Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/19

"May this great temple which we have just erected to liberty, always be an instruction to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, a refuge for the rights of the human race, and an object of delight to the manes of its founders."

"Happy," (said Washington, when announcing the treaty of peace to the army,) "thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who shall have contributed any thing, who shall have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire on the broad basis of independency, who shall have assisted in protecting the rights of human nature, and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions."

And would that the solemn injunction uttered at the close of the Convention that adopted the Federal Constitution might be sounded, in trumpet peals, through the length and breadth of our land. Said those noble patriots, "Let it he remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature." How far the present generation has fallen from that sublime principle, I need not stop to show. That a fearful responsibility rests somewhere upon the creators of public opinion, in state and church, at this day, I solemnly believe.

One cause of this rapid retrograde movement is, doubtless, the strong effort that has been made to separate the evil of the extension of slavery and the revival of the trade, from the evil of the system itself.

Many have taken the ground, that while they were opposed to the introduction of slavery into new