Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/9

Rh rightful station among the inhabitants of the earth; to compare the two prospects together, is to contrast the occasional overcast of bright day with the impenetrable gloom of starless midnight, or to equal the whispers of hope to the sullen silence of despair. To hear such arguments as these proceeding from the source whence they have emanated, is a bad omen; it looks like a deliberate design not to meliorate, and finally by degrees to abolish the evil, but rather, in the face of former professions, to perpetuate forever this open and palpable infringement of the very unction and spirit of our free institutions. We affect great sympathy for enslaved Spain, we profess much commiseration for degraded Italy; nay, we even reprobate the Holy Alliance, for not undertaking a crusade in favor of the quondam land of science and of song, and are almost ready ourselves to assist in driving the barbarians from her soil: but what avails this profession? Do not all our vaunts of republicanism and free government amount to sheer mockery and insult to the name of religion, justice, and liberty, so long as a large number of the States of our confederacy continue the American slavery and slave-trade. We are well aware that this is a subject of a momentous nature, fraught with difficulty and embarrassment, and eminently deserving calm, dispassionate, and mature consideration; and we would be very far from recommending, nay, even desiring, the immediate abolition of slaveryin proportion to the magnitude of the evil will be the tardiness and difficulty of its eradicationbut we do insist that no excuse whatever can be made for the breeding