suffocate between the decks of the floating
slave-pen, freighted and packed with unparalleled human woe, and the
slavers in mercy have cast them out to perish on their native shores.
Such is the beginning, and no less wicked is the end of that system
which Scribes and Pharisees in the Church and the State pronounce to be
just, humane, benevolent and Christian. If such are the deeds of mercy
wrought by angels, then tell me what works of iniquity there remain for
devils to do?

* * * * *

It is the highly concentrated essence of all conceivable wickedness.
Theft, robbery, pollution, unbridled passion, incest, cruelty,
cold-blooded murder, blasphemy, and defiance of the laws of God. It
teaches children to disregard parental authority. It tears down the
marriage altar, and tramples its sacred ashes under its feet. It creates
and nourishes polygamy. It feeds and pampers its hateful handmaid,
prejudice.

It has divided our national councils. It has engendered deadly strife
between brethren. It has wasted the treasure of the Commonwealth, and
the lives of thousands of brave men, and driven troops of helpless women
and children into yawning tombs. It has caused the bloodiest civil war
recorded in the book of time. It has shorn this nation of its locks of
strength that was rising as a young lion in the Western world. It has
offered us as a sacrifice to the jealousy and cupidity of tyrants,
despots, and adventurers of foreign countries. It has opened a door
through which a usurper, a perjured, but a powerful prince, might
stealthily enter and build an empire on the golden borders of our
southwestern frontier, and which is but a stepping-stone to further and
unlimited conquests on this continent. It has desolated the fairest
portions of our land, "until the wolf long since driven back by the
march of civilization returns after the lapse of a hundred years and
howls amidst its ruins."

It seals up the Bible, and mutilates its sacred truths, and flies into
the face of the Almighty, and impiously asks, "Who art thou that I
should obey thee?" Such are the outlines of this fearful national sin;
and yet the condition to which it reduces man, it is affirmed, is the
best that can possibly be devised for him.

When inconsistencies similar in character, and no more glaring, passed
beneath the eye of the Son of God, no wonder he broke forth in language
of vehement denunciation. Ye Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites! Ye
blind guides! Y