Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/7

Rh support the sacred rights of man, regardless of the ridicule of the unprincipled, or the mercenary calculations of those with whom human flesh and sinews, and tobacco, cotton, and sugar, are equally legitimate objects of traffic. How can we, as citizens of the United States, remain silent, unconcerned spectators of an American slave-trade within our borders, in our capital city, the boasted centre of free government,a traffic, the wretched objects of which are bred for sale as regularly as horses and cattle, and whose treatment whilst on their way to market and when in the field of labor is scarcely upon a par with our beasts of burden. This is no highly wrought picture of gone-by days, but the hourly experience and practice of the present time. Upon a comprehensive view of the subject, we think it may be asserted boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that the worst slavery, the most total prostration of the rights of man, and the most entire degradation of the image of God, are exhibited in the bondage of the negroes. This is the slavery which is not only practiced and tolerated, on the plea that it is an entailed and unavoidable evil, but is absolutely defended in the House of Representatives of the freemen of the United States, as being consistent with Holy Scripture, and with the mild religion of our Redeemer. Negro slavery has been compared to the bondage of the Hebrews and Romans; but there is no parallel, scarcely a remote analogy between them. The slavery of the Hebrews was as the submission of sons to their fathers; the slaves formed part of one common household, of which the patriarch was the