Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/116

102 one who had treated them like men, and cheered their toil by making it a certain means of freedom.

I cannot forbear paying a tribute of respect to the venerable Moses Brown, of Providence, Rhode Island, now living in virtuous and vigorous old age. He was a slave owner in early life, and, unless I have been misinformed, a slave dealer, likewise. When his attention became roused to religious subjects, these facts troubled his conscience. He easily and promptly decided that a Christian could not consistently keep slaves; but he did not dare to trust his own nature to determine the best manner of doing justice to those he had wronged. He therefore appointed a committee, before whom he laid a statement of the expenses he had incurred for the food and clothing of his slaves, and of the number of years, during which he had had the exclusive benefit of their labors. He conceived that he had no right to charge them for their freedom, because God had given them an unalienable right to that possession, from the very hour of their birth; but he wished the committee to decide what wages he ought to pay them for the work they had done. He cordially accepted the decision of the committee, paid the negroes their dues, and left them to choose such employments as they thought best. Many of the grateful slaves preferred to remain with him as hired laborers. It is hardly necessary to add that Moses Brown is a Quaker.

It is commonly urged against emancipation that white men cannot possibly labor under the sultry climate of our most southerly States. This is a good reason for not sending the slaves out of the country, but it is no argument against making them free. No doubt we do need their labor; but we ought to pay for it. Why should their presence be any more disagreeable as hired laborers, than as slaves? In Boston, we continually meet colored people in the streets, and employ them in various ways, without being endangered, or even incommoded. There is no moral impossibility in a perfectly kind and just relation between the two races.

If white men think otherwise, let them remove from climates which nature has made too hot for their