and an Almighty Hand.  Here my mind gets relief in contemplating this subject, not in abstract reasoning, not in logical premises and deductions, but by resting in Providence.  There are mysteries in it,—­as truly so as in the human apostasy, origin of evil, permission of sin, which confound my reasonings as to the benevolence of God; in which, however, I, nevertheless, maintain my firm belief.  Here was the great defect in Mr. Jefferson’s views of slavery.  In the highest Christian sense, he was not qualified to understand this subject; he reasoned like one who did not take into view the providence and the purposes of God, even while he was saying what he did of there being “no attribute in the Almighty that would take part with us” in favor of slavery.  Standing as I do by this providential view of the great subject, the assailants of slavery at the North seem to me, some of them, almost insane, and others, even ministers of the Gospel, shall I say it? more than unchristian;—­there is a sort of blind, wild, French Jacobinical atheism in their feeling and behavior; while as to the rest, good people, they are misled by what Mr. Webster, in one of his speeches in the Senate, called “the constant rub-a-dub of the press,”—­“no drum-head,” he says, “in the longest day’s march, having been more incessantly beaten than the feeling of the public in certain parts of the North.”  I cannot reason with these men,’ continued the Judge, ’for I confess, at once, that I cannot demonstrate, either by logic or by mathematics, a modern quitclaim or warranty in holding slaves.  In combating their illogical and unscriptural positions, I seem to them to be an advocate of the divine right of oppression,—­which I am not.  That it is best, however, and that it is right, for this relation to continue until God shall manifest some purpose to terminate it consistently with the good of all concerned, I am perfectly convinced and satisfied.  I believe that it has reference to the great plan of mercy toward our world, and that when the object is accomplished, the providence of God will, in some way, make it known.  It may be the case, no candid man and believer in revelation and divine providence will deny it to be possible, that this dispensation with regard to this colored race will continue for long ages to come, in the form of bondage.  That they are now under a curse, and have been so for centuries, is apparent.  When the curse is to be repealed, God only knows.  I like to cherish the idea that some development is to be made of immense sources of wealth in Africa, that we have an embryo nation in the midst of us, whom God has been educating for a great enterprise on that continent, and when, like California and Australia, the voice of the Lord shall shake the wilderness of Africa, and open its doors, it may appear that American slavery has been the school in which God has been preparing a people to take it into their possession.

“‘EMIGRATION, then,’ said he, ’is the second of the three ways in which this problem of slavery may have its solution.