which they have given unto us?  Israel had the most fertile land in all Egypt.  Need I mention the very notorious fact, that I have known a poor man of color, who labored night and day, to acquire a little money, and having acquired it, he vested it in a small piece of land, and got him a house erected thereon, and having paid for the whole, he moved his family into it, where he was suffered to remain but nine months, when he was cheated out of his property by a white man, and driven out of door!—­And is not this the case generally?  Can a man of color buy a piece of land and keep it peaceably?  Will not some white man try to get it from him even if it is in a mud hole?  I need not comment any farther on a subject, which all, both black and white, will readily admit.  But I must, really, observe that in this very city, when a man of color dies, if he owned any real estate it must generally fall into the hands of some white person.  The wife and children of the deceased may weep and lament if they please, but the estate will be kept snug enough by its white possessors.

But to prove farther that the condition of the Israelites was better under the Egyptians than ours is under the whites.  I call upon the professing christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the Egyptians heaped the insupportable insult upon the children of Israel by telling them that they were not of the human family.  Can the whites deny this charge?  Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of slaves under their feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of Monkeys or Orang-Outangs?  O! my God!  I appeal to every man of feeling—­is not this insupportable?  Is it not heaping the most gross insult upon our miseries, because they have got us under their feet and we cannot help ourselves?  Oh! pity us we pray thee, Lord Jesus, Master.—­Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to the whites, both in the endowments of our bodies and of minds?  It is indeed surprising, that a man of such great learning, combined with such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains.  I do not know what to compare it to, unless, like putting one wild deer in an iron cage, where it will be secured, and hold another by the side of the same, then let it go, and expect the one in the cage to run as fast as the one at liberty.  So far, my brethren, were the Egyptians from heaping these insults upon their slaves, that Pharaoh’s daughter took Moses, a son of Israel, for her own, as will appear by the following.

     “And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, [Moses’ mother] take
     this child away, and nurse it for me and I will pay thee thy
     wages.  And the woman took the child [Moses] and nursed it.

     “And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s
     daughter and he became her son.  And she called his name
     Moses:  and she said because I drew him out of the water."[6]