‘That our Colonies want people, is a very weak argument for so inhuman a violation of justice.—Shall a civilized, a _Christian_ nation encourage Slavery, because the barbarous, savage, lawless _African_ hath done it? Monstrous thought! To what end do we profess a religion whose dictates we so flagrantly violate? Wherefore have we that pattern of goodness and humanity, if we refuse to follow it? How long shall we continue a practice, which policy rejects, justice condemns, and piety dissuades? Shall the _Americans_ persist in a conduct, which cannot be justified; or persevere in oppression from which their hearts must recoil? If the barbarous _Africans_ shall continue to enslave each other, let the dæmon slavery remain among them, that their crime may include its own punishment. Let not _Christians_, by administering to their wickedness, confess their religion to be a useless refinement, their profession vain, and themselves as inhuman as the savages they detest.’ _James Foster_, in _his Discourses on Natural Religion and Social Virtue_, also shews his just indignation at this wicked practice, which he declares to be _a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural right of mankind_. At page 156, 2d vol. he says, ‘Should we have read concerning the _Greeks_ or _Romans_ of old, that they traded, with view to make slaves of their own species, whom they certainly knew that this would involve in schemes of blood and murder, of destroying or enslaving each other, that they even fomented wars, and engaged whole nations and tribes in open hostilities, for their own private advantage; that they had no detestation of the violence and cruelty, but only feared the ill success of their inhuman enterprises; that they carried men like themselves, their brethren, and the offspring of the same common parent, to be sold like beasts of prey, or beasts of burden, and put them to the same reproachful trial of their soundness, strength and capacity for greater bodily service; that quite forgetting and renouncing the original dignity of human nature, communicated to all, they treated them with more severity and ruder discipline, than even the ox or the ass, who are void of understanding.—Should we not, if this had been the case, have naturally been led to despise all their pretended refinements of morality; and to have concluded, that as they were not nations destitute of politeness, they must have been _entire Strangers to Virtue and Benevolence_?