ONDUCIVE TO THEIR OWN HAPPINESS, THAN ANY
OTHER OF WHICH THEY ARE SUSCEPTIBLE. Whether we consult the
sacred Scriptures or the lights of nature and reason, we
shall find these truths as abundantly apparent as if written
with a sun-beam in the heavens. Under both the Jewish and
Christian dispensations of our religion, DOMESTIC SLAVERY
existed with the unequivocal sanction of its prophets, its
apostles, and finally its great Author. The patriarchs
themselves, those chosen instruments of God, were
slaveholders. In fact the divine sanction of this institution
is so plainly written that "he who runs may read" it, and
those over-righteous pretenders and pharisees, who affect to
be scandalized by its existence among us, would do well to
inquire how much more nearly they walk in the way of
godliness, than did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That the
African negro is DESTINED BY PROVIDENCE TO OCCUPY THIS
CONDITION OF SERVILE DEPENDENCE, is not less manifest. It is
marked on the face, stamped on the skin, and evinced by the
intellectual inferiority, and natural improvidence of his
race. THEY HAVE ALL THE QUALITIES THAT FIT THEM FOR SLAVES,
AND NOT ONE OF THOSE THAT WOULD FIT THEM TO BE FREEMEN, they
are utterly unqualified not only for rational freedom, but
for self-government of any kind. They are in all respects
physical, moral and political, inferior to millions of the
human race, who have for consecutive ages dragged out a
wretched existence under a grinding political despotism, and
who are doomed to this hopeless condition by the very
qualities which unfit them for a better. It is utterly
astonishing that any enlighted American, after contemplating
all the manifold forms in which even the white race of
mankind are doomed to slavery and oppression, should suppose
it possible to reclaim the Africans from their destiny. THE
CAPACITY TO ENJOY FREEDOM IS AN ATTRIBUTE NOT TO BE
COMMUNICATED BY HUMAN POWER. IT IS AN ENDOWMENT OF GOD, AND
ONE OF THE RAREST WHICH IT HAS PLEASED HIS INSCRUTABLE WISDOM
TO BESTOW UPON THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH. IT IS CONFERRED AS
THE REWARD OF MERIT, and only upon those who are qualified to
enjoy it. Until the "Ethiopian can change his skin," it will
he vain to attempt, by any human power, to make freemen of
those whom God has doomed to be slaves, by all