n this subject, with those of our own countrymen.
In France the warmest and most animated exertions are making, in order to
introduce the entire abolition of the slave trade; and in England many of
the first characters of the country advocate the same measure, with an
enthusiastic philanthropy. The prime minister himself is at the head of
that society; and nothing can equal the ardour of their endeavours, but the
glorious goodness of the cause.[3]--Will the Americans allow the people of
England to get the start of them in acts of humanity? Forbid it shame!

The practice of stealing, or bartering for human flesh is pregnant with the
most glaring turpitude, and the blackest barbarity of disposition.--For can
any one say, that this is doing as he would be done by? Will such a
practice stand the scrutiny of this great rule of moral government? Who can
without the complicated emotions of anger and impatience, suppose himself
in the predicament of a slave? Who can bear the thoughts of his relatives
being torn from him by a savage enemy; carried to distant regions of the
habitable globe, never more to return; and treated there as the unhappy
Africans are in this country? Who can support the reflexion of his
father--his mother--his sister--or his wife--perhaps his children--being
barbarously snatched away by a foreign invader, without the prospect of
ever beholding them again? Who can reflect upon their being afterwards
publicly exposed to sale--obliged to labor with unwearied assiduity--and
because all things are not possible to be performed, by persons so
unaccustomed to robust exercise, scourged with all the rage and anger of
malignity, until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds
and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the
case to himself, without being chilled with horror, at circumstances so
extremely shocking?--Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description
is, of the sufferings sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless
true; and so far from being exaggerated, falls infinitely short of a
thousand circumstances of distress, which have been recounted by different
writers on the subject, and which contribute to make their situation in
this life, the most absolutely wretched, and completely miserable, that can
possibly be conceived.--In many places in America, the slaves are treated
with every circumstance of rigorous inhumanity, accumulated hardship, and
enormo