to the preservation of the relation of slaveholder and slave!  It is true, that you attempt to justify the enactment of the laws in question, by the occasions which you say led to it.  But, every law forbidding what God requires, is a wicked law—­under whatever pretexts, or for whatever purposes, it may have been enacted.  Let the occasions which lead to a wicked measure be what they may, the wickedness of the measure is still sufficient to condemn it.

In the case before us, we see how differently different persons are affected by the same fact.  Whilst the stand taken against slavery by Wesley, Edwards, and the other choice spirits you enumerate, serves but to inspire you with concern for its safety, it would, of itself, and without knowing their reasons for it, be well nigh enough to destroy my confidence in the institution.  Let me ask you, Sir, whether it would not be more reasonable for those, who are so industriously engaged in insulating the system of American slavery, and shrouding it with darkness, to find less fault with the bright and burning light which the writings of the wisest and best men pour upon it, and more with the system which “hateth the light, neither cometh to the light.”

You would have your readers believe, that the blessings of education are to be withheld from your slaves—­only “until the storm shall be overblown,” and that you hope that “Satan’s being let loose will be but for a little season.”  I say nothing more about the last expression, than that I most sincerely desire you may penitently regret having attributed the present holy excitement against slavery to the influences of Satan.  By “the storm” you, doubtless, mean the excitement produced by the publications and efforts of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Now, I will not suppose that you meant to deceive your readers on this point.  You are, nevertheless, inexcusable for using language so strikingly calculated to lead them into error.  It is not yet three years since that Society was organized:  but the statute books of some of the slave States contain laws, forbidding the instruction of slaves in reading, which were enacted long before you and I were born.  As long ago as the year 1740, South Carolina passed a law, forbidding to teach slaves to write.  Georgia did so in 1770.  In the year 1800, thirty-three years before “the storm” of the Anti-Slavery Society began to blow, South Carolina passed a law, forbidding “assemblies of slaves, free negroes, &c., for the purpose of mental instruction.”  In the Revised Code of Virginia of 1819, is a law similar to that last mentioned.  In the year 1818, the city of Savannah forbade by an ordinance, the instruction of all persons of color, either free or bond, in reading and writing.  I need not specify any more of these man-crushing, soul-killing, God-defying laws;—­nor need I refer again to the shocking penalties annexed to the violation of most of them.  I conclude my remarks under this head, with the advice, that, in the next edition of your book, you do not assign the anti-slavery excitement, which is now spreading over our land, as the occasion of the passage of the laws in question.