For the Anglo-Saxon slaves had it in their power
to purchase their freedom; and the laws of the realm recognized their
liberation and placed them under legal protection.
[The diffusion of Christianity in Great Britain was moreover
followed by a general manumission; for it would seem that the
priests and missionaries of religion in that early and benighted age
were more faithful in the performance of their duties than those of
the present. "The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T.
Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and
deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was
for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men,
by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit
all their villains."--Hilt. Commonwealth, Blackstone, p. 52.]
To counteract the dangers resulting from a state of society so utterly at
variance with the great Declaration of American freedom should be the
earnest endeavor of every patriotic statesman.
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