They should know that public opinion is steadily
turning to the light of truth. The fountains are breaking up around us,
and the great deep will soon be in motion. A stern, uncompromising, and
solemn spirit of inquiry is abroad. It cannot be arrested, and its
result may be easily foreseen. It will not long be popular to talk of
the legality of soul-murder, the constitutionality of man-robbery.
One word in relation to our duty to our Southern brethren. If we detest
their system of slavery in our hearts, let us not play the hypocrite with
our lips. Let us not pay so poor a compliment to their understandings as
to suppose that we can deceive them into a compliance with our views of
justice by ambiguous sophistry, and overcome their sinful practices and
established prejudices by miserable stratagem. Let us not first do
violence to our consciences by admitting their moral right to property in
man, and then go to work like so many vagabond pedlers to cheat them out
of it. They have a right to complain of such treatment. It is mean, and
wicked, and dishonorable.
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