hich he moved with that calm appeal
to the reason which made his results always so weighty.

"If these things be true," he said, after a condensed statement of the
facts of the case, "then the following terrible consequences, which may
well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, force themselves
upon us, namely: that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous
business, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence
to promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or have
not opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable,--all
these are, in a greater or less degree, chargeable with the injuries and
miseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guilty
of the blood of millions who have lost their lives by this traffic in
the human species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in this
trade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money to
engage in this cruel work, and the slave-holders of every description,
are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures who
have authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to the
utmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations who
have in any way aided in this business, consented to it, or have not
opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt.

"This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in
Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended;
this town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the
expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor
Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten
most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on him
'that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong,'
Jer. xxii. 13,--to him 'that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth
a city by iniquity,' Hab. ii. 12,--to 'the bloody city,' Ezek. xxiv.
6,--what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those
whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans, especially the
inhabitants of this State and this town, who have had a distinguished
share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!"

He went over the recent history of the country, expatiated on the
national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free
and independent and have natural and inalienable rights to liberty, and
a