Hear your language further!

[Hand->] “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Now, Americans!  I ask you candidly, was your sufferings under Great Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered ours under you?  Some of you, no doubt, believe that we will never throw off your murderous government, and “provide new guards for our future security.”  If Satan has made you believe it, will he not deceive you?[30] Do the whites say, I being a black man, ought to be humble, which I readily admit?  I ask them, ought they not to be as humble as I? or do they think they can measure arms with Jehovah?  Will not the Lord yet humble them? or will not these very coloured people, whom they now treat worse than brutes, yet under God, humble them low down enough?  Some of the whites are ignorant enough to tell us, that we ought to be submissive to them, that they may keep their feet on our throats.  And if we do not submit to be beaten to death by them, we are bad creatures and of course must be damned, &c.  If any man wishes to hear this doctrine openly preached to us by the American preachers, let him go into the Southern and Western sections of this country—­I do not speak from hearsay—­what I have written, is what I have seen and heard myself.  No man may think that my book is made up of conjecture—­I have travelled and observed nearly the whole of those things myself, and what little I did not get by my own observation, I received from those among the whites and blacks, in whom the greatest confidence may be placed.

The Americans may be as vigilant as they please, but they cannot be vigilant enough for the Lord, neither can they hide themselves, where he will not find and bring them out.

* * * * *

    1 Thy presence why withdraw’st thou, Lord? 
        Why hid’st thou now thy face,
      When dismal times of deep distress
        Call for thy wonted grace?

    2 The wicked, swell’d with lawless pride,
        Have made the poor their prey;
      O let them fall by those designs
        Which they for others lay.

    3 For straight they triumph, if success
        Their thriving crimes attend;
      And sordid wretches, whom God hates,
        Perversely they commend.

    4 To own a pow’r above themselves
        Their haughty pride disdains;
      And, therefore, in their stubborn mind
        No thought of God remains.

    5 Oppressive methods they pursue,
        And all their foes they slight;
      Because thy judgements, unobserved,
        Are far above their sight.

    6 They fondly think their prosp’rous state
        Shall unmolested be;
      They think their vain designs shall thrive,
        From all misfortune free.