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LETTER XVI.

CHRISTIAN BRETHREN,

MANY of those considerations, which go to show the necessity of acting with promptness on this matter, have already been noticed. It may, however, be of use to refer again to this point; and especially to some topics which deserve the serious and prayerful attention of all who receive God's word, and believe in a righteous and retributive providence.

It is declared of God, "with the merciful, thou wilt show thyself merciful; with the upright man, thou wilt show thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward, thou wilt show thyself froward: for thou wilt save the afflicted people, but wilt bring down high looks."

"If thou forbear to deliver those that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain. If thou sayest, Behold, I knew it not: doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it; and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall he not render to every man according to his work?”

"These nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years-and when seventy years are accomplished, I will punish that nation for their iniquity. Many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them, and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the work of their hands."

"Reward her as she hath rewarded you, and double to her double, according to all her works. In the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double." Psal. xviii. Prov. xxiv.

Jer. xxv. Rev. xviii.

These, with a multitude of other passages, teach the doctrine of recompenses.

They assure us, that God, in his dealings with individuals and nations, will recompense them according to their works. Not only is this doctrine plainly taught, but the Scriptures are full of examples.

The Egyptians oppressed Israel, held them fast and re

fused to let them go. But the judgments of God fell more and more heavily on them, until they were constrained to send them out free, after Egypt was almost ruined by the delay.

They had attempted to prevent the increase of Israel, by destroying their children; and God destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt, both man and beast.

They compelled Israel to labour without wages, under task-masters; and God, by his judgments, compelled them to give to Israel gold, silver and raiment, until Egypt was spoiled and Israel rewarded.

These things happened for examples, and were written for our instruction. And we are to notice that the generation of the Egyptians that drank this bitter cup, was not the one that began the system of oppression. They however continued it, and received this visitation for their own sins, and the sins of their fathers. They might have escaped by letting Israel go out free, but this they refused to do and were dealt with accordingly.

The kingdom of Judah was destroyed, the city and temple burnt, many of the people slain, and the rest taken captive and reduced to slavery, expressly for the crime of enslaving others, (Jer. 34.) Other sins no doubt were punished by these judgments, but this was the sin that was especially pointed out as the leading one.

Buying and selling persons is specified as a sin that was visited on the kingdom of Israel, when it was destroyed. God swear he would not forget it. They were delivered to their enemies and sold for bond-men.

The kingdoms of Tyre and Edom, Ammon and Moab, Gaza, Assyria and Babylon, are all charged with this sin, and judgments were sent on them for it, and they were recompensed by being, in their turn, dealt with in the same

way.

Adonijah, when his thumbs and great toes were cut off, confessed that he had served seventy kings in the same way; and, although a heathen, owned the retributive justice of God in it: "As I have done, so God requited me." "So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai," he was recompensed according to his device against the Jews.

Profane history is full of examples illustrative of the same principle, and not a few respecting slavery.

Tyre was a great slave-trader and slave-holder-she traded in the persons of men; and Tyre perished in a night, by her slaves. But one master is said to have escaped, and he owed his life to the affection of a slave, to whom he had been more than usually kind.

The states of Greece were sorely injured by their slaves; and Lacedemon, who had distinguished herself by her cruelty, received a punishment deep and shameful in proportion. They saw the slaves in power, and indulging their lusts on the wives and daughters of their former masters.

The Romans were repeatedly brought to the verge of ruin by their slaves; and one series of insurrections in Sicily was not closed until near a million of lives were lost. That was but one of the many bloody scenes through which slavery led her.

The Sarmatians were expelled their country by their slaves. The fate of the whites of St. Domingo is generally known.

History is full of insurrections and rebellions against despotic rulers; and there is no kind of government more absolute and despotic than that over slaves. The most despotic political power leaves more liberty to the subject than is possessed by the slave. Where is the government that allows the subject to hold no property, that does not recognize the marriage and parental relation, that carries on a trade in its people, as well as compels them to perpetual service without wages? Bad as political slavery is, it is not so bad as personal-much as people may desire political, much more do they, and with good reason, desire personal freedom. And as rebellion against political power, and civil wars growing out of them, are a hundred-fold worse than foreign wars; so insurrections for personal liberty always have, and always will, assume still more frightful forms. This all history proves.

With such declarations of God's hatred of oppression, and his purpose to punish it; and with so many examples of it in the history of the world, what have we to expect at the hand of a God of recompense?

God, in his gracious providence, gave our fathers, who settled in this western world, both to know their rights and to enjoy them. Most of the settlements in America, were made between 1620 and 1680, the very period in which the great contest about freedom and personal rights took place in England, and before the face of Europe. The question was pretty well understood; and our fathers appreciated their rights. Yet very soon they introduced the system of negro slavery, the most hopeless and oppressive that was ever laid on human nature.

And during the contest for our independence, we declared that liberty was an unalienable right-we invoked the God of truth, and equity, and justice, to aid us in defending it. Preachers justified contending for it, and supplicated aid from on high. The professor of religion took part in the contest, and mingled in the field of battle; and when God gave success, and made us free, what did we do for the slave? He did not take sides against us; but aided us in cultivating our fields and supporting our families. Did we give him that freedom which we declared before heaven and earth was the unalienable right of all men? No; we riveted his chains more fast; we shut him out more and more from instruction; we added more to his disabilities, and threw more obstructions in the way of his attaining to freedom.

There has but seldom, in the history of the world, been a wider departure, by a nation, from their own avowed principles, or a more glaring deviation from the rule of doing as they would be done by. What will be our doom, if we have measured to us as we have measured to our slaves, if we are recompensed according to our works? This, without repentance and amendment, is what both Scripture and history lead us to expect.

Thus far, it is true, we have not seen the day of righteous retribution. We have, however, in the injured morals of our people, and in the declining prosperity of the slaveholding states, no dubious tokens of God's displeasure; and a man must be ignorant, or inattentive, or infatuated, not to see the natural means of retribution so gathering in the south, that, instead of a miracle being needful to pun

ish us, nothing but a miracle can prevent it, unless we change our course.

The whole country, from the Potomac to the Sabine, and from the mountains to the sea-board, has a population of blacks more numerous than the whites. In large districts near the coast, on the best lands, at the mouth of all our rivers, and about our harbours, they are already much the most numerous. The state of the south is now full of danger; and every year increases the physical and moral power of the blacks much faster than that of the whites. A military establishment will soon be needful to protect the south, and that must be increased from time to time, with the increasing danger. It can hardly be supposed, that the non-slave-holding states will agree to bear the expense of a standing army to protect slave-holders against their slaves and to hold said slaves in bondage, and if the whole expense lies on the south it must, added to the great disadvantages of slave-labour, exceedingly oppress the south. But were that evil got over, there are others. In a government like this, standing armies are dangerous, and with the existing jealousies between the north and south, which may be expected to last while slavery does, it is not to be supposed that the north would be satisfied to see a growing military force in the south, and devoted to the south.

Such a state of things, would in all probability, lead to convulsions. The North and the South would separate. Military despotism would arise in the South, and the rapid increase of the coloured population, would soon make it needful to conciliate them. Amidst the revolutions that would follow, the slaves would most likely be called in by some party, or taking advantage of those troubled scenes, they would triumph over the whites. The whole state of things, looks so much that way, that I know not how any can help forseeing that such times are to pass over the South, unless a new course be taken with that people.

And should the slaves fail in their first efforts, as probably they would, who can think, without horror, of the scenes that would attend the attempt. The situation in which they now are, makes it a forfeiture of life, to try