which
he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he
also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed
against the LIBERTIES of one people with crimes which he
urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

Mr. Jefferson says, "It was struck out in _compliance to South
Carolina and Georgia_, who had never attempted to restrain the
importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to
continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little
tender under it, for though their people have very few slaves
themselves, yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to
others."

* * * * *

But the orator went on protesting against righteousness:--

"I would beseech them [the Abolitionists] to discard their
dangerous abstractions [that men are endowed by their
Creator with certain natural, equal, and unalienable
Rights--to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness]
which they [in common with the Declaration of Independence]
adopt as universal rules of human conduct--without regard to
time, condition, or circumstances; which _darken the
understanding and mislead the judgment_, and urge them
forward to consequences from which they will shrink back
with horror. I would ask them to reflect that ... the
religion they profess is not to be advanced by forgetting
the precepts and the example of their Divine Master. Upon
that example I would ask them to pause. He found Slavery,
Roman Slavery, an institution of the country in which he
lived. Did he denounce it? Did he attempt its immediate
abolition? Did he do any thing, or say any thing which could
in its remotest tendency encourage resistance and violence?
No, his precept was, 'Servants (Slaves) obey your
Masters.'"[183] "It was because _he would not interfere with
the administration of the laws, or abrogate their
authority_."

[Footnote 183: The learned counsel for the slaveholders probably
referred to Eph. vi. 5; or Coloss. iii. 22; or Tit. ii. 9; or 1 Pet.
ii. 18.]

Gentlemen of the Jury, this alleged precept of the "Divine Master"
does not occur in any one of the four canonical Evangelists of the New
Testament; nor have I found it in any of those Spurious and Apocryphal
Records of old time. It appears originally in the Gospel according to
the Hon. Peleg Sprague.