Of the immense advantages of this contest I know not how to speak; indeed, the very agitation of the question which it involved has been highly important.  Never was the heart of man so expanded; never were its generous sympathies so generally and so perseveringly excited.  These sympathies, thus called into existence, have been useful in the preservation of a national virtue.  For anything we know, they may have contributed greatly to form a counteracting balance against the malignant spirit, generated by our almost incessant wars during this period, so as to have preserved us from barbarism.

It has been useful also in the discrimination of moral character; in private life it has enabled us to distinguish the virtuous from the more vicious part of the community[A].  It has shown the general philanthropist; it has unmasked the vicious in spite of his pretension to virtue.  It has afforded us the same knowledge in public life; it has separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician.  It has shown us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country, are fit to save, and who to destroy, a nation.

[Footnote A:  I have had occasion to know many thousand persons in the course of my travels on this subject, and I can truly say, that the part which these took on this great question was always a true criterion of their moral character.  Some indeed opposed the abolition, who seemed to be so respectable, that it was difficult to account for their conduct; but it invariably turned out, in the course of time, either that they had been influenced by interested motives, or that they were not men of steady moral principle.  In the year 1792, when the national enthusiasm was so great, the good were as distinguishable from the bad, according to their disposition to this great cause, as if the divine Being had marked them, or, as a friend of mine the other day observed, as we may suppose the sheep to be from the goats on the day of judgment.]

It has furnished us also with important lessons.  It has proved what a creature man is! how devoted he is to his own interest! to what a length of atrocity he can go, unless fortified by religious principle!  But as if this part of the prospect would be too afflicting, it has proved to us, on the other hand, what a glorious instrument he may become in the hands of his Maker; and that a little virtue, when properly leavened, is made capable of counteracting the effects of a mass of vice!

With respect to the end obtained by this contest, or the great measure of the abolition of the Slave Trade as it has now passed, I know not how to appreciate its importance; to our own country, indeed, it is invaluable.  We have lived, in consequence of it, to see the day, when it has been recorded as a principle in our legislation, that commerce itself shall have its moral boundaries.  We have lived to see the day when we are likely to be delivered from the contagion of the most barbarous opinions.  They who supported