350.  We cannot believe this, and therefore, without going back into history and precedents, we must believe, that, in whatever civil community this right does not exist, it has been lost, or rather, unjustly taken away.  And then, having seen the terrible evils which always have arisen, and always must arise, from the want of it; being convinced that, where lost or taken away by force or fraud, it is our very first duty to do all in our power to restore it, the next consideration is, how one ought to act in the discharge of this most sacred duty; for sacred it is even as the duties of husband and father.  For, besides the baseness of the thought of quietly submitting to be a slave oneself, we have here, besides our duty to the community, a duty to perform towards our children and our children’s children.  We all acknowledge that it is our bounden duty to provide, as far as our power will go, for the competence, the health, and the good character of our children; but, is this duty superior to that of which I am now speaking?  What is competence, what is health, if the possessor be a slave, and hold his possessions at the will of another, or others; as he must do if destitute of the right to a share in the making of the laws?  What is competence, what is health, if both can, at any moment, be snatched away by the grasp or the dungeon of a master; and his master he is who makes the laws without his participation or assent?  And, as to character, as to fair fame, when the white slave puts forward pretensions to those, let him no longer affect to commiserate the state of his sleek and fat brethren in Barbadoes and Jamaica; let him hasten to mix the hair with the wool, to blend the white with the black, and to lose the memory of his origin amidst a dingy generation.

351.  Such, then, being the nature of the duty, how are we to go to work in the performance of it, and what are our means?  With regard to these, so various are the circumstances, so endless the differences in the states of society, and so many are the cases when it would be madness to attempt that which it would be prudence to attempt in others, that no general rule can be given beyond this; that, the right and the duty being clear to our minds, the means that are surest and swiftest are the best.  In every such case, however, the great and predominant desire ought to be not to employ any means beyond those of reason and persuasion, as long as the employment of these afford a ground for rational expectation of success.  Men are, in such a case, labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come; and therefore they should not slacken in their exertions, because the grave may close upon them before the day of final triumph arrive.  Amongst the virtues of the good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one by one.