-holding is a
heinous crime"--No new test has been set up--But the majority of the
Society, for the time being, faithful to its duty of trying every
institution by the light of the present day--of uttering its opinion
on every passing event that touches the slave's welfare, has seen it
to be duty to sound forth its warning,

NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS.

No one who did not vote for the Resolution is responsible for it. No
one is asked to quit our platform. We, the majority, only ask him to
extend to our opinions the same toleration that we extend to him,
and agreeing to differ on this point, work together where we can. We
proscribe no man for difference of opinion.

It is said, that having refused in 1840, to say that a man _ought to
vote_, on the ground that such a resolution would be tyrannical and
intolerant, the Society is manifestly inconsistent now in taking
upon itself to say that no abolitionist _can_ consistently vote. But
the inconsistency is only apparent and not real.

There may he a thousand reasons why a particular individual ought
not to do an act, though the act be innocent in itself. It would be
tyranny therefore in a society which can properly take notice of but
one subject, slavery, to promulgate the doctrine that all its
members ought to do any particular act, as for instance, to vote, to
give money, to lecture, to petition, or the like. The particular
circumstances and opinions of each one must regulate his actions.
All we have a right to ask is, that he do for the slave's cause as
much as he does for any other of equal importance. But when an act
is wrong, it is no intolerance to say to the whole world that it
ought _not to be done_. After the abolitionist has granted that
slavery is wrong, we have the right to judge him by his own
principles, and arraign him for inconsistency that, so believing, he
helps the slaveholder by his oath.

The following pages have been hastily thrown together in explanation
of the vote above recited. They make no pretension to a full
argument of the topic. I hope that in a short time I shall get
leisure sufficient to present to our opponents, unless some one does
it for me, a full statement of the reasons which have led us to this
step.

I am aware that we non-voters are rather singular. But history, from
the earliest Christians downwards, is full of instances of men who
refused all connection with government, and all the influence which
office could bestow, r