But when the colonial system, as now administered, except perhaps in some particular cases, has not only been injurious to the Slaves, but on the long run to the master also; when it is at length declared by a very intelligent West Indian, that the colonists, by adopting those reforms for which justice and humanity should alone furnish sufficient motives, will ultimately derive the most substantial benefits, though possibly they may suffer some temporary inconveniency; when, at the same time, the prejudices against these reforms are so powerful, that a direct, palpable, and valuable interest alone, will probably be adequate to overcome their effect; in such circumstances as these, it is undeniably obvious, that to hold forth an offer of compensation to all, who, after the abolition, should allege that they had suffered from that measure, or who should even furnish plausible proof that it had been injurious to their interests, would not only be to subject ourselves to immeasurable and most inequitable claims, but would be to interpose an insurmountable obstacle in the way of all reforms of the West Indian system, or, to speak more correctly, it would be to give a premium on the continuance and even extension of the old abuses. [Sidenote: and on grounds of religion.] It is, however, most of all astonishing, that our opponents attempt to vindicate the Slave Trade on grounds of religion also. The only argument which they urge with the slightest colour of reason is, that slavery was allowed under the Jewish dispensation. The Jews were exalted by the express designation of heaven to a state of eminence above the strangers who sojourned among them, and the heathen who dwelt around them, from either of whom, as a mark of their own dominion, God, who has a right to assign to all his creatures their several places in the scale of being, allowed them to take bondmen and bondwomen, treating them, however, with kindness, remembering their own feelings when they were slaves in Egypt, and admitting them to the chief national privileges, to the circumcision, to the passover, and other solemn feasts, and thus instructing them in the true religion. Besides this, the slaves were to be set free at the year of Jubilee, or every fiftieth year, a command which was alone sufficient to prevent their accumulating in any great number.