this country, and doomed to remediless bondage. Is it not as atrocious a
crime to kidnap these, as to kidnap a similar number on the coast of
Africa?

It is said, moreover, that we ought to legislate prospectively, on this
subject; that the fetters of the present generation of slaves cannot be
broken; and that our single aim should be, to obtain the freedom of
their offspring, by fixing a definite period after which none shall be
born slaves. But this is inconsistent, inhuman and unjust. The following
extracts from the speech of the Rev. Dr. Thomson are conclusive on this
point:

'In the first place, it amounts to an indirect sanction of the
continued slavery of all who are now alive, and of all who may
be born before the period fixed upon. This is a renunciation of
the great moral principles upon which the demand for abolition
proceeds. It consigns more than 800,000 human beings to bondage
and oppression, while their title to freedom is both
indisputable and acknowledged. And it is not merely an
inconsistency on the part of the petitioners, and a violation of
the duty which they owe to such a multitude of their fellow-men,
but it weakens or surrenders the great argument by which they
enforce their application for the extinction of colonial
slavery.

'Besides, it is vain to expect that the planters will acquiesce
in such a prospective measure, any more than in the liberation
of the existing slaves, for the progeny of the existing slaves
must be considered by them as much a part of their property as
these slaves themselves. And they would regard it equally unjust
to deprive them of what is hereafter to be produced from their
own slave stock, as it would be to deprive a farmer, by an
anticipating law of all the foals and of all the calves that
might be produced in his stable and in his cow-house, after a
given specified date.

'We must be true to our own maxims, which are taken from the
word of God; and ask for all that we are entitled to have on the
ground of justice and humanity, and be contented with nothing
less.

'In the second place, the plan objected to is not merely an
acquiescence in the continuance of crime, it is a violation of
the best feelings of our nature. For, let any man but reflect on
the circumstance of children being born to slavery, merely
because they came into the wor