When, according to arrangements which had usurped the sacred name of law, he consented to receive and use them as property, he forfeited all claims to the esteem and confidence, not only of the helpless sufferers themselves, but also of every philanthropist.  In becoming a slaveholder, he became the enemy of mankind.  The very act was a declaration of war upon human nature.  What less can be made of the process of turning men to cattle?  It is rank absurdity—­it is the height of madness, to propose to employ him to train, for the places of freemen, those whom he has wantonly robbed of every right—­whom he has stolen from themselves.  Sooner place Burke, who used to murder for the sake of selling bodies to the dissector, at the head of a hospital.  Why, what have our slaveholders been about these two hundred years?  Have they not been constantly and earnestly engaged in the work of education?—­training up their human cattle?  And how?  Thomas Jefferson shall answer.  “The whole commerce between master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.”  Is this the way to fit the unprepared for the duties and privileges of American citizens?  Will the evils of the dreadful process be diminished by adding to its length?  What, in 1818, was the unanimous testimony of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church?  Why, after describing a variety of influences growing out of slavery, most fatal to mental and moral improvement, the General Assembly assure us, that such “consequences are not imaginary, but connect themselves WITH THE VERY EXISTENCE[15] of slavery.  The evils to which the slave is always exposed, often take place in fact, and IN THEIR VERY WORST DEGREE AND FORM; and where all of them do not take place,” “still the slave is deprived of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.”  Is this the condition in which our ecclesiastics would keep the slave, at least a little longer, to fit him to be restored to himself?

[Footnote 15:  The words here marked as emphatic, were so distinguished by ourselves.]

“AND THEY STOPPED THEIR EARS.”

The methods of discipline under which, as slaveholders; the Southrons now place their human cattle, they with one consent and in great wrath, forbid us to examine.  The statesman and the priest unite in the assurance, that these methods are none of our business.  Nay, they give us distinctly to understand, that if we come among them to take observations, and make inquiries, and discuss questions, they will dispose of us as outlaws.  Nothing will avail to protect us from speedy and deadly violence!  What inference does all this warrant?  Surely, not that the methods which they employ are happy and worthy of universal