one of the Southern
American Legislatures, because of the reputed irreligion of these
abolitionist "Friends".

When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North America, large
numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination were found ready to
defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the famous abolitionist, was
driven from the pulpit as irreligious, solely because of his attacks
on slaveholding. Northern clergymen tried to induce "silver tongued"
Wendell Philips to abandon his advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits
rang with praises for the murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The
slayers of Elijah Lovejoy were highly reputed Christian men.

Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church exerted
its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European Civilisation", vol.
i., p. 110):

"It has often been repeated that the abolition of slavery among modern
people is entirely due to Christians. That, I think, is saying too much.
Slavery existed for a long period in the heart of Christian society,
without its being particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude
of causes, and a great development in other ideas and principles of
civilisation, were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all
iniquities."

And my contention is that this "development in other ideas and
principles of civilisation" was long retarded by Governments in which
the Christian Church was dominant. The men who advocated liberty were
imprisoned, racked, and burned, so long as the Church was strong enough
to be merciless.

The Rev. Francis Minton, Hector of Middlewich, in his recent earnest
volume (1) on the struggles of labor, admits that "a few centuries
ago slavery was acknowledged throughout Christendom to have the divine
sanction....

1 "Capital and Wages", p. 19.

Neither the exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the
belief in the righteousness of slavery can be defined. It was doubtless
due to a combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the
recognition of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline of
the belief the abolition of slavery took place."

The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian Scotland
in the 17th century, where the white coal workers and salt workers of
East Lothian were chattels, as were their negro brethren in the Southern
States thirty years since; they "went to those who succeeded to the
property of the works, and they cou