The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign | Page 2

In a third class, men, their wives, and children, are
driven from their homes to perish in the road, or to endure the slavery
of dependence on public charity until pestilence shall Send them to
their graves, and thus clear the way for a fresh supply of others like
themselves. In a fourth, we see men driven to selling themselves for
long periods at hard labour in distant countries, deprived of the society
of parents, relatives, or friends. In a fifth, men, women, and children
are exposed to sale, and wives are separated from husbands, while
children are separated from parents. In some, white men, and, in others,
black men, are subjected to the lash, and to other of the severest and
most degrading punishments. In some places men are deemed valuable,
and they are well fed and clothed. In others, man is regarded as "a
drug" and population as "a nuisance;" and Christian men are warned
that their duty to God and to society requires that they should permit
their fellow-creatures to suffer every privation and distress, short of
"absolute death," with a view to prevent the increase of numbers.
Among these various classes of slaves, none have recently attracted so
much attention as those of the negro race; and it is in reference to that
race in this country that the following paper has recently been
circulated throughout England:--
_"The affectionate and Christian Address of many thousands of the
Women of England to their Sisters, the Women of the United States of
America:_
"A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a
common cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the
subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so
extensively, and, even under kindly-disposed masters, with such
frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the Western World.
"We will not dwell on the ordinary topics--on the progress of
civilization; on the advance of freedom everywhere; on the rights and
requirements of the nineteenth century;--but we appeal to you very
seriously to reflect, and to ask counsel of God, how far such a state of
things is in accordance with His holy word, the inalienable rights of

immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian
religion.
"We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might
beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system: we see
and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event. But, in
speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those
laws of your country which (in direct contravention of God's own law,
instituted in the time of man's innocency) deny, in effect, to the slave,
the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations; which
separates, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband and the
children from the parents. Nor can we be silent on that awful system
which, either by statute or by custom, interdicts to any race of man, or
any portion of the human family, education in the truths of the gospel
and the ordinances of Christianity.
"A remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the
amelioration of their sad condition. We appeal, then, to you as sisters,
as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens
and your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction from the
Christian world. We do not say these things in a spirit of
self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it
perceives in others. We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy
share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced,
nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We
humbly confess it before Almighty God. And it is because we so
deeply feel, and so unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now
venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our
common dishonour."
We have here a movement that cannot fail to be productive of much
good. It was time that the various nations of the world should have their
attention called to the existence of slavery within their borders, and to
the manifold evils of which it was the parent; and it was in the highest
degree proper that woman should take the lead in doing it, as it is her
sex that always suffers most in that condition of things wherein might
triumphs over right, and which we are accustomed to define as a state

of slavery.
How shall slavery be abolished? This is the great question of our day.
But a few years since it was answered in England by an order for the
immediate emancipation of the black people held to slavery in her