To elucidate this point, I mentioned several specific instances out of
those which I had collected in my journey, and which I could depend upon
as authentic, of honour--gratitude--fidelity--filial, fraternal, and
conjugal affection--and of the finest sensibility on the part of those
who had been brought into our colonies from Africa in the character of
slaves; and then I proceeded for a while in the following words:--
"If, then, we oppress the stranger, as I have shown, and if, by a
knowledge of his heart, we find that he is a person of the same passions
and feelings as ourselves, we are certainly breaking, by means of the
prosecution of the Slave Trade, that fundamental principle of
Christianity, which says, that we shall not do that unto another which
we wish should not be done unto ourselves, and, I fear, cutting
ourselves off from all expectation of the Divine blessing. For how
inconsistent is our conduct! We come into the temple of God; we fall
prostrate before Him; we pray to Him, that He will have mercy upon us.
But how shall He have mercy upon us, who have had no mercy upon others!
We pray to Him, again, that He will deliver us from evil. But how shall
He deliver us from evil, who are daily invading the rights of the
injured African, and heaping misery on his head!"
I attempted, lastly, to show, that, though the sin of the Slave Trade
had been hitherto a sin of ignorance, and might, therefore, have so far
been winked at, yet as the crimes and miseries belonging to it became
known, it would attach even to those who had no concern in it, if they
suffered it to continue either without notice or reproach, or if they
did not exert themselves in a reasonable manner for its suppression.
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