The system of slavery, especially of slavery in it’s more hateful forms, never did nor ever will prevail long in any country, without producing a most pernicious effect, both on it’s morals, habits, and manners. This is an invidious topic, on which I will not enlarge; but let it’s amount be duly estimated by all who are interested for the independence, the prosperity, or the happiness of their country. When all these various masses of misery are piled up into one, who shall attempt to take the dimensions of it’s enormous bulk. Yet we must acknowledge, that from it’s very size it produces less impression on mankind in general. This principle may be termed a law of our nature, and we suffer from the effect of it in every part of our great cause. I firmly believe that it is here the Slave Trade has found it’s chief security. Had it not been for the operation of this cause, both Houses of Parliament, I had almost said the whole nation, would have risen with one indignant effort, and have forced the Slave Traders to desist from their cruel occupation. Could we but place even the people of Liverpool themselves, where they could see with their own eyes the progress, from first to last, of this series of crimes and cruelties; could we but confine their attention so that they might have but one object before them at once, and might view it in all it’s parts distinctly, with all it’s circumstances and relations, I firmly believe they would themselves abjure that inhuman traffic for which they are now so ignominiously preeminent. But the enormous dimensions of this mass of misery are such, that our organs are not fitted for the contemplation of it; our affections are not suited to deal with it; we are lost in the immensity of the prospect; we are distracted by it’s variety. We may see highly probable reasons why our all wise Creator has so constituted us, that we are more deeply affected by one single tale of misery, with all the details of which we are acquainted, than by the greatest accumulation of sufferings of which the particulars have not fallen under our notice. Could I but separate this immense aggregate into all its component parts, and present them one by one to your view, in all their particularity of wretchedness, you would then have a more just impression of the immensity of the misery which we wish to terminate. This cannot now be done; but let us, in concluding our melancholy course, employ a few moments in taking some family, or some individual Negro, and following him through all his successive stages of suffering, from his first becoming the victim of some nightly attack on his dwelling, or from his being sentenced to slavery for the benefit of those who condemned him, to the final close of his wretched life. I will not attempt to describe his sufferings; estimate from your own feelings what must be his, in all the various situations through which he passes.