Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/19

15 this dreary subject of slavery into the ears of mankind, if your slaves in America but enjoyed the hopes, the kind treatment, and the privileges, which the same class enjoyed amongst the Romans under their best emperors. But when once the evils of slavery are deepened and darkened by the difference of race, then comes the utmost cruelty of which human nature is capable: where all remorse is anticipated or destroyed by disgust.

But to pass to other considerations which do not require learning or thought, let us simply go back in imagination to the time of Christ's coming upon earth, and for a moment bring before him in our fancy such transactions in slavery as may be seen now, which are indeed daily occurrences, mere matters of business, in your country.

Now imagine him in the Temple, looking on at the sale of a young child, about to be taken from its mother's breast; and conceive what he would have said of that traffic. Picture him coming into any market, like yours in the South, and seeing the sale of beautiful quadroons; or, for one hour, watching such exorbitant cruelty as that perpetrated upon the slaves in many plantations. Would any of your clergy, those who now justify this institution, like to have been there? Why, the terror and horror of the evil-doers (ay, and