Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do

; this was no mere speculation, but the acknowledgment of a great "humanitarian fact." True then, it is true now; and must remain indisputable and eternal--a pillar of fire by night, a cloud by day, to guide and guard nations yet unborn in the path of honor, of safety, of moral and political grandeur.

But the learned gentleman does not pause upon these "speculations." He proceeds to tell us that circumstances are changed; that there was then little more than half a million slaves, and scarce a pound of cotton exported. Does the gentleman believe, or does he but attempt to lead us to believe, that the ethics of those men "without fear and without reproach" had no sounder foundation than this: that while slaves were few and cotton scarce, slavery might be a wrong, but with four million slaves and four million two hundred thousand bales of cotton, it becomes just, humane, moral?--that while negroes and cotton fill one side of the scales, Christian truth must kick the beam on the other, and slaver