fame, respect, and character abroad. And, next, with regard to ourselves, how this need is pressed upon our heart of hearts! For the truth must needs be confessed by us all, that oiir natures have been dwarfed and our souls shrivelled by the dread ordeal of caste and oppression through which our fathers, and some of ourselves, have passed. Why, do not you, and you, and you, fellow-citizens, feel the want, the lack, the incompleteness of being?—the idea that something is gone?—that you need something that has been taken away, and you cannot seize upon it—so that, at times, the heart swells, and the tears come unbidden, and the mind itself becomes bewildered? It is the fruit of that old system, which tracks even freemen to freedom's own domain. It is the remembrance of that old death, which retains vitality and generates agony even in the region of life and blessedness.
Men talk of our having been in training for freedom! that slavery has schooled us for free government! We submit to the severe providences of God, and recognize his wisdom therein; but they are nought but vain babblers, who speak as though this were natural sequence, or legitimate result, or effect, which should follow its parent cause—that death should be the prime and proper originator of life—that filth and pollution should generate purity—that sin should be the direct author and agent of salvation—that Satan should be the sure guide to godliness and heaven! We reject and scorn all such empty verbosity as this—so disgraceful to the cause of freedom, and so dishonoring to the name of liberty; for I doubt whether
