Ignorance, my brethren, is a mist, low down into the very dark and
almost impenetrable abyss of which, our fathers for many centuries
have been plunged. The christians, and enlightened of Europe, and some
of Asia, seeing the ignorance and consequent degradation of our
fathers, instead of trying to enlighten them, by teaching them that
religion and light with which God had blessed them, they have plunged
them into wretchedness ten thousand times more intolerable, than if
they had left them entirely to the Lord, and to add to their miseries,
deep down into which they have plunged them, tell them, that they are
an _inferior_ and _distinct race_ of beings, which they will be glad
enough to recall and swallow by and by. Fortune and misfortune, two
inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which
have from the creation of the world, and will continue to take place
among men until God shall dash worlds together.

When we take a retrospective view of the arts and sciences--the wise
legislators--The Pyramids, and other magnificent buildings--the
turning of the channel of the river Nile, by the sons of Africa or of
Ham, among whom learning originated, and was carried thence into
Greece, where it was improved upon and refined. Thence among the
Romans, and all over the then enlightened parts of the world, and it
has been enlightening the dark and benighted minds of men from then,
down to this day. I say, when I view retrospectively, the renown of
that once mighty people, the children of our great progenitor, I am
indeed cheered. Yea further, when I view that mighty son of Africa,
HANNIBAL, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, who defeated and
cut off so many thousands of the white Romans or murderers, and who
carried his victorious arms, to the very gate of Rome, and I give it
as my candid opinion, that had Carthage been well united and had given