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    himself in tho slave ' s raiment , to eat the slave ' s coarse food , ttill bis tields with his own hands , than to pamper himself by day , and pillow ]) is bend on down at night , at the cost of a wantonly injured fellowcreature . ISo fellow creuture can be so injured without taking terrible % 'engeance . He is terribly avenged even now . The blight which falls on the soul of the wrong doer , the desolation of his moral nature , is a move terrible calamity than be inflicts . In deadening his moral

    feeling , he dies to the proper happiness of a man . In hardening hia heart against his fellow-creatures , lie sears it to all true joy . In shutting liis ear against the voice of justice , he shuts out all the harmonies of the universe , and turns the voice of God within him into rebuke . He may prosper , indeed , and hold faster the slave by v horn he prospers ; but he rivets heavier and more ignominious chains on his own soul than he lays on others . No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt . No fiend , exhausting on us all his

    power of torture , is so terrible as an oppressed fellow-creature . The cry of the oppressed , unheard on earth , is heard in heaven . God is just , and if justice reign , then the unjust must terribly suffer . Then no being can profit by evil doing . Then all the laws of the universe are ordinances agaiust guilt . Then every enjoyment , gained hy wrong doing , will be turned into a curse . No laws of nature are so irrepealable as that law which binds guilt and misery , God is just . Then all the defences , which the oppressor rears against the consequences of wrong doin ^ , are vain , as vain as would be his striving- to arrest hy his single arm the ocean or whirlwind . He may disarm

    the slave . Can he disarm that slave ' s Creator ? lie can crush the spirit of insurrection in a fellow-creature . Can he crush the awful spirit of justice and letribution in the Almighty ? He can still the murmur of discontent in his victim . Can he silence that voice which speaks in thunder , and is to break the hlecp of the grave ? Can he always still the reproving , avenging voice in his own breast ? " I know it will be said , You would make us poor . ' Be poor , then , and thank God for your honest poverty . Better be poor than unjust . Better hej ^ than steal . Better live in an alms-house , better die , than trample on a fellow-creature and reduce him to a brute , for fcelfiah gratification . What ! Have we yet to learn , that it « profits us nothing to gain the whole world , and lose our souls ? ' "—p . 34-36 .

    In the fourth chapter we come to the very pith and marrow of the subject . " flie Evils of Slavery " are set forth in a manner , and with a power to bring conviction home to all minds , and rouse the feeling- of all hearts , whatever may be the religious principles or moral theory of the individual . They are classed under the heads of Moral Influence , Intellectual Influence , Domestic Influences , Cruelty , and the effect unon

    ' v ' M . the slave-holder . The alleged advantages of slavery are then discussed , —the supposed lightness of his labour , —freedom from care , —opportunities for enjoyment or instruction , &c . The whole of this chapter is alike logical and eloquent . It demonstrates what slavery must he , from its own nature and the nature of man . There are no statements of fact , no reports , authenticated or unauthenticated , to which exception

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    198 Channing on Slavery .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 198, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/6/