Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/31

 escape. Yet, when we consider the crime, the punishment cannot be considered severe; for what can be more abominable than seizing, selling, and transporting human beings, without any crime against God or man being imputed to them? Our conduct in life is directed by three laws—the law of opinion, the law of the land, and the law of God. You have violated them all; the slave trader is execrated in society, and the law of opinion, would condemn you to solitude; the verdict of the Jury, under which you now wait the sentence of the Court, is declaratory of your violation of the law of the land, and your conscience must, convict you of despising the law of God; think of the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal;” it is neither money nor fame, but liberty of which you have robbed your fellow-creatures. Human beings, created and made after God's image, you have stolen; you have loaded them with irons, plunged them into slavery, and bartered them for the wretched gratification of appetite and avarice; you have not, perhaps, seized on the person yourself, but you have received and sold the stolen body, and that is worse. Consider another great commandment of the Almighty, “Thou shalt do no murder.” How many innocent victims have expired at your threshold; how many torn from their country, parents, or children, have you condemned to disease, to decrepitude, to slavery, and to death?—“There is a God, all nature cries aloud,” that marks the movements of this world, and brings us to account; when you are summoned before that great tribunal for judgment, and those unfortunate Africans, whom you branded on the thigh with burning implements of torture, shall arise in evidence against you, what can you expect from the seat of Supreme Justice? You cannot exclaim, O God, the mercy which I have shewn to others that mercy shew to me!" Yet all that I dare do I will do in mercy. It is not an individual victim of the law that