might, perhaps, be unavoidable. Suppose we were in famine or great
necessity, and we wished to obtain provisions for our suffering
families: suppose, too, there was a certain man with provisions, who, we
knew, had come by them dishonestly, but we had no other resource than to
purchase of him. In that case we should be justified in purchasing of
him, and should not participate in the guilt of the robbery. But still,
however great our necessity, we are not justified in refusing to examine
the subject, and in discouraging those who are endeavoring to set the
thing on the right ground. That is all I wish, and all the resolution
contemplates; and, happily, I find that that also is what was implied in
the address. I may mention one other method alluded to in the address,
and that is prayer to Almighty God. This ought to be, and must be, a
religious enterprise. It is impossible for any man to contemplate
slavery as it is without feeling intense indignation; and unless he have
his heart near to God, and unless he be a man of prayer and devotional
spirit, bad passions will arise, and to a very great extent neutralize
his efforts to do good. How do you suppose such a religious feeling has
been preserved in the book to which the address refers? Because it was
written amid prayer from the beginning; and it is only by a constant
exercise of the religious spirit that the good it had effected has been
accomplished in the way it has. There is one more subject to which I
would allude, and that is unity among those who desire to emancipate the
slave. I mean a good understanding and unity of feeling among the
opponents of slavery. What gives slavery its great strength in the
United States? There are only about three hundred thousand slaveholders
in the United States out of the whole twenty-five millions of its
population, and yet they hold the entire power over the nation. That is
owing to their unbroken unity on that one matter, however much, and
however fiercely, they may contend among themselves on others. As soon
as the subject of slavery comes up, they are of one heart, of one voice,