Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/342

324 it up with a bill or bills, which should do away at once all the most palpable and cruel abuses practised upon the slaves; provide for their moral and religious instruction; facilitate and encourage their manumission; and secure to their offspring the birthright of freedom. It must have been interesting and affecting to see the comparatively youthful senator step forward and consecrate his energies to the great cause, while the venerable Wilberforce sat by, like a parent eagle, impelling, directing, supporting, and delighting in the flight of its eaglet; or, rather, like the ancient prophet Elijah, anointing his successor, and leading him to the spot where his own prophetic mantle should descend upon him, as the pledge of "a double portion of his spirit."

Mr. Buxton, in an animated manner, stated the gross injustice in which the state of negro slavery originated, and detailed some particular instances of the cruelty and hardship to which its unhappy victims were exposed. He alluded to the imaginary alarms which had been raised, and the terrific predictions which had been uniformly uttered by the advocates of slavery, wherever any motion was made or proposed which should in the least degree tend to disturb the existing state of things. "An insurrection of all the blacks, the massacre of all the whites," was to be the "inevitable consequence" of the slightest intimation that the condition of the former might and ought to be improved; and having proved, instance by instance, that all these predictions had been falsified by subsequent fact, he argued the safety of proceeding in the work of equity and humanity, undeterred by these imaginary terrors.