if it be wrong, then I must contend that the Scriptures, whose authority we venerate, are false.  I must contend that his slaves never could have been born free agents and accountable creatures; or that, as soon as they became slaves, they were absolved from the condition of free-agency and that they lost their responsibility as men.  But if, on the other hand, it be the revealed will of God, that all men, without exception, must be left free to act, but accountable to God for their actions;—­I contend that no man can be born, nay, further, that no man can be made, held, or possessed, as a proper slave.  I contend that there can be, according to the Gospel-dispensation, no such state as West Indian slavery.  But let us now suppose for a moment, that there might be found an instance or two of slaves enlightened by some pious Missionary, who would refuse to execute their master’s orders on the principle that they were wrong; even this would not alter our views of the case.  For would not this refusal be so unexampled, so unlooked-for, so immediately destructive to all authority and discipline, and so provocative of anger, that it would be followed by immediate and signal punishment?  Here then we should have a West Indian master reversing all the laws and rules of civilized nations, and turning upside down all the morality of the Gospel by the novel practice of punishing men for their virtues.  This new case affords another argument, why a man cannot be born a proper slave.  In fact, the whole system of our planters appears to me to be so directly in opposition to the whole system of our religion, that I have no conception, how a man can have been born a slave, such as the West Indian is; nor indeed have I any conception, how he can be, rightly, or justly, or properly, a West Indian slave at all.  There appears to me something even impious in the thought; and I am convinced, that many years will not pass, before the West Indian slavery will fall, and that future ages will contemplate with astonishment how the preceding could have tolerated it.

It has now appeared, if I have reasoned conclusively, that the West Indians have no title to their slaves on the ground of purchase, nor on the plea of the law of birth, nor on that of any natural right, nor on that of reason or justice, and that Christianity absolutely annihilates it.  It remains only to show, that they have no title to them on the ground of original grants or permissions of Governments, or of Acts of Parliament, or of Charters, or of English law.

With respect to original grants or permissions of Governments, the case is very clear.  History informs us, that neither the African slave trade nor the West Indian slavery would have been allowed, had it not been for the misrepresentations and falsehoods of those, who were first concerned in them.  The Governments of those times were made to believe, first, that the poor Africans embarked