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BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER,

Before the SOCIETY For the PROPAGATION of the GOSPEL, at the anniversary
meeting on the 21st of _February_, 1766.

From the free-savages, I now come (the last point I propose to consider)
to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly
stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to
their great idol, the GOD OF GAIN. But what then? say these sincere
worshippers of _Mammon_; they are our own property which we offer up.
Gracious God! to talk (as in herds of cattle) of property in rational
creatures! creatures endowed with all our faculties; possessing all our
qualities but that of colour; our brethren both by nature and grace,
shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense.
But, alas! what is there in the infinite abuses of society which does
not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself, and apparent to
all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both
divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to
assert his freedom. In excuse of this violation, it hath been pretended,
that though indeed these miserable out-casts of humanity be torn from
their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby
become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are
You, who pretend to judge of another man's happiness? That state, which
each man, under the guidance of his Maker, forms for himself, and not
one man for another? To know what constitutes mine or your happiness, is
the sole prerogative of Him who created us, and cast us in so various
and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their
unhappiness amidst their native woods and deserts? Or, rather, let me
ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their
lordly masters? where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil
life, but see them all pass to others, themselves unbenefited by them.
Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your
slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness.
And then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own
country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which
their misery makes so large a part. A return so passionately longed for,
that despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of
their cruel task-masters, they console themselves with feig