isagreeable
to allow colored people the same rights and privileges as other
citizens, we can do with our prejudice, what most of us often do with
better feeling--we can conceal it.

Our almanacs and newspapers can fairly show both sides of the question;
and if they lean to either party, let it not be to the strongest. Our
preachers can speak of slavery, as they do of other evils. Our poets can
find in this subject abundant room for sentiment and pathos. Our orators
(provided they do not want office) may venture an allusion to our
_in_-"glorious institutions."

The union of individual influence produces a vast amount of moral force,
which is not the less powerful because it is often unperceived. A
mere change in the _direction_ of our efforts, without any increased
exertion, would in the course of a few years, produce an entire
revolution of public feeling. This slow but sure way of doing good is
almost the only means by which benevolence can effect its purpose.

_Sixty thousands_ petitions have been addressed to the English
parliament on the subject of slavery, and a large number of them were
signed by women. The same steps here would be, with one exception,
useless and injudicious; because the general government has no control
over the legislatures of individual States. But the District of Columbia
forms an exception to this rule. _There_ the United States have power
to abolish slavery; and it is the duty of the citizens to petition
year after year, until a reformation is effected. But who will present
remonstrances against slavery? The Hon. John Q. Adams was intrusted with
fifteen petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia; yet clearly as that gentleman sees and defines the pernicious
effects of the system, he offered the petitions only to protest against
them! Another petition to the same effect, intrusted to another
Massachusetts representative, was never noticed at all. "Brutus is an
honorable man:--So are they all--all honorable men." Nevertheless, there
is, in this popular government, a subject on which it is _impossible_
for the people to make themselves heard.

By publishing this book I have put my mite into the treasury. The
expectation of displeasing all classes has not been unaccompanied with
pain. But it has been strongly impressed upon my mind that it was a duty
to fulfil this task; and worldly considerations should never stifle the
voice of conscience.

THE END.