Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/139

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119

foreign lands, on the high seas, during the coffle-march between the States of the American Union, or on the cane-fields and cotton plantations; by unprincipled politicians, who rise to power on pledges to befriend and enlarge the area of despotism; or by the hireling press, prostituted pulpits, corrupted courts, and the multiform classes whose God is mammon. It has been so retarded. But the seeming triumphs of these enemies of the human race is transient, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision." Truth is mighty, and will prevail. The rights of man will be regarded, oppression shall cease, both body and mind will be unshackled, "the expectation of the poor shall not perish." "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." The Slaveholders may drive the free coloured people from their comfortable homes in the Slave states as exiles, as some are doing, in order to tighten the chains still firmer on the necks of the suffering vassals; but let these men remember we can plant ourselves at the very portals of Slavery. We can hover about the Gulf of Mexico, nearly all the isles of the Caribbean Sea bids them welcome; while the broad and fertile valleys of British Guiana, under the sway of the emancipating Queen, invites them to their treasure and to nationality. With the Gulf of Mexico on the South and Canada on the North, the latter is already a recep-