I could cite many conversations and incidents to show how the morals of women are crushed: but I can make room for only one. Let it be the following. A lady, who is considered unusually clear-headed and sound-hearted where trying questions are not concerned, one day praised very highly Dr. Channing's work on Slavery. "But," said she, "do not you think it a pity that so much is said on slavery just now?"
"No. I think it necessary and natural."
"But people who hold Dr. Channing's belief about a future life, cannot well make out the case of the slaves to be so very bad an one. If the present life is but a moment in comparison with the eternity to come, can it matter so very much how it is spent?"
"How does it strike you about your own children? Would it reconcile you to their being made slaves, that they could be so only for three-score years and ten?"
"O no. But yet it seems as if life would so soon be over."
"And what do you think of their condition at the end of it? How much will the purposes of human life have been fulfilled?"
"The slaves will not be punished, you know, for the state they may be in; for it will be no fault of their own. Their masters will have the responsibility; not they."
"Place the responsibility where you will. Speaking according to your own belief, do you think it of no consequence whether a human being enters upon a future life utterly ignorant and sensualised, or in the likeness of Dr. Channing, as you described him just now?"
"Of great consequence, certainly. But then it is no business of ours; of us women, at all events."
"I thought you considered yourself a Christian."