we have never hesitated to avow the objects
of our institutions, now the honest means by which we hope for their
ultimate attainment. Yet we are sensible that many of our fellow
citizens have laboured under mistaken impressions on both these
points, and have ascribed to us views as inconsistent with the policy
of our country, as with our real prospects. It is true we contemplate
the deliverance from slavery of all the blacks and people of color in
these states, sooner or later, by such means as your humanity, and the
wisdom of our rulers may suggest; and though we think the existing
laws of some of the states unnecessarily severe; yet we pointedly
disavow any wish to contravene them, while they remain in force, or to
hazard the peace and safety of the community by the adoption of ill
advised and precipitate measures.

In common with the rest of our fellow citizens, we sincerely deplore
the late attempts at insurrection by some of the slaves of the
southern states, and participate in the dreadful sensations the
inhabitants in their vicinity must have felt on so awful an occasion.
It is fervently to be hoped that they may induce a weighty
consideration of the source of the evil, and of the best means of its
future prevention. We are convinced, that so long as a relation
subsists between cause and effect, and the present policy of those
states is pursued, so long the deprecated calamity is to be dreaded;
and while we all revolt with horror from the anticipation of an
organization on the part of the slaves, we conceive there is a certain
state of degradation and misery to which they may be reduced, a
certain point of desperation to which the human mind may be brought,
and beyond which it cannot be driven.--If then the premonitory signs
of this crisis have appeared, if a recurrence of the desperate
feelings which gave birth to the design is to be so awfully dreaded,
ought not the attention of every humane mind to be exerted in devising
adequate means for averting so enormous a danger? We advance with
confidence our firm belief, a belief founded on mature reflection,
that to be effectual they must be in many respects different from
those which have heretofore been adopted. An amelioration of the
present situation of the slaves, and the adoption of a system of
gradual emancipation, while it would tend to remove the charge of
inconsistency, between the constitutional declaration, and the legal
provisions of some of the states;