me in a body to the agents, and declared that if the
plantations still belonged to General La Fayette they were ready and
willing to resume their labors for the benefit of one who had treated
them like men, and cheered their toil by making it a certain means of
freedom.

I cannot forbear paying a tribute of respect to the venerable Moses
Brown, of Providence, Rhode Island, now living in virtuous and vigorous
old age. He was a slave-owner in early life, and, unless I have been
misinformed, a slave-dealer, likewise. When his attention became roused
to religious subjects, these facts troubled his conscience. He easily
and promptly decided that a Christian could not consistently keep
slaves; but he did not dare to trust his own nature to determine the
best manner of doing justice to those he had wronged. He therefore
appointed a committee, before whom he laid a statement of the expenses
he had incurred for the food and clothing of his slaves, and of the
number of years, during which he had had the exclusive benefit of their
labors. He conceived that he had no right to charge them for their
freedom, because God had given them an inalienable right to that
possession, from the very hour of their birth; but he wished the
committee to decide what wages he ought to pay them for the work they
had done. He cordially accepted the decision of the committee, paid the
negroes their dues, and left them to choose such employments as they
thought best. Many of the grateful slaves preferred to remain with him
as hired laborers. It is hardly necessary to add that Moses Brown is a
Quaker.

It is commonly urged against emancipation that white men cannot possibly
labor under the sultry climate of our most southerly States. This is a
good reason for not sending the slaves out of the country, but it is
no argument against making them free. No doubt we do need their labor;
but we ought to pay for it. Why should their presence be any more
disagreeable as hired laborers, than as slaves? In Boston, we
continually meet colored people in the streets, and employ them in
various ways, without being endangered or even incommoded. There is no
moral impossibility in a perfectly kind and just relation between the
two races.

If white men think otherwise, let _them_ remove from climates which
nature has made too hot for their constitutions. Wealth or pleasure
often induces men to change their abode; an emigration for the sake of
humanity would be an agre