How perfectly natural, that the one sentiment should follow the other!  How perfectly natural, that he who can limit his love by state or national lines, should be also capable of confining it to certain varieties of the human complexion!  How perfectly natural, that, he who is guilty of the insane and wicked prejudice against his fellow men, because they happen to be born a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand miles from the place of his nativity, should foster the no less insane and wicked prejudice against the “skin not colored like his own!” How different is man from God!  “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”  But were man invested with supreme control, he would not distribute blessings impartially even amongst the “good” and the “just.”

You close your speech with advice and an appeal to abolitionists.  Are you sure that an appeal, to exert the most winning influence upon our hearts, would not have come from some other source better than from one who, not content with endeavoring to show the pernicious tendency of our principles and measures, freely imputes to us bloody and murderous motives?  Are you sure, that you, who ascribe to us designs more diabolical than those of burning “beautiful capitals,” and destroying “productive manufactories,” and sinking “gallant ships,” are our most suitable adviser?  We have, however, waved all exception on this score to your appeal and advice, and exposed our minds and hearts to the whole power and influence of your speech.  And now we ask, that you, in turn, will hear us.  Presuming that you are too generous to refuse the reciprocation, we proceed to call on you to stay your efforts at quenching the world’s sympathy for the slave—­at arresting the progress of liberal, humane, and Christian sentiments—­at upholding slavery against that Almighty arm, which now, “after so long a time,” is revealed for its destruction.  We urge you to worthier and more hopeful employments.  Exert your great powers for the repeal of the matchlessly wicked laws enacted to crush the Saviour’s poor.  Set a happy and an influential example to your fellow slaveholders, by a righteous treatment of those, whom you unrighteously hold in bondage.  Set them this example, by humbling yourself before God and your assembled slaves, in unfeigned penitence for the deep and measureless wrongs you have done the guiltless victims of your oppression—­by paying those men, (speak of them, think of them, no longer, as brutes and things)—­by paying these, who are my brother men and your brother men, the “hire” you have so long withheld from them, and “which crieth” to Heaven, because it “is of you kept back”—­by breaking the galling yoke from their necks, and letting them “go free.”