What is the denunciation with which we are charged?  It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandize of men,—­of separating husband and wife,—­taking the infant from its mother and selling the daughter to prostitution,—­of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for “two or three” to meet together, except a white man be present!  What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?  It is simply holding the intelligent and deliberate actor responsible for the character and consequences of his acts.  Is there any thing inherently wrong in such denunciation of such criticism?  This we may claim,—­we have never judged a man but out of his own mouth.  We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, except for acts of which he and his own friends were proud.  All that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are the principles and deeds on which the American pulpit and American public men plume themselves.  We always allow our opponents to paint their own pictures.  Our humble duty is to stand by and assure the spectators that what they would take for a knave or a hypocrite is really, in American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity or a Secretary of State.

The South is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable.  The public squares of half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder at the auction-block; no one of our fair rivers that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear; thousands of fugitives skulk along our highways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being; free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years returns to make men aghast with his tale.  The press says, “It is all right”; and the pulpit cries, “Amen.”  They print the Bible in every tongue in which man utters his prayers; and they get the money to do so by agreeing never to give the book, in the language our mothers taught us, to any negro, free or bond, south of Mason and Dixon’s line.  The press says, “It is all right”; and the pulpit cries, “Amen.”  The slave lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in every face but ours the face of an enemy.  Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation, scathing sarcasm, and pitiless ridicule are wholly and always unjustifiable; else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any weapon which ever broke up the crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a slumbering conscience, shamed a proud sinner, or changed in any way the conduct of a human being.  Our aim is to alter public opinion.  Did we live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and cents, and we would seek to prove only that slavery was an unprofitable