Under the Mosaic dispensation it was imperatively commanded,—­“Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee:  he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best:  thou shalt not oppress him.”  The warning which the prophet Isaiah gave to oppressing Moab was of a similar kind:  “Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noon-day; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth.  Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.”  The prophet Obadiah brings the following charge against treacherous Edom, which is precisely applicable to this guilty nation:—­“For thy violence against thy brother Jacob, shame shall come over thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.  In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them.  But thou shouldst not have looked on the day of thy brother, in the day that he became a stranger; neither shouldst thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah, in the day of their destruction; neither shouldst thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress; neither shouldst thou have stood in the cross-way, to cut off those of his that did escape; neither shouldst thou have delivered up those of his that did remain, in the day of distress.”

How exactly descriptive of this boasted republic is the impeachment of Edom by the same prophet!  “The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee, thou whose habitation is high; that saith in thy heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?  Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”  The emblem of American pride and power is the eagle, and on her banner she has mingled stars with its stripes.  Her vanity, her treachery, her oppression, her self-exaltation, and her defiance of the Almighty, far surpass the madness and wickedness of Edom.  What shall be her punishment?  Truly, it may be affirmed of the American people, (who live not under the Levitical but Christian code, and whose guilt, therefore, is the more awful, and their condemnation the greater,) in the language of another prophet—­“They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.  That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire:  so they wrap it up.”  Likewise of the colored inhabitants of this land it may be said,—­“This is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison-houses; they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.”