Amidst the infinite variety of moral and political subjects, proper for public commendation, it is truly surprising, that one of the most important and affecting should be so generally neglected.  An encroachment on the smallest civil or political privilege, shall fan the enthusiastic flames of liberty, till it shall extend over vast and distant regions, and violently agitate a whole continent.  But the cause of humanity shall be basely violated, justice shall be wounded to the heart, and national honor deeply and lastingly polluted, and not a breath or murmur shall arise to disturb the prevailing quiescence or to rouse the feelings of indignation against such general, extensive, and complicated iniquity.—­To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence—­this torpid indifference—­this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans?  Why do they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of polluted integrity?—­Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God and the world, to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant regions, and to exterminate oppression from the face of the fair fields of America?

When the united colonies revolted from Great Britain, they did it upon this principle, “that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free.”—­After a long, successful, and glorious struggle for liberty, during which they manifested the firmest attachment to the rights of mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then governed their determinations?  Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge?  Blush, ye revolted colonies, for having apostatized from your own principles.

Slavery, in whatever point of light it is considered, is repugnant to the feelings of nature, and inconsistent with the original rights of man.  It ought therefore to be stigmatized for being unnatural; and detested for being unjust.  Tis an outrage to providence and an affront offered to divine Majesty, who has given to man his own peculiar image.—­That the Americans after considering the subject in this light—­after making the most manly of all possible exertions in defence of liberty—­after publishing to the world the principle upon which they contended, viz.:  “that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free,” should still retain in subjection a numerous tribe of the human race merely for their own private use and emolument, is, of all things the strongest inconsistency, the deepest reflexion on our conduct, and the most abandoned apostasy that ever took place, since the almighty fiat spoke into existence this habitable world.  So flagitous a violation can never escape the notice of a just Creator whose vengeance may be now on the wing, to disseminate and hurl the arrows of destruction.