o exclaimed, "Am I my brother's keeper?" In that book, to which, by
the way, the infamous Atherton Resolutions are indebted for their
keynote, and grand pervading idea, we find the doctrine, that even if it
were the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, the North nevertheless should not seek for such abolition,
unless the object of it be "ultimate within itself." If it be "for the
sake of something ulterior" also--if for the sake of inducing the
slaveholders of the slave states to emancipate their slaves--then we
should not seek for it. Let us try this doctrine in another
application--in one, where its distinguished author will not feel so
much delicacy, and so much fear of giving offence. His reason why we
should not go for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
unless our object in it be "ultimate within itself," and unaccompanied
by the object of producing an influence against slavery in the slave
states, is, that the Federal Constitution has left the matter of slavery
in the slave states to those states themselves. But will President
Wayland say, that it has done so to any greater extent, than it has left
the matter of gambling-houses and brothels in those states to those
states themselves? He will not, if he consider the subject:--though, I
doubt not, that when he wrote his bad book, he was under the prevailing
error, that the Federal Constitution tied up the hands and limited the
power of the American people in respect to slavery, more than to any
other vice.

But to the other application. We will suppose, that Great Britain has
put down the gambling-houses and brothels in her wide dominions--that
Mexico has done likewise; and that the George Thompsons, and Charles
Stuarts, and other men of God, have come from England to beseech the
people of the northern states to do likewise within their respective
jurisdictions;--and we will further suppose, that those foreign
missionaries, knowing the obstinate and infatuated attachment of the
people of the southern states to their gambling-houses and brothels,
should attempt, and successfully, too, to blend with the motive of the
people of the northern states to get rid of their own gambling houses
and brothels, the motive of influencing the people of the southern
states to get rid of theirs--what, we ask, would this eminent divine
advise in such a case? Would he have the people of the northern states
go on in their good work, and rej