Instead of the Americans proceeding in their conduct towards the colored people with any reference either to the divine laws or the divine decrees, they act solely under the influence of their pride and prejudice. How their prejudice was in the first place produced, it is not necessary at this time to inquire. I may just remark that color has long been the badge of slavery. Long have the negroes been an enslaved and degraded class. The child is tutored to look upon a colored man as an inferior, and this feeling of superiority, implanted early in the mind of the child, growing with his growth, and strengthening with his strength, becomes at last a confirmed and almost invincible principle, disposing him with eagerness to adopt any views of revelation which will permit him to cherish and gratify his pride and hatred towards the colored man. Hence has arisen the aristocracy of the skin. Hence the many lamentable departures from the spirit and precepts of the gospel, every day witnessed in the United Slates. Two illustrations of the force of prejudice are now before me. The first is a short article from the New York Evangelist, copied into the Scottish Guardian of this city. I will read it entire. It is as follows:
A Hard Case. A native born American applied to our authorities this morning for a license to drive a cart. He has been for years employed as a porter in Pearl Street, principally among the booksellers, who were his petitioners to the number of forty firms. He is an honest, temperate, and in every respect a worthy man; of an amiable disposition, muscular frame, and of good address, and every way calculated for the situation he seeks; besides being a member of the Society of Friends, a sufficient recommendation of itself; for the office is now filled in part by swearing, drunken, quarrelling foreigners, who are daily disturbing the quiet of our streets by their broils; and endangering the lives of our citizens by their infuriate conduct.
Wm. S. Hewlett was refused by our Mayor, on the ground of public opinion! because
"——guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own."
Hewlett owns property in William Street, to the amount of 20,000 dollars; but prefers, unlike many of no more income, a life of industry and economy, to seeking "otium cum dignitate."
"What man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head to own himself a man."
The next is found in a letter written by a Professor Smith, of the Wesleyan University, Connecticut, who, while vindicating the University from the charge of having expelled a young man "for the crime of color," makes the following admission:
"That it would be difficult, in the present state of public feeling, to preserve a colored individual from inquietude in any of our collegiate schools, and to render his connection with them tolerable, is not denied."
I come now, (continued Mr. T.) to the state of the American Churches, in regard to Slavery; and to attempt a justification of the heavy charges I have brought against them. If at the close of this address it shall appear that I have misrepresented the Christians of America; that I have stated as facts, things which are untrue, I solemnly call upon those who have hitherto vindicated my reputation, and sustained me as the truthful advocate of the cause of human rights, to discard me as utterly disqualified to be their representative in so sacred a work, because, capable of pleading for JUSTICE at the expense of TRUTH.
Of slaveholding ministers in America, Mr. Breckinridge has asserted, that they are as ONE IN A THOUSAND, or at most, as ONE IN FIVE HUNDRED. The first document I shall quote to disprove this assertion, will be a letter in the "Southern Religious Telegraph," of October 31, 1835, addressed to the Presbyterian Clergy of Virginia; written to warn those ministers against pursuits calculated to injure their spirituality, destroy their usefulness, and prevent those revivals of religion with which other portions of the Church of Christ had been favored; also to account for an apparent declension in piety in the State generally. It is proper to remark, that the letter from which I make the present extract, was not written to promote the cause of abolition; that the writer never imagined it would be used on such an occasion; and that the newspaper in which it appears is pro-slavery to the very core.