Descending from these summits, let me show plainly the object it seeks to accomplish; and here you will see and confess its complete practicability. While discountenancing all prejudice of color and every establishment of caste, the Antislavery Enterprise--at least so far as I may speak for it--does not undertake to change human nature, or to force any individual into relations of life for which he is not morally, intellectually, and socially adapted; nor does it necessarily assume that a race, degraded for long generations under the iron heel of bondage, can be taught at once all the political duties of an American citizen. But, Sir, it does confidently assume, against all question, contradiction, or assault whatever, _that every man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and, with equal confidence, it asserts that every individual who wears the human form, whether black or white, should be recognized at once as man_. When this is done, I know not what other trials may be in wait for the unhappy African; but this I do know, that the Antislavery Enterprise will then have triumphed, and the institution of Slavery, _as defined by existing law_, will no longer shock mankind. In this work, the first essential, practical requisite is, that the question shall be openly and frankly confronted. Do not put it aside. Do not blink it out of sight. Do not dodge it. Approach it. Study it. Ponder it. Deal with it. Let it rest in the illumination of speech, conversation, and the press. Let it fill the thoughts of the statesman and the prayers of the pulpit. When Slavery is thus regarded, its true character will be recognized, _as a hateful assemblage of unquestionable wrongs under sanction of existing law_, and good men will be moved to apply the remedy. Already even its zealots admit that its “abuses” should be removed. This is their word, not mine. Alas! alas! Sir, it is these very “abuses” that constitute its component parts, without which it would not exist,--even as the scourges in a bundle with the axe constituted the dread fasces of the Roman lictor. Take away these, and the whole embodied outrage disappears. Surely that central assumption--more deadly than axe itself--by which man is changed into a chattel, may be abandoned; and is not this practicable? The associate scourges by which that transcendent “abuse” is surrounded may, one by one, be subtracted. The “abuse” which substitutes concubinage for marriage, the “abuse” which annuls the parental relation, the “abuse” which closes the portals of knowledge, the “abuse” which tyrannically usurps all the labor of another, now upheld by positive law, may by positive law be abolished. To say that this is not practicable, in the nineteenth century, is a scandal upon mankind, and just in proportion as these “abuses” cease to have the sanction of law will the institution of Slavery cease to exist. The African, whatever may be then his condition, will no longer be the _slave_ over