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THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
154112

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
1899

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by

ALBERT BARNES,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO., PHILADELPHIA.

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INTRODUCTION.

THE subject of slavery is one in which all men have an interest, and which all have a right to discuss. It pertains to a great wrong done to our common nature, and affects great questions relating to the final triumph of the principles of justice and humanity. Wherever wrong is done to any human being, there is no improper interference if the conviction is expressed by any other one. Wherever principles are held which have a tendency to produce or perpetuate wrong, it is a right which all men have, to examine those principles freely. The race is one great brotherhood, and every man is under obligation, as far as he has the ability, to defend those principles which will permanently promote the welfare of the human family.

These obvious principles have a peculiar applicability to our own land. Our country is one. What promotes the honour of one portion of the nation, promotes the honour of the whole; what is dishonourable, in like manner pertains to all.

Pre-eminently, the subject of slavery pertains to the republic, as such. There are no interests of our common liberty or religion which are not affected by it; there is nothing which our fathers valued, and which we have been taught to prize,no principles of justice, or humanity, or equal rights, or industry, or morals, which are not more or less affected by this institution. If it be a good institution; if it be in accordance with the divine arrangements for the welfare of society, it is the duty of every man to defend it, and to seek its extension in the world. If it be contrary to the principles of the Bible, and if its tendency be evil, he is under no less obligation to

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lift up his voice on this subject, and to do whatever he can, that truth and justice may prevail. Every citizen at the North whose situation is such, or who has secured such a reputation that his arguments will receive respectful attention, owes a duty to his Southern brethren which he should not fail to discharge, and should not die without giving utterance, in the best way he can, to his convictions on the subject of American slavery. It may be little that the testimony of any one individual can accomplish, but by the accumulation of numerous testimonies, and the multiplication of appeals and arguments, the conviction may gain ground all over the nation that slavery is wrong, and the means may be devised for its entire removal. As one having a common interest in whatever affects the welfare of my country, in the prevalence of true religion, and in opposing whatever seems to me to militate against the gospel, I desire to discharge this portion of my duty to my generation, however humble my individual influence may be, and to record my convictions on a subject of so much concern to our whole land.

The work which is now submitted to the public, is limited to an examination of the Scripture argument on the subject of slavery. This is done because this seems to me to be the most important department of the general argument respecting slavery, and because it better falls in with my whole studies and habits of investigation than any other question pertaining to it. There are questions in regard to the general subject-its relations to agriculture and commerce; its political bearings; its influence on the means of national defence and security, and kindred topics, which I do not feel competent to examine, and which can be much better pursued by those who are familiar with the science of political economy than by one whose studies have had a different direction. To a man, however, who has spent more than twenty years in an almost exclusive study of the Bible, it may be permitted to examine the teachings of that book

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