erein they made them serve, was with rigour." The argument
therefore of Moses was simply this; "Ye knew well, when ye were strangers
in Egypt, the nature of your own feelings. Were you not made miserable by
your debased situation there? But if so, you must be sensible that the
stranger, who has the same heart, or the same feelings with yourselves,
must experience similar suffering, if treated in a similar manner. I charge
you then, knowing this, to stand clear of the crime of his oppression."

The law, then, by which Moses commanded the Children of Israel to regulate
their conduct with respect to the usage of the stranger, I showed to be a
law of universal and eternal obligation, and for this, among other reasons,
that it was neither more nor less than the Christian law, which appeared
afterwards, that we should not do that to others, which we should be
unwilling to have done unto ourselves.

Having gone into these statements at some length, I made an application of
them in the following words:--

"This being the case, and this law of Moses being afterwards established
into a fundamental precept of Christianity, I must apply it to facts of the
present day, and I am sorry that I must apply it to--ourselves.

"And first, Are there no strangers, whom we oppress? I fear the wretched
African will say, that he drinks the cup of sorrow, and that he drinks it
at our hands. Torn from his native soil, and from his family and friends,
he is immediately forced into a situation, of all others the most
degrading, where he and his progeny are considered as cattle, as
possessions, and as the possessions of a man to whom he never gave offence.

"It is a melancholy fact, but it can be abundantly proved, that great
numbers of the unfortunate strangers, who are carried from Africa to our
colonies, are fraudulently and forcibly taken from their native soil. To
descant but upon a single instance of the kind must be productive of pain
to the ear of sensibility and freedom. Consider the sensations of the
person, who is thus carried off by the ruffians, who have been lurking to
intercept him. Separated from every thing which he esteems in life, without
the possibility even of bidding his friends adieu, behold him overwhelmed
in tears--wringing his hands in despair--looking backwards upon the spot
where all his hopes and wishes lay,--while his family at home are waiting
for him with anxiety and suspense--are waiting, perhaps, for
sustenance--