their limits, but that the influence of their overthrow would be fatal to the like establishments in the southern states?  To be consistent with himself—­with the doctrine in question—­he must reply in the negative.  To be consistent with himself, he must advise the people of the northern states to let their own gambling-houses and brothels stand, until they can make the object of their abolishment “ultimate within itself;”—­until they can expel from their hearts the cherished hope, that the purification of their own states of these haunts of wickedness would exert an influence to induce the people of their sister states to enter upon a similar work of purity and righteousness.  But I trust, that President Wayland would not desire to be consistent with himself on this point.  I trust that he would have the magnanimity to throw away this perhaps most pernicious doctrine of a pernicious book, which every reader of it must see was written to flatter and please the slaveholder and arrest the progress of the anti-slavery cause.  How great the sin of seizing on this very time, when special efforts are being made to enlist the world’s sympathies in behalf of the millions of our robbed, outraged, crushed countrymen—­how great the sin, of seizing on such a time to attempt to neutralize those efforts, by ascribing to the oppressors of these millions a characteristic “nobleness”—­“enthusiastic attachment to personal right”—­“disinterestedness which has always marked the southern character”—­and a superiority to all others “in making any sacrifice for the public good!” It is this sin—­this heinous sin—­of which President Wayland has to repent.  If he pities the slave, it is because he knows, that the qualities, which he ascribes to the slaveholder, do not, in fact, belong to him.  On the other hand, if he believes the slaveholder to be, what he represents him to be, he does not—­in the very nature of things, he cannot—­pity the slave.  He must rather rejoice, that the slave has fallen into the hands of one, who, though he has the name, cannot have the heart, and cannot continue in the relation of a slaveholder.  If John Hook, for having mingled his discordant and selfish cries with the acclamations of victory and then general joy, deserved Patrick Henry’s memorable rebuke, what does he not deserve, who finds it in his heart to arrest the swelling tide of pity for the oppressed by praises of the oppressor, and to drown the public lament over the slave’s subjection to absolute power, in the congratulation, that the slaveholder who exercises that power, is a being of characteristic “nobleness,” “disinterestedness,” and “sacrifice” of self-interest?

President Wayland may perhaps say, that the moral influence, which he is unwilling to have exerted over the slaveholder, is not that, which is simply persuasive, but that, which is constraining—­not that, which is simply inducing, but that, which is compelling.  I cheerfully admit, that it is infinitely better to induce men to do right from their own approbation of the right, than it is to shame them, or in any other wise constrain them, to do so; but I can never admit, that I am not at liberty to effect the release of my colored brother from the fangs of his murderous oppressor, when I can do so by bringing public opinion to bear upon that oppressor, and to fill him with uneasiness and shame.