hing which can be taken away,
will be perpetuated, for the best good of the slave and his master.

"But," said I, "while this perpetual relation of the black race to us is
possible, and may be the design of a benevolent God for our happiness
and that of the Africans, and while I love to use it in replying to
those who, with short-sighted and somewhat passionate reasoning, as I
think, contend that slavery must utterly be rooted out of the land, I
confess that my own thoughts turn to the Continent of Africa as the
great object for which an all-wise God has permitted slavery to exist on
our shores.

"I love to look at American slavery in connection with the future
history of that great African continent, containing one hundred and
fifty millions of people. History and discovered relics make the
Ethiopian race to be older even than Egypt. The once powerful nations of
Northern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyptian builders
of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist only in a few Coptic
tribes; and even they are of doubtful origin. But the Ethiopian people,
notwithstanding the slave-trade which has extended its degrading
influence far and wide among them, and though civilization long since
departed from their tribes, have continued to increase till now they are
the most numerous of the human families except the Chinese. The
slave-holding nations which have pillaged them forages, have not been
able to destroy them. Ethiopia may well say, stretching out her hands to
God, 'Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all
thy waves.' It is sublime to think what triumphs of redemption there are
yet to be on that African continent. But how little, apparently, from
all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist friends seem to
think about Africa as a future jewel in Immanuel's diadem! Utterly
foreign from all their thoughts appears to be the great plan of
Providence which by means even of slavery in this land, has done so much
to extend the work of human salvation among the African race. And there
are some ministers of the Gospel and professed Christians, I regret to
observe, who reply to all that you say about the vast proportion, to
white converts, of converts among the colored people, in a manner which
would awaken great fears in the most charitable breast with regard to
their own personal interest in the salvation by Christ, did we not all
know how far we may be blinded by passion. If you