'To say that we will come out of the sin by degrees—that we will only forsake it slowly, and step by step—that we will pause and hesitate and look well about us before we consent to abandon its gains and its pleasures—that we will allow another age to pass by ere we throw off the load of iniquity that is lying so heavy upon us, lest certain secularities should be injuriously affected—and that we will postpone the duty of "doing justly and loving mercy," till we have removed every petty difficulty out of the way, and got all the conflicting interests that are involved in the measure reconciled and satisfied;—to say this, is to trample on the demands of moral obligation, and to disregard the voice which speaks to as from heaven. The path of duty is plain before us; and we have nothing to do but to enter it at once, and to walk in it without turning to the right hand or to the left. Our concern is not with the result that may follow our obedience to the divine will. Our great and primary concern is to obey that will. God reigns over his universe in the exercise of infinite perfection: he commands us to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke; and submitting, without procrastination, and without any attempts at compromise, to that command, we may be assured that he will take care of all the effects that can be produced by compliance with his authority, and give demonstration to the truth that obedience to his behests is our grand and only security for a prosperous lot.
'We are by no means indifferent to the expediency of the case. On the contrary, we think ourselves prepared to prove, by fair reasoning and by ascertained fact, that the expediency of the thing is all on our side; that immediate abolition is the only secure and proper way of attaining the object which we all profess to have in view; that to defer the measure to a distant period, and to admit the propriety of getting at it by a course of mitigation, is the surest mode of frustrating every hope we might otherwise entertain, and giving over the slaves to interminable bondage.' * * *
'I do not deny, Sir, that the evils of practical slavery may be lessened. By parliamentary enactments, by colonial arrangements, by appeals to the judgment and feelings of planters, and by various other means, a certain degree of melioration may be secured. But I say, in the first place, that, with all that you can accomplish, or reasonably expect, of mitigation, you cannot alter the nature of slavery itself. With every improvement you have superinduced upon it, you have not made it less debasing, less cruel, less destructive, in its essential character. The black man is still the property of the white man. And that one circumstance not only implies in it the transgression of inalienable right and everlasting justice, but is the fruitful and necessary source of numberless mischiefs, the very thought of which harrows up the soul, and the infliction of which no superintendence of any government can either prevent or control. Mitigate and keep down the evil as much as you can, still it is there in all its native virulence, and still it will do its malignant work in spite of you. The improvements you have made are merely superficial. You have not reached the seat and vital spring of the mischief. You have only concealed in some measure, and for a time, its inherent enormity. Its essence remains unchanged and untouched, and is ready to unfold itself whenever a convenient season arrives, notwithstanding all your precaution, and all you vigilance, in those manifold acts of injustice and inhumanity, which are its genuine and its invariable fruits. You may white-wash the sepulchre,—you may put upon it every adornment that fancy can suggest,—you may cover it over with all the flowers and evergreens that the garden or the fields can furnish, so that it will appear beautiful outwardly unto men. But it is a sepulchre still,—full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Disguise slavery as you will,—put into the cup all the pleasing and palatable ingredients which you can discover in the wide range of nature and of art,—still it is a bitter, bitter draught, from which the understanding and the heart of every man, in whom nature works unsophisticated and unbiassed, recoils with unutterable aversion and abhorrence. Why, Sir, slavery is the very Upas tree of the moral world, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes, and all virtue dies. And if you would get quit of the evil, you must go more thoroughly and effectually to work than you can ever do by any or by all of those palliatives, which are included under the term "mitigation." The foul sepulchre must be taken away. The cup of oppression must be dashed to pieces on the ground. The pestiferous tree must be cut down and eradicated; it must be, root and branch of it, cast into the consuming fire, and its ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven. It is thus you must deal with slavery. You must annihilate it,—annihilate it now,—and annihilate it for ever.
'Get your mitigation. I say in the second place, that you are thereby, in all probability farther away than ever from your object. It is not to the Government or the Parliament at home that you are to look—neither is it to the legislatures and planters abroad that you are to look—for accomplishing the abolition of negro slavery. Sad experience shows that, if left to themselves, they will do nothing efficient in this great cause. It is to the sentiments of the people at large that you are to look, to the spread of intellectual light, to the prevalence of moral feeling, to the progress, in short, of public opinion, which, when resting on right principles and moving in a right direction, must in this free and Christian country prove irresistible. But observe, Sir, the public mind will not be sufficiently affected by the statement of abstract truths, however just, or by reasonings on the tendencies of a system, however accurate. It must be more or less influenced by what is visible, or by what is easily known and understood of the actual atrocities which accompany slavery, wherever it is left to its own proper operation. Let it be seen in its native vileness and cruelty, as exhibited when not interfered with by the hand of authority, and it excites universal and unqualified detestation. But let its harsher asperities be rubbed off; take away the more prominent parts of its iniquity; see that it look somewhat smoother and milder than it did before; make such regulations as ought, if faithfully executed, to check its grosser acts of injustice and oppression; give it the appearance of its being put under the humanizing sway of religious education and instruction; do all this, and you produce one effect at least,—you modify the indignation of a great number of the community; you render slavery much less obnoxious; you enable its advocates and supporters to say in reply to your denunciations of its wickedness, "O, the slaves are now comfortable and happy; they do not suffer what they did; they are protected and well treated," and in proof of all this, they point to what are called "mitigations." But mark me, Sir; under these mitigations, slavery still exists, ready at every convenient season to break forth in all its countless forms of inhumanity; meanwhile the public feeling in a great measure subsides; and when the public feeling—such an important and indispensable element in our attempts to procure abolition—is allowed to subside, tell me, Sir, when, and where, and by what means it is again to be roused into activity. I must say, for one, that though I sympathize with my sable brethren, when I hear of them being spared even one lash of the cart-whip; yet when I take a more enlarged view of their condition—when I consider the nature of that system under which they are placed, and when I look forward to their deliverance, and the means by which alone it is to be effected, I am tempted, and almost if not altogether persuaded, to deprecate that insidious thing termed "mitigation," because it directly tends to perpetuate the mighty evil, which will by and by throw off the improvements by which it is glossed over as quite unnatural to it, will ultimately grow up again into all its former dreadfulness, and continue to wither and crush beneath it, all that is excellent and glorious in man.
'But if our rulers and legislators will undertake to emancipate the slaves, and do it as it ought to be done, immediately, I beg those who set themselves against such a measure, to point out the danger, and to prove it. The onus lies upon them. And what evidence do they give us? Where is it to be found? In what circumstance shall we discover it? From what principles and probabilities shall we infer it? We must not have mere hypothesis—mere allegations—mere fancied horrors, dressed up in frightful language. We must have proof to substantiate, in some good measure, their theory of rebellion, warfare, and blood. If any such thing exists, let them produce it.' * * * 'But if you push me, and still urge the argument of insurrection and bloodshed, for which you are far more indebted to fancy than to fact, as I have shown you, then I say, be it so. I repeat that maxim, taken from a heathen book, but pervading the whole Book of God, Fiat justitia—ruat cælum. Righteousness, Sir, is the pillar of the universe. Break down that pillar, and the universe falls into ruin and desolation. But preserve it, and though the fair fabric may sustain partial dilapidations, it may be rebuilt and repaired—it will be rebuilt, and repaired, and restored to all its pristine strength, and magnificence, and beauty. If there must be violence, let it even come, for it will soon pass away—let it come and rage its little hour, since it is to be succeeded by lasting freedom, and prosperity and happiness. Give me the hurricane rather than the pestilence. Give me the hurricane, with its thunder, and its lightning, and its tempest;—give me the hurricane, with its partial and temporary devastations, awful though they be;—give me the hurricane, with its purifying, healthful, salutary effects;—give me that hurricane, infinitely rather than the noisome pestilence, whose path is never crossed, whose silence is never disturbed, whose progress is never arrested, by one sweeping blast from the heavens; which walks peacefully and sullenly through the length and breadth of the land, breathing poison into every heart, and carrying havoc into every home, enervating all that is strong, defacing all that is beautiful, and casting its blight over the fairest and happiest scenes of human life—and which, from day to day, and from year to year, with intolerant and interminable malignity, sends its thousands and its tens of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning and never-satisfied grave!'
It is said, by way of extenuation, that the present owners of slaves are not responsible for the origin of this system. I do not arraign them for the crimes of their ancestors, but for the constant perpetration and extension of similar crimes. The plea that the evil of slavery was entailed upon them, shall avail them nothing: in its length and breadth it means that the robberies of one generation justify the robberies of another! that the inheritance of stolen property converts it into an honest acquisition! that the atrocious conduct of their fathers exonerates them from all accountability, thus presenting the strange anomaly of a race of men incapable of incurring guilt, though daily practising the vilest deeds! Scarcely any one denies that blame attaches somewhere: the present generation throws it upon the past—the past, upon its predecessor—and thus it is cast, like a ball, from one to another, down to the first importers of the Africans! 'Can that be innocence in the temperate zone, which is the acme of all guilt near the equator? Can that be honesty in one meridian of longitude, which, at one hundred degrees east, is the climax of injustice?' Sixty thousand infants, the offspring of slave-parents, are annually born in this country, and doomed to remediless bondage. Is it not as atrocious a crime to kidnap these, as to kidnap a similar number on the coast of Africa?
It is said, moreover, that we ought to legislate prospectively, on this subject; that the fetters of the present generation of slaves cannot be broken; and that our single aim should be, to obtain the freedom of their offspring, by fixing a definite period after which none shall be born slaves. But this is inconsistent, inhuman and unjust. The following extracts from the speech of the Rev. Dr. Thomson are conclusive on this point:
'In the first place, it amounts to an indirect sanction of the continued slavery of all who are now alive, and of all who may be born before the period fixed upon. This is a renunciation of the great moral principles upon which the demand for abolition proceeds. It consigns more than 800,000 human beings to bondage and oppression, while their title to freedom is both indisputable and acknowledged. And it is not merely an inconsistency on the part of the petitioners, and a violation of the duty which they owe to such a multitude of their fellow-men, but it weakens or surrenders the great argument by which they enforce their application for the extinction of colonial slavery.
'Besides, it is vain to expect that the planters will acquiesce in such a prospective measure, any more than in the liberation of the existing slaves, for the progeny of the existing slaves must be considered by them as much a part of their property as these slaves themselves. And they would regard it equally unjust to deprive them of what is hereafter to be produced from their own slave stock, as it would be to deprive a farmer, by an anticipating law of all the foals and of all the calves that might be produced in his stable and in his cow-house, after a given specified date.
'We must be true to our own maxims, which are taken from the word of God; and ask for all that we are entitled to have on the ground of justice and humanity, and be contented with nothing less.