g its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him;
captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of _Infidel_ powers, is the warfare of the
_Christian_ king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a
market where _men_ should be bought and sold, he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.
And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which
he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he
also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed
against the _liberties_ of one people with crimes which he
urges them to commit against the _lives_ of another.[525]

The solicitude concerning the slavery question was not so great in the
Northern colonies. The slaves were not so numerous as in the Carolinas
and other Southern colonies. The severe treatment of slaves had been
greatly modified, the spirit of masters toward them more gentle and
conciliatory, and the public sentiment concerning them more humane.
Public discussion of the Negro question, however, was cautiously
avoided. The failure of attempted legislation friendly to the slaves
had discouraged their friends, while the critical situation of public
affairs made the supporters of slavery less aggressive. On the 25th of
October, 1774, an effort was made in the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts to re-open the discussion, but it failed. The record of
the attempt is as follows:--

"Mr. Wheeler brought into Congress a letter directed to
Doct. Appleton, purporting the propriety, that while we are
attempting to free ourselves from our present
embarrassments, and preserve ourselves from slavery, that we
also take into consideration the state and circumstances of
the negro slaves in this province. The same was read, and it
was moved that a committee be appointed to take the same
into consideration. After some debate thereon, the question
was put, whether the matter now subside, and it passed in
the affirmative."[526]

Thus ended the attempt to call the atte