INTRODUCTION.

FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN. The holders of slaves in this republic cry out with one consent, The Immediate Abolitionists must be put down.' Doubtless they must, or Slavery must be relinquished. Terrible systems of injustice may go forward smoothly, so long as truth can be kept under lock and key. But the troubler is abroad. She has whispered in the ears of thousands what they cannot forget. She Is the man who takes your watch, without your consent, a has asked some hard questions about the "names of things."

thief or a robber,

or what is he?

'Amen,' say the people Well, if he

he is any thing but honest and honorable.'

had cut deeper in his process, and taken with the watch the owner-the bird, nest and all-what then? Here, in a nutshell, is the whole issue upon which depends the destiny of one sixth part of our nation. Truth has hinted a name.— 'Avaunt there,' say the tribe of conservatives, we have nothing to do with your logic or your abstractions, we look at the consequences. Whether a man is to be called a thief or a robb er depends upon the consequences. If you push this question and urge the analogical answer, making slaveholders consummate adepts in conduct which usually falls under the denomination of villany, you jeopard the public safety, you sunder the Union-nay, you put the abolition of slavery itself at a hopeless distance.'

But the question recurs, What is the slaveholder doing? What is the real nature of that relation which he sustains to the fellow man whom he calls his slave? Name it as you will, how does it compare with one of those acts of theft or robbery which is commonly punished as such?

The slaveholder must be set down somewhere. If he is set down among honest and praiseworthy men, we shall no doubt have peace with him, but will he mend his ways? Verily not. Why should he? If you set the slaveholder among honest men, while he is really the most flagrant violator of human rights, you are guilty of falsehood, and falsehood never produced a reformation. On the other hand, if you place him where he belongs, whether you reclaim him or not, you prevent others from imitating his example. Let this never be forgotten.

But the exasperation of slaveholders is a slender argument against the efficacy of truth. The word of Jesus exasperated the demoniacs, but it brought out the devils. Why are the slaveholders enraged? Because they know that when the seeds of Abolition, which are now scattered, spring up in a full expression of public sentiment, the disgrace of their practice will cost more than the profit. Were it otherwise they would notice us only by a laugh. They fear no attacks upon their persons, nor unconstitutional interference with their claims, nor additional inducements to rebellion held out to the slaves, but that the world will become abolitionists ;—in which event slavery will be found less tolerable to the master than to the slave.

We have no fondness for dealing in hard names. We do not insist upon applying to slaveholders the epithets thieves and robbers. But in reasoning on the guilt of slaveholding we must of necessity resort to comparison. We must compare the practice with acknowledged violations of human rights, and judge of it accordingly. The relation in which it stands to theft or robbery is infallibly detected by an easy

comparison. A is a slave who has in his pocket $500 to pay for his freedom. B meets him and takes away half the money. Which does him the greater injury? B who takes $250, or the master who withholds what the slave values at more than $500? Yet B is a robber and a cruel one, for he robs a poor man of that on which depends his liberty. But the circumstances and the consequences are brought up to justify the master,-why not to justify B?

The reader needs not be told that this Quarterly Magazine has been established to promulgate the view of American slavery here presented, and if possible to brush away from before the eyes of the American people that veil which has prevented their seeing it in the full odiousness of its principle and the worse horrors of its practice. Should we succeed in this arduous undertaking, we shall only have effected what would take place spontaneously to-morrow, should a miracle, to night, reduce the complexion of our countrymen to one homogeneous tint. Such a transformation would bring self-interest to the aid of conscience and benevolence, against a system from which the white nonslaveholder now supposes himself protected by the hue of

his skin.

ON THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY GREAT BRITAIN.

BY C. STUART.

"MEN of little genius and great bodily strength, are by nature destined to serve, and those of better capacity to command-wherefore the nations of Greece* and of some other countries, being naturally superior in genius, have a natural right to empire; and the rest of mankind, being naturally stupid, are destined to labour and slavery."-Aristotle, De. Republ. Lib. I. Cap. 5, 6.-(Note, when Aristotle wrote this, our white ancestors were the merest barbarians, living in caves and hollow

trees.)

"If they have been any considerable time in slavery, they appear lost to reason and to feeling their spirits broken, and their faculties sunken in a species of stupor, which I am unable to describe. They appear degraded even below the negro slave. The succession of hardships, without any protecting law to which they can appeal for alleviation or redress, seems to destroy every species of exertion or hope Observe, the Greeks are colored people, and must always have been such.