous reproach of oppression, and her citizens be called Tyrants.

Fellow-countrymen, let the hand of persecution be no longer raised
against you.--Act virtuously; do unto all men as you would they should
do unto you, and exterminate the pest of slavery from your land.

Then will the tongues of slander be silenced, the shafts of criticis