THE AMERICAN SLAVE.

Hark! from the fields where freedom fought To see delights he cannot share!

Slavery in America.

No. V. NOVEMBER, 1836.

WHAT CAN BRITISH CHRISTIANS DO TOWARDS THE EXTINCTION OF AMERICAN SLAVERY?

No. II.

In a former paper, the importance of making the condition of the slave, and the efforts now in progress for his liberation, a matter of constant prayer, was pointed out. In addition to this, there are many obvious methods of aiding in this great and noble undertaking.

We can bear our testimony against the crime of slavery in our private correspondence. So intimate is the relation between this country and America, that there is scarcely a family of any extent and standing, but what has some connexion, either commercial, social, or religious, with families on the other side of the Atlantic. Our brethren, our sisters, our friends, our correspondents are there; and, as Americans, are deeply involved in the guilt of slavery. Only calculate for a moment what would be the amount of pressure upon the moral feelings of the American people, were the whole of our intercourse with them seasoned by strong anti-slavery principles and appeals! Reason, remonstrate, rebuke! Tell the man of the world that, in every enlightened government, among people who know how to value freedom without playing the tyrant, that he is proverbially the object of scorn and contempt! Tell the politican who pleads for slavery, that his juridical authority is based on the subverted rights and liberties of others! Take the men of education and refinement to the rivers where lie buried the printing-presses, consigned there for no other crime, than holding up their deeds of darkness to the gaze of the world. Ask them, if an American is afraid of a printing-press? And, if writing to a professor of religion, appeal to his reason, to his conscience, to his principles, to his feelings, to his obligations, to the standard of right and wrong that lies before him, and especially to that anticipated judgment where master and slave, the oppressor and the oppressed, will stand in perfect equality, and where each will be judged by one standard. Many of them will doubtless tell you, that they are no slaveholders, they have

no dealings in the flesh and blood of their fellow-creatures; but do not be satisfied with this general answer. Ask them, if they are constantly remonstrating with those that have such dealings; if there be not in their veins any lurking prejudice against color; if they have united heart and hand with that devoted band of philanthropists who are seeking the emancipation of the enslaved, and the deliverance of their country from the crime and the curse of slavery. There are tens of thousands whom, to accuse of neutrality or indifference on the subject of slavery, would scarcely be consistent with justice-who in heart thoroughly hate the system, and who, in public and in private, will inveigh against it, as loud and as eloquent as could be desired, who yet want that vivid sense of the enormity of the evil, which induces active and public efforts for its removal. They love peace and order more than they hate slavery. They will pray and talk against it with all their hearts; but they consider it an evil best eradicated by the silent operation of conviction, by the diffusion of more correct sentiments, and reiterated appeals to the understanding and judg

ment.

This is the predicament of the far greater portion of professing Christians in the free states of the Union; and it is upon the heart and conscience of this class of Christians, that our most powerful and incessant appeals must be pressed. These are the men that have, in a great measure, the destiny of the slave at their disposal. Could they be disposed to join heart and hand in active attempts at the annihilation of the system, Slavery would receive a wound from which it could never survive. It is the comparative torpor of this part of society, that forms the most formidable impediments to the progress of the anti-slavery cause. This quiescence is the atmosphere, the very element in which the slave tyrant exists. He does not ask for patronage; all he asks is to be let alone. He can endure your appeals to his heart; for the system under which he lives has hardened it. You may assail his concience, for it has been already seared. The influence which British Christians can hope to secure, must be with those who, in practice and sympathy, stand aloof from the system. They cannot hope for any access, or at least, for any available access, to those whose sensibilities are already blunted by the abominations of slavery: they must compass their object by a less direct, but not less available process. From this time, let no letter from a British Christian cross the Atlantic which does not allude in strong and stirring accents to the crime under which our Christian brethren in America are suffering-brethren who are our examples and patterns in almost everything but this canker-worm at the root of her institutions, which defaces the beauty of her character, and impairs the efficiency of her labours.

Again: Let information respecting the wrongs and sufferings of the slave be spread abroad in every direction. Let his groans be borne on every wind that blows, and heard in every civilized dwelling. Let the tyrant, when he inflicts his merciless stripes on his victim, imagine that the eyes of the world are upon him; that, when tearing the child from the

The Duty of British Christians in reference to American Slavery. 99

fond maternal embrace, or the husband from his wife, or the father from his offspring the finger of scorn is pointed at him from a thousand hands, and reprobation uttered from ten thousand tongues. Let him know that his deeds of cruelty, however shielded by the darkness and solitude around him, will be re-echoed by the faithful press, and will be transmitted to every civilized portion of the globe; and that while a sigh of commiseration is heaved at the unmerited wrongs of the captive, the dark frown of execration will be cast upon his unjust and merciless oppressor. If there be one nation under heaven that can bear up amidst the scorn and derision of the civilized world, that nation most surely is not America. The frame-work of all its institutions is erected on the basis of public opinion. It was public opinion that matured and consolidated their laws and social polity; it is public opinion which preserves them in exercise and health. To suppose that its legislators and public men are perfectly indifferent to the opinion and practices of other nations, and that its institutions, being the concentration and collection of materials within itself, is therefore independent and dissociated from all the world around, is just as opposed to reason as it is to fact. However national vanity may for awhile vaunt itself, for any man to imagine that this is an adequate substitute for the approbation and esteem of the wise and good in other nations, is just as irrational as to mistake bluster fer bravery, and a good opinion of one's self the surest basis, and best reward of virtue. No: the truth, the whole truth, must be told. The eye and the ear must not be so filled with the fancy paintings and poetic descriptions of the American character; of the freedom of her institutions; the amplitude of her territory and resources; the extent of her voluntary efforts for the spread of religion :—we must be permitted to look on the other side of the picture. We must know that these free, these noblespirited, these philanthropic men are slave-holders; that they buy and sell their fellow-creatures, men and women like themselves-separated only by a different tint of complexion; that they barter the beings made in the image of God, the purchase of a Saviour's sufferings, the heirs of immortality, just as cattle in the fields, or as implements of husbandry. These things must be told; the father must tell it to his children; we must sigh over it in our social circles; we must reprobate it on our platforms, and from our pulpits. And those who are susceptible of no higher motive, must be shamed out of practices fit only for a nation of savages, and an age of barbarity.*

Another way in which we may contribute towards the downfall of Ameri

* The writer is perfectly aware, that to identify these practices with the whole of the American republic, would be gross defamation. Happily it is not the fact. Slavery has been abandoned in one half of the States. No American, however, feeling, as he ought to do, the degradation and guilt of the practice, will take offence, that what is acknowledged by all to be deplorably prevalent, should be predicated as attaching to the national character.

can slavery, is by affording countenance and encouragement to the band of holy and devoted men who have confederated for the accomplishment of this object. For this they naturally look. If slavery was so thoroughly abominated by us, that we were ready to buy it off at the cost of twenty millions of national money, surely, having accomplished this work, we can afford a little unexpensive encouragement to those who are engaged in a similar struggle. And let us remember, that their battle is fought in the very camp of the enemy; ours was on neutral ground. The hazards and sacrifices which these warm-hearted friends of the slave are making, are beyond all powers of calculation. In many instances family ties are dissolved, worldly prospects are blighted, character is defamed, and all but life sacrificed; and how long this solitary exception will be allowed, is known only to an Omniscient Being. We have sent our representatives to the American Churches; but they disappointed us: they did not exhibit our sentiments and feelings on the question of slavery. Our alliances in future must not be with American Christians as Baptists, or Congregationalists, or Presbyterians, as with those who, at any sacrifice, and in the face of all hazards, have determined to wash their hands of this foul, this blood-stained abomination.

The character of the active agents in the American anti-slavery cause has been grossly defamed; and, among the abettors of slavery, this was to be expected. To be abused from such quarters is equivalent to praise. And that they should attempt to abuse the public mind in Great Britain, was also to be expected; that they should employ representatives and lecturers for this object, was not beyond the bounds of probability; but we will not join in the hue and cry. Our estimate of the men shall be taken from the cause in which they are engaged, and the zeal and prudence with which they urge it forward; and by this criterion, we are prepared to "esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." The exertions and the success of the American Anti-Slavery Societies are truly wonderful -they have no parallel in the history of modern revolutions. It is not much more than four years since, that what may be esteemed the thorough anti-slavery spirit, was the inhabitant of one solitary breast-a man who gave up a heart of no ordinary texture, and an intellect of no mean capacity, to this single object, denying himself everything but the barest necessaries of life, that he might most effectually serve the cause of the oppressed and down-trodden slave. From this centre it has diffused itself with an energy and rapidity almost incredible; and which would be almost beyond the limits of possibility in any other state of society than that existing in the republican States of America, where aristocratical prejudices have no existence, and offer no resistance to the tide of public opinion and feeling. The principles upon which their operations are conducted, have been sufficiently developed in the preceding pages of this work; and their success has corresponded with the simplicity of their aim, and the energy with