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Americans persist in a conduct, which cannot be justified; or persevere in oppression from which their hearts must recoil? If the barbarous Africans shall continue to enslave each other let the dæmon slavery remain among them, that their crime may include its own punishment. Let not Christians, by administring to their wickedness, confess their religion to be a useless refinement, their profession vain, and themselves as inhuman as the savages they detest.'
James Foster, in his Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue, also shews his just indignation at this wicked practice, which he declares to be a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural right of mankind. At page 156, 2 vol. he says,
'Should we have read concerning the Greeks or Romans of old, that they traded, with view to make slaves of their own species, whom they certainly knew that this would involve in schemes of blood and murder, of destroying or enslaving each other, that they even fomented wars, and engaged whole nations and tribes in open hostilities, for their own private advantage; that they had no detestation of the violence and cruelty; but only feared the ill success of their inhuman enterprises; that they carried men like themselves, their brethren, and the off-spring of the fame common parent, to be sold like beasts of prey, or beasts of burden, and put them to the same reproachful trial, of their soundness, strength and capacity for greater bodily service; that quite forgetting and renounceing the original dignity of human nature, communicated to all, they treated them with more severity and ruder discipline, than even the ox or the ass, who are void of understanding, — should we not, if this had been the case, have naturally been led to
' despise
