tion with themselves, and from all further consideration of their duties in reference to the subjects. Let them beware, how they prejudice the blacks, who are ambitious, unsatisfied and restless here, against that retreat from oppression to the independence and dignity of manhood, which has been provided for them. Let them beware, how they infuse turbulence, envy and petulance, into those, whom they delude to continue here, or who are otherwise compelled to remain. "Let as many servants as are under the yoke, count their masters worthy of all honor." And let them remember the divine command, to withdraw from such as teach otherwise. As the foot cannot say it is not of the body, because it is not the hand, so neither can the servant say, he is not a man, nor occupying his place as a man, because he is not master. And as the eye cannot say to the ear, "what need have I of thee?" so neither can servant say to master, or master to servant, "what need have I of thee?"

And lastly let those bethink themselves who persist in these abominations. If they fail to repent and undo their iniquities, let them learn from the past, the fate that awaits them. History is but a ceaseless unfolding of the weal or wo consequent on principles maintained, or principles violated. The revulsion of the unpitying, indiscriminate caprice of Charles I. on his own head, shows how far it is safe for one human being to treat superciliously or irreverently in others, that which puts them above the rank of beings merely sentient, and confers rights even as it imposes duties which no man can destroy, or rightfully fail to recognize. So certainly operative is this tendency, that the imprisonment of a few innocent seamen, which occasioned pecuniary loss too small to be considered, and whose condition placed them below any other sympathy than the consciousness of a causeless and intolerable wrong perpetrated against that higher being which we feel working within us in common with all, aroused and embattled a whole people in their defence. Whence came Clarkson's and Wilberforce's triumph, when, after being thwarted again and again, they bounded back at each repulse with augmented vigor, and at length bore down all the obstructions of self-interested wickedness, which witnessed its own discomfiture in the irrepressible rejoicings of a whole people? They maintained the truth, against those who had outraged the truth. How comes it, that a despised band of pugnacious and awry

speculators, in spite of the hateful bitterness and personality which season their appeals, are yet starting increased sympathy and enlarging alliances, amid the very salt of the earth, which though grieved and repulsed by the acrid and virulent tone of their writings, is not content to remain indifferent or inactive, in forwarding their ultimate aim? There is no mistaking this voice, nor its origin. It is saying to oppressors, in tones too mighty to be longer smothered, "quit your inhumanity and stay your oppressions." The primary instincts of man, the spirit of civilization, the diffusion of knowledge, the growth and spread of civil liberty, all erect themselves in dire array before you, and warn you, not to lay yourselves bare to the gathering thunder-burst of indignation from all human kind! If you obstinately resist the light, and grind down God's image into commixture with the dust, think not to evade the fit retributions of eternity or time. The day is speeding on, when it will be vain mockery to plead, that God winks at the times of ignorance. His people will feel and know the hollowness of the plea; and their hearts yearn with a sympathy as strong as their love of God, towards the oppressed.

IS MINE,

But if no human heart should beat in pity for the victims of violated humanity, there is a Being, the pulsations of whose heart vibrate through the universe, and who holds all things in the hollow of his hand. He has said, VENGEANCE and that vengeance is denounced in no stinted measure against the oppressor. The crisis is at hand and if you do not avert it by a speedy repentance, by doing justice and loving mercy, it must come, when this mass of humanity, this latent body of etherial fire which now lies crushed and smothered under the burthens grievous to be borne, imposed upon it by your cruelty, will swell and burst its fetters, and overwhelm you in the shock. The intimations of God's ordinary providence, show that the lash and the stocks will not long avail to keep out light and knowledge. Nor does He fail to visit enormous and high-handed wickedness with special judgments. In vain do you appeal to the laws of his theocracy, in justification of barring out the victims of your cruelty from all knowledge of themselves and God, from all HOPE here, or hereafter. The periodical proclamation of ransom to the Hebrew slaves, their protection from wanton and capricious cruelty, the sedulous instruction given them in their duties to God and man, rebuke the impious

attempt. Which things if you fail to do, and may God avert such an issue, but if you fail to do them, and remain deaf to the monitions of conscience and his word, be ready for direr evils and more tremendous visitations upon yourselves, when there shall be a revulsion from your grinding tyranny to fierce insurrection, anarchy, and bloodshed, and the victims of your cruelty shall be upon you in the temper and attitude of mad revenge.

ARTICLE III.

THE ORIGIN, NATURE, PRINCIPLES AND PROSPECTS OF THE TEMPERANCE REFORM.

THE temperance reform began with a few individuals. They were among the thoughtful, well principled and well educated men of the State of Massachusetts. Intemperance was making progress in our country with a rapidity which exceeded even the increase in our population, and men almost despaired of arresting it. The reformers saw that this vast moral evil could only be cured by a moral remedy. Various other means they knew had been thought of and tried. Legal enactments, excise laws, with penalties. for their infringement, were among these. Every thing showed how deplorably they had failed. But for every moral evil God has provided one only and sure remedy, a moral one. This most. grateful truth was at length seen in all its relations to the great evil of intemperance, and men looked to it with the full confidence which a great natural principle always excites. The foundations of the undertaking were thus made to rest on an original moral truth. Regard was constantly had, in its earliest movements, to the circumstances of the times in which it was begun, but with this always came the deep conviction of its ultimate success. It was foreseen that it must be vast in its extent, and it was further believed that it was to be permanent in its results.

If men could be awakened to the great truth that their religious, their moral, and their intellectual nature, was a possession of incalculable value, and that in the highest cultivation of that nature was their truest felicity, it was foreseen that the reform which promised and secured such cultivation, had in it the sure promise of being alike extensive and permanent. The earliest movers in the temperance reform saw that their undertaking was a new one in an important sense. It was new in that men of great consideration in the community, solemnly impressed with the ruinous tendency of intemperance, and with its alarming and hitherto unchecked progress, came out as one man to make open declaration of their convictions, and, in a special manner, to separate and to pledge themselves to the greatest of all causes, the cause of reform. There was nothing fanatical or rash in any of their proceedings. They did not set themselves as judges of other men's affairs. It was for themselves, and for the whole human family that they came forward to show how for each and for all, ruin to soul and body, to mind and estate, was by a paramount necessity the consequence of intemperance.

The attempt then to eradicate this vice, was with these individuals a new one. This fact is an important one. It is not stated with so much distinctness in order to direct public attention to the first movers in this great cause. They do not ask it, they do not require it. The fact is important because it teaches, what indeed has been again and again taught before, that the distinct apprehension of a great evil, connected, as in these individuals, with as distinct a notion of the means of eradicating it, contains within itself the essential elements of all great and successful enterprises. This fact, in the present instance, also teaches how long the most important truths may remain unknown, or if apprehended at all, in such a way only as to be productive of no sinall or permanent practical results.

In the fullest sense of its novelty was the undertaking begun. Its first efforts were directed against the intemperate use of ardent spirits. The history of the times furnished instances of their temperate use. Perhaps some of the

reformers themselves were instances. This use of them was accounted hospitality, and a man might have been thought deficient in this great virtue who did not commonly so use them. The same use extended to the domestic

circle, and the dinner and supper table would have been thought wanting in a daily article of drink which did not furnish some form of alcohol. We may now think of this as hardly possible, but it is matter of sober history. It was in view of these facts that the reformers began. And the novelty of their attempt is thus further proved by the history of the times. The wisdom of their plan is easily shown. It is proved by the circumstance that temperate drinking was recognized as no departure from the strictest morality, and in the instances of all those who confined themselves to the strictest temperance it was no such departure. They understood the rule exactly, and dreamed as little of its violation in their own cases, as do those who now totally abstain, of violating the pledge under the sanction of which they daily and hourly practise this total abstinence.

Was it not wise that no more was attempted in the times we speak of? Has the reform been checked for a day in its onward progress by this distinct reference by the reformers to the circumstances of their times? I answer that it has not. The earliest movements were necessarily slow. Men looked with doubts about the results of the enterprise, and some men with suspicion about the motives of the reformers. There was occasion found in this extraordinary movement for deliberate argument against the wisdom of the undertaking, and the more powerful weapon, sarcasm, was not forgotten among the means employed to defeat it. But neither the opposing circumstances of the times, nor the direct, nor indirect agencies to obstruct its progress, which the reform gave rise to, have produced this effect. It has gone steadily onward gaining and diffusing light in its whole career.

At first the undertaking moved slowly, and to some it did not move at all. Its earliest friends were the habitually temperate. They were deeply convinced of the virtue they practised, for the practice was based on principle. But they were most anxious that what was to them so great a blessing might be equally so to all. They knew the power of example, but they also knew that intemperance removed its victim from the influence of this ordinarily powerful motive. He was to be sought then, and to be addressed directly, touching the danger and ruin that attended him. There was no other way of reaching him. The reformers were thus obliged, by the very circumstances of the case, to come out, and to make the public a friend or a foe to their noble enterprise.