Ye mercenary Portuguese, ye ambitious French, and ye deceitful Britons, I again call upon you to take these things into your consideration; it is time, a remorse of conscience had seized upon you; it is time, you were apprised of your danger: Behold the thousands that are annually lost to your governments, in the prosecution of an unlawful and iniquitous trade.
View the depredations that you commit upon a nation, born equally free with yourselves; consider the abyss of misery into which you plunge your fellow-mortals, and reflect upon the horrid crimes you are hourly committing under the bright sunshine of revealed religion.—Will you not then find yourselves upon a precipice, and protected from ruin, only because you are too wicked to be lost?
What Empire, or what State can have the hope of existing, which prosecutes a trade, that proves a sinking fund to her coffers, and to her subjects, tramples the human species under foot, with as much indifference as the dirt, and fills the world with misery and woe?
Let not a blind hardness of opinion any longer bias your judgments, and prevent you from acting like Christians.
View the Empires amongst the ancients; behold Egypt in the time of Secostris, Greece in the time of Cyrus, and Rome in the reign of Augustus; view them all, powerful as enemies, patterns of virtue and science, bold and intrepid in war, free and independent; and now see them sacrificed at the shrine of luxury, and dwindled into insignificance. When in power, they usurped the authority of God, they stretched out their arms to encompass their enemies, and bound their captives in iron chains of slavery.
Vengeance was then inflicted, their spoils became the instruments of pride, luxury and dissipation, and finally proved the cause of their present downfall.
Then look back at home; view your degeneracy from the times of Louis the 14th and Charles the 2d, and if a universal blush don't prevail, it will argue a hardness of heart, tempered by a constant action of wickedness upon the smooth anvil of religion.
For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it destroys every human principle, vitiates the mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of government.
What a distressing scene is here before us. America, I start at your situation! The idea of these direful effect of slavery demand your most serious attention.—What! shall a people, who flew to arms with the valour of Roman Citizens, when encroachments were made upon their liberties, by the invasion of foreign powers, now basely descend to cherish the seed and propagate the growth of the evil, which they boldly sought to eradicate. To the eternal infamy of our country, this will be handed down to posterity, written in the blood of African innocence.