If these arguments of the Bishop be well founded, it follows, first, that the great mark at which every friend of humanity ought to aim, by all lawful expedients, is complete and irrevocable emancipation; secondly, that in the interim, as laws, when committed to the guardianship of the slave-holder, are merely waste paper, the Government and Legislature of this country should take the matter into their own hands, and shape their course to an ultimate extinction of an evil from which they cannot extract all the venom but by slaying the hydra itself; and thirdly, that too much weight should not be given to the representations of persons even of the “best principles and most generous natures,” when “perverted by the influence of passion and habit,” to apologize for, or wish to perpetuate, the enormities of this accursed system.
The Bishop in reply to those who defend or connive at West India slavery as a “dispensation of Providence,” and as, indirectly at least, sanctioned by the word of God, observes,
“Many attacks,” says his lordship, “have been made on the authority of Scripture; but nothing would more effectually subvert its authority than to prove that its injunctions are inconsistent with the common principles of benevolence, and inimical to the general rights of mankind. It would degrade the sanctity of Scripture; it would reverse all our ideas of God’s paternal attributes, and all arguments for the Divine origin of the Christian religion drawn from its precepts of universal charity and benevolence.” “That any custom so repugnant to the natural rights of mankind as the slave trade, or slavery the source and support of the slave trade, should be thought to be consonant to the principles of natural and revealed religion, is a paradox which it is difficult to reconcile with the reverence due to the records of our holy religion.”
His Lordship then proceeds to shew, 1st, That slavery and the slave trade are inconsistent with the principles of nature (in allusion to his opponent’s argument), deducible from Scripture. 2d. That no conclusion can be drawn in favour of West India slavery or the African slave trade (which the Bishop always classes and brands together) from particular transactions recorded in Scripture; both because the trade in slaves bears no resemblance to the slavery and slave trade in question, and because transactions merely recorded in Scripture history are not sanctioned by the record. 3d, That no conclusion can be formed from Hebrew laws respecting West Indian Slavery, because the conditions are by no means analogous; and because, even if they were, laws neither introduce nor justify every custom which they regulate. 4th, That the clearest and fullest permission of slavery to the Jews under the Law of Moses does not make it allowable to Christians, because the new law has succeeded to the ritual and judicial ordinances of the old; and we cannot reason from one state of things to another when any great revolution has intervened in the progress of religion. 5th, That, however such permission might appear to make slavery in any degree allowable to the first Hebrew Christians under the Roman government, it does not by any means make it allowable under the free government of this country, because we cannot reason from one form of government to another. 6th, That whatever may be the commercial and national advantages of slavery, (which however the Bishop does not estimate very highly: on the contrary, he strongly insists on its improvidence, and the vast superiority of free labour,) it ought not to be tolerated, because of the inadequacy of those advantages to their many bad effects and consequences. 7th, That slavery and the slave trade ought to be abolished on account of the good which would follow to religion, to mankind, and to ourselves.
We have not space to condense the whole of the Bishop’s arguments, but we shall present our readers with a few succinct notices. As for the atrocities of the African slave trade, or the cruelties of West India slavery, he says there is nothing in Scripture that is parallel to either; but he argues that “slavery itself (in every form) is inconsistent with the law of nature deducible from Scripture, and therefore with the will of God;” and that, therefore, “much more so are the cruelties of West India slavery, and the African slave trade.” Slavery, he further remarks, “even in its mildest sense, considered as unlimited, involuntary, uncompensated subjection to the service of another, is a total annihilation of all natural rights.” This forcible abduction of liberty, he contends, is inconsistent with the natural rights of society, as deducible from Scripture. In God’s first commission to man he gave him dominion over the brute creation; but there is no expression by which Adam or any of his posterity could collect that they had a right of dominion over their own species. The extent of this primary charter, remarks the Bishop, cannot be more forcibly expressed than in the language of our great poet:
O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brother! to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given.
He gave us only over beasts, flesh, fowl,
Dominion absolute. That right we hold