I charge you, then, knowing this, to stand
clear of the crime of his oppression."
The law, then, by which Moses commanded the children of Israel to
regulate their conduct with respect to the usage of the stranger, I
showed to be a law of universal and eternal obligation, and for this,
among other reasons, that it was neither more nor less than the
Christian law, which appeared afterwards, that we should not do that to
others which we should be unwilling to have done unto ourselves.
Having gone into these statements at some length, I made an application
of them in the following words:--
"This being the case, and this law of Moses being afterwards established
into a fundamental precept of Christianity, I must apply it to facts of
the present day, and I am sorry that I must apply it to--ourselves.
"And first,--Are there no strangers whom we oppress? I fear the wretched
African will say, that he drinks the cup of sorrow, and that he drinks
it at our hands. Torn from his Native soil, and from his family and
friends, he is immediately forced into a situation, of all others the
most degrading, where he and his progeny are considered as cattle, as
possessions, and as the possessions of a man to whom he never gave
offence.
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