by _liberty of conscience_.
The time and mode of worshipping God as prescribed in his word,
and dictated by our conscience, we are not only free to follow,
but are protected in following.

Forming a community of our own, in the land of our forefathers,
having the commerce and soil and resources of the country at our
disposal; we know nothing of that debasing inferiority, with
which our very colour stamped us in America. There is nothing
here to create the feeling on our part--nothing to cherish the
feeling of superiority in the minds of foreigners who visit us.
It is this moral emancipation--this liberation of the mind from
worse than iron fetters, that repays us ten thousand times over,
for all that it has cost us, and makes us grateful to God, and
our American patrons, for the happy change which has taken place
in our situation. We are not so self-complacent as to rest
satisfied with our improvement either as regards our minds or our
circumstances. We do not expect to remain stationary,--far from
it; but we certainly feel ourselves, for the first time, in a
state to improve either to any purpose. The burden is gone from
our shoulders; we now breathe and move freely, and know not (in
our present state) for which to pity you most, the empty name of
liberty, which you endeavour to content yourselves with, in a
country that is not yours; or the delusion which makes you hope
for ampler privileges in that country hereafter. Tell us; which
is the white man, who, with a prudent regard to his own
character, can associate one of you on terms of equality? Ask
_us_ which is the white man who would decline such association
with one of our number, whose intellectual and moral qualities
are not an objection? To both of these questions we
unhesitatingly make the same answer: there is no such white man.

We solicit none of you to emigrate to this country; for we know
not who among you prefers rational independence and the honest
respect of his fellow men, to the mental sloth and careless
poverty, which you already possess, and your children will
inherit after you, in America. But if your views and aspirations
rise a degree higher--if your minds are not as servile as your
present condition, we can decide the question at once; and with
confidence say t