Before the SOCIETY For the PROPAGATION of the GOSPEL, at the anniversary meeting on the 21st of February, 1766.

From the free-savages, I now come (the last point I propose to consider) to the savages in bonds.  By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol, the GOD OF GAIN.  But what then? say these sincere worshippers of Mammon; they are our own property which we offer up.  Gracious God! to talk (as in herds of cattle) of property in rational creatures! creatures endowed with all our faculties; possessing all our qualities but that of colour; our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense.  But, alas! what is there in the infinite abuses of society which does not shock them?  Yet nothing is more certain in itself, and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law.  Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom.  In excuse of this violation, it hath been pretended, that though indeed these miserable out-casts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible.  But who are You, who pretend to judge of another man’s happiness?  That state, which each man, under the guidance of his Maker, forms for himself, and not one man for another?  To know what constitutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of Him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds.  Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness amidst their native woods and deserts?  Or, rather, let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters? where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others, themselves unbenefited by them.  Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness.  And then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part.  A return so passionately longed for, that despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of their cruel task-masters, they console themselves with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their future state, which I do not find their haughty masters have as yet concerned themselves to invade.  The less hardy, indeed, wait for this felicity till over-wearied nature sets them free; but the more resolved have recourse even to self-violence, to force a speedier passage.