He may confidently and earnestly alledge, that he
is not responsible for the state of society in which he is placed.
Slavery was established before he began to breathe. It was his
inheritance. His slaves are his property by birth or testament. But why
will he thus deceive himself? Why will he permit the cunning and
rapacious spiders, which in the very sanctuary of ethics and religion
are laboriously weaving webs from their own bowels, to catch him with
their wretched sophistries?--and devour him, body, soul, and substance?
Let him know, as he must one day with shame and terror own, that whoever
holds slaves is himself responsible for _the relation_, into which,
whether reluctantly or willingly, he thus enters. _The relation can not
be forced upon him_. What though Elizabeth countenanced John Hawkins in
stealing the natives of Africa?--what though James, and Charles, and
George, opened a market for them in the English colonies?--what though
modern Dracos have "framed mischief by law," in legalizing man-stealing
and slaveholding?--what though your ancestors, in preparing to go "to
their own place," constituted you the owner of the "neighbors" whom they
had used as cattle?--what of all this, and as much more like this, as
can be drawn from the history of that dreadful process by which men "are
deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be _chattels
personal_?" Can all this force you to put the cap upon the climax--to
clinch the nail by doing that, without which nothing in the work of
slave-making would be attempted? _The slaveholder is the soul of the
whole system_. Without him, the chattel principle is a lifeless
abstraction. Without him, charters, and markets, and laws, and
testaments, are empty names. And does _he_ think to escape
responsibility? Why, kidnappers, and soul-drivers, and law-makers, are
nothing but his _agents_. He is the guilty _principal_. Let him look
to it.

[Footnote A: You join with them in their bloody work. They murder, and
you bury the victims.]

But what can he do? Do? Keep his hands off his "neighbor's" throat. Let
him refuse to finish and ratify the process by which the chattel
principle is carried into effect. Let him refuse, in the face of
derision, and reproach, and opposition. Though poverty should fasten its
bony hand upon him, and persecution shoot forth its forked tongue;
whatever may betide him--scorn, flight, flames--let him promptly and
steadfastly refuse. Better the spite