slavery, and cruelty, ought not to be used as _synonymous_ terms!" Again, fresh he is no doubt to the charge, with the thrust, "but this fact of many of the slaveholders treating their slaves with cruelty, shows there ought to be no slavery!" Avast, friend! is the _abuse_ of a system a just cause of condemnation? Do you say it is: then the system of apprenticeship--of guardianship--of matrimony--_Liberty_--and _Christianity_ themselves, ought to be condemned, for they all have been abused--all have had the most _cruel_--_tyrannical_--and _Satanic_ acts, committed under their names! Therefore, according to the very argument by which you would have slavery condemned, you would also have _liberty_, _matrimony_, and _Christianity_, banished from the earth!--You cannot get out of the dilemma--there is no possible alternative--if _slavery_ is to be condemned because it has been _abused_, so are Liberty and Christianity! Out of thine own mouth thou art condemned! A total recklessness of truth is a remarkable feature in the arguments adopted by the advocates of Abolitionism; while they give no credit to the statements of those differing from them! they unblushingly assert that _all_ slaveholders are _tyrants_ and _cruel_! Does truth require falsehood to make it conquer? Ought not those preposterous misstatements open the eyes of the public to the real character, and motive, of those men?--The cause of God they cannot be advocating, for his cause requires not the weapons of Satan! Error invariably stands in need of lies for its support. That there is great cruelty in the South, no one denies; but is there no cruelty in the North? Are there no cruel, tyrannical, husbands and masters in Philadelphia or in Boston? Are no acts of oppression committed north of the Chesapeake? These cannot be attributed to slavery! There is, rely on it, a deeper, a more concealed, a more galling _slavery_ and _bondage_, to which these evils are attributable, even the slavery of the soul to sin and to Satan. To this one, and the same _mental slavery_, both cruelty and tyranny in the South, and in the North, are alike referable. Therefore attributing these detestable evils, cruelty, and tyranny, to _corporeal_ slavery, is not only unphilosophical and unscriptural, but fatally erroneous; for it leads us to attack the _effect_, and not the _cause_.