lives.--And who are these miserable creatures, that receive such
barbarous treatment from the planter? Can we restrain our just
indignation, when we consider that they are undoubtedly _his brethren!
his neighbours! the children of the same Father, and some of those for
whom Christ died, as truly as for the planter himself_. Let the opulent
planter, or merchant, prove that his Negro slave is not his brother, or
that he is not his neighbour, in the scripture sense of these
appellations; and if he is not able so to do, how will he justify the
buying and selling of his brethren, as if they were of no more
consideration than his cattle? The wearing them out with continual
labour, before they have lived out half their days? The severe whipping
and torturing them, even to death, if they resist his unsupportable
tyranny? Let the hardiest slave-holder look forward to that tremendous
day, when he must give an account to God of his stewardship; and let him
seriously consider, whether, at such a time, he thinks he shall be able
to satisfy himself, that any act of buying and selling, or the fate of
war, or the birth of children in his house, plantation, or territories,
or any other circumstance whatever, can give him such an absolute
property in the persons of men, as will justify his retaining them as
slaves, and treating them as beasts? Let him diligently consider whether
there will not always remain to the slave a _superior_ property or right
to the fruit of his own labour; and more especially to his own person;
that being which was given him by God, and which none but the Giver can
justly claim?





CHAP. IX.