cts of a mass of vice!

With respect to the end obtained by this contest, or the great measure
of the abolition of the Slave Trade as it has now passed, I know not how
to appreciate its importance; to our own country, indeed, it is
invaluable. We have lived, in consequence of it, to see the day, when it
has been recorded as a principle in our legislation, that commerce
itself shall have its moral boundaries. We have lived to see the day
when we are likely to be delivered from the contagion of the most
barbarous opinions. They who supported this wicked traffic, virtually
denied that man was a moral being; they substituted the law of force for
the law of reason: but the great act now under our consideration has
banished the impious doctrine, and restored the rational creature to his
moral rights. Nor is it a matter of less pleasing consideration, that,
at this awful crisis, when the constitutions of kingdoms are on the
point of dissolution, the stain of the blood of Africa is no longer upon
us, or that we have been freed (alas, if it be not too late!) from a
load of guilt, which has long hung like a mill-stone about our necks,
ready to sink us to perdition.

In tracing the measure still further, or as it will affect other lands,
we become only the more sensible of its importance; for can we pass over
to Africa; can we pass over to the numerous islands, the receptacles of
miserable beings from thence; and can we call to mind the scenes of
misery which have been passing in each of these regions of the earth,
without acknowledging that one of the greatest sources of suffering to
the human race has, as far as our own power extends, been done way? Can
we pass over to these regions again, and contemplate the multitude of
crimes which the agency necessary for keeping up the barbarous system
produced, without acknowledging that a source of the most monstrous and
extensive wickedness has been removed also? But here, indeed, it becomes
us peculiarly to rejoice; for though nature shrinks from pain, and
compassion is engendered in us when we see it become the portion of
others, yet what is physical suffering compared with moral guilt? The
misery of the oppressed is, in the first place, not contagious like the
crime of the oppressor; nor is the mischief which it generates either so
frightful or so pernicious. The body, though under affliction, may
retain its shape; and, if it even perish, what is the loss of it but of
worthless dust?