tes to the _time_ and the _manner_ of its
extinction. The Abolitionists claim that their method will bring it to
an end in the shortest time, and in the safest and best way. Their
opponents believe, that it will tend to bring it to an end, if at all,
at the most distant period, and in the most dangerous way.

As neither party are gifted with prescience, and as the Deity has made
no revelations as to the future results of any given measures, all the
means of judging that remain to us, as before stated, are the laws of
mind, and the records of the past.

The position then I would aim to establish is, that the method taken by
the Abolitionists is the one that, according to the laws of mind and
past experience, is least likely to bring about the results they aim
to accomplish. The general statement is this.

The object to be accomplished is:

First. To convince a certain community, that they are in the practice of
a great sin, and

Secondly. To make them willing to relinquish it.

The method taken to accomplish this is, by voluntary associations in a
foreign community, seeking to excite public sentiment against the
perpetrators of the evil; exhibiting the enormity of the crime in full
measure, without palliation, excuse or sympathy, by means of periodicals
and agents circulating, not in the community committing the sin, but in
that which does not practise it.

Now that this method may, in conjunction with other causes, have an
influence to bring slavery to an end, is not denied. But it is believed,
and from the following considerations, that it is the least calculated
to do the _good_, and that it involves the greatest evils.

It is a known law of mind first seen in the nursery and school,
afterwards developed in society, that a person is least likely to judge
correctly of truth, and least likely to yield to duty, when excited by
passion.

It is a law of experience, that when wrong is done, if repentance and
reformation are sought, then love and kindness, mingled with
remonstrance, coming from one who has a _right_ to speak, are more
successful than rebuke and scorn from others who are not beloved, and
who are regarded as impertinent intruders.

In the nursery, if the child does wrong, the finger of scorn, the
taunting rebuke, or even the fair and deserved reproof of equals, will
make the young culprit only frown with rage, and perhaps repeat and
increase the injury. But the voice of maternal love, or even the g