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 outcasts 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 feigning it to be
the gracious reward of heaven in their future state."

About this time certain cruel and wicked practices, which must now be
mentioned, had arrived at such a height, and had become so frequent in
the metropolis, as to produce of themselves other coadjutors to the
cause.