Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/6

370 rightfully expect to see a cordial and active support of all measures calculated to relieve the miseries of mankind. Under this view of the character of the founders of our State, we might with safety anticipate that humane sympathy, that powerful and impressive precept, and that prompt and active exertion in relation to the oppressed sons of Africa, which it is the object of the present sketch briefly to delineate; and we propose now to consider the exertions of Pennsylvanians previously to the year 1770, and to make her subsequent history, from that time to the present, the subject of another memoir. It is not necessary in this State to urge arguments to show the total hostility of slavery to Christianity, reason, and the unalienable rights of mankind; but it behooves every Pennsylvanian to speak forth his honest abhorrence boldly, and his manly indignation loudly, into those ears which are professedly open, but it is feared virtually and practically shut, to the appeals for liberty, right, and justice, of a large portion of the inhabitants of a country whose Constitution is founded upon the principle that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights which we receive from God, and of which no earthly power can ever rightfully dispossess us: and we trust it will be shown that, as Pennsylvania early stood forth as an advocate of this deeply-injured class of humanity, so will she now, from the known opinions of her citizens, from her local situation, and from her moral influence in our confederacy, be compelled to take a decided and prominent attitude, and to proclaim and