Christ, open your hearts to understand and believe the
truth.

The _causes_, my brethren, which produce our wretchedness and
miseries, are so very numerous and aggravating, that I believe the pen
only of a Josephus or a Plutarch, can well enumerate and explain them.
Upon subjects, then, of such incomprehensible magnitude, so
impenetrable, and so notorious, I shall be obliged to omit a large
class of, and content myself with giving you an exposition of a few of
those, which do indeed rage to such an alarming pitch, that they
cannot but be a perpetual source of terror and dismay to every
reflecting mind.

I am fully aware, in making this appeal to my much afflicted and
suffering brethren, that I shall not only be assailed by those whose
greatest earthly desires are, to keep us in abject ignorance and
wretchedness, and who are of the firm conviction that heaven has
designed us and our children to be slaves and _beasts of burden_ to
them and their children.--I say, I do not only expect to be held up to
the public as an ignorant, impudent and restless disturber of the
public peace, by such avaricious creatures, as well as a mover of
insubordination--and perhaps put in prison or to death, for giving a
superficial exposition of our miseries, and exposing tyrants. But I am
persuaded, that many of my brethren, particularly those who are
ignorantly in league with slave-holders or tyrants, who acquire their
daily bread by the blood and sweat of their more ignorant
brethren--and not a few of those too, who are too ignorant to see an
inch beyond their noses, will rise up and call me cursed--Yea, the
jealous ones among us will perhaps use more abject subtlety by
affirming that this work is not worth perusing; that we are well
situated and there is no use in trying to better our condition, for we
cannot. I will ask one question here.--Can our condition be any
worse?--Can it be more mean and abject? If there are any changes, will
they not be for the better, though they may appear for the worse at
first? Can they get us any lower? Where can they get us? They are
afraid to treat us worse, for they know well, the day they do it they
are gone. But against all accusations which may or can be preferred
against me, I appeal to heaven for my motive in writing--who knows
that my object is, if possible, to awaken in the breasts of my
afflicted, degraded and slumbering brethren, a spirit of enquiry and
investigation respecting our miseries an