Think us not extravagantly sanguine. The very horror manifested by the slaveholders of the means we recommend, is evidence of their efficacy. We advise you to exercise freedom of speech. Have they not endeavored to bully you into silence by the threat, that "the question of slavery is not and shall not be open to discussion;" and that the moment any private individual talks about the means of terminating slavery, "_that moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon a dunghill_?" Promote a free press. Is not the wisdom of the recommendation verified by the proclamation made of "_instant death_" to the abolition editors in the slave States, if "_they avow their opinions_?" Your Constitutions have indeed been rendered by the slaveholders "blurred and obliterated parchments;" be it your care to restore them to their pristine beauty, and to make them fair and legible charters of the rights of man. But we doubt not, fellow-citizens, that although you give your cordial assent to all we have said respecting the practical influence of slavery, you have, nevertheless, some misgivings about the effect of _immediate_ emancipation. Shut up as you are in darkness on this subject, threatened with death if you talk or write about it; while the utmost pains are taken to prevent books or papers, which might enlighten you, from falling into your hands, it would be wonderful indeed, were you at once prepared to admit the safety and policy of instant and unconditional emancipation. You are assured, and probably believe, that massacre, and conflagration, and universal ruin would ensue on "letting loose the negroes;" but you are kept in ignorance of the fact, that in various parts of the world, negroes have been let loose, and in no one instance have such consequences followed; and you are not permitted to learn, in discussion, the _reasons_ why such consequences never have followed, and never will follow the immediate abolition of slavery. What think you would be the fate of the man who should attempt to deliver a lecture in Charleston or Mobile on the safety of emancipation? Yet such a lecture might be delivered with perfect safety, were the lecturer to be accompanied by one or two hundred of _your_ number, declaring their determination to maintain freedom of speech and to protect the lecturer. From such a lecture you would learn, with astonishment, that the atrocities in St. Domingo, so constantly used by the slaveholders to intimidate the refractory, arose from a civil war, which the planters, by their own folly and wickedness, kindled between themselves and the _free_ blacks, and were wholly independent of the subsequent act of the French Government manumitting the slaves. You would also hear, perhaps for the first time, of the peaceful abolition of slavery in Mexico and South America. You would listen, with a surprise almost bordering on incredulity, to accounts of the glorious, wonderful success, attending