“Your letter declining the testimonial proffered by your native Commonwealth pleased me more than anything you ever did. I had previously said, ‘I hope Massachusetts will express her gratitude toward him with princely magnificence, and I hope _he_ will transfer the gift to Kansas: that would be morally grand on _both_ sides.’ And Mr. Child answered: ‘Depend upon it, he _will_ do it. Nothing could be more characteristic of the man.’ That letter and Mr. Wilson’s answer to the challenge have revived my early faith in human nature. It is impossible to calculate the salutary influence of such examples.” FOOTNOTES [1] Resolutions of the Legislature of South Carolina, December 16, 1835. See also Resolutions of the Legislature of North Carolina, December 19, 1835; of Georgia, December 22, 1835; of Alabama, January 7, 1836; and of Virginia, February 16, 1836. Massachusetts Senate Documents, Sess. 1836, No. 56. [2] “Ahi serva Italia, … bordello!”--_Purgatorio_, Canto VI. 76-78. [3] Civil Code of the State of Louisiana, Art. 35. [4] Statutes at Large of South Carolina, Vol. VII. p. 397, Act No. 670, sec. 1. [5] Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery in the several States, pp. 22, 23. [6] Genesis, ix. 25-27. [7] Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 301, 302. [8] Encyclopædia Metropolitana, First Division, Pure Sciences, Vol. I. p. 32 (ed. 1829, 4to): Preliminary Treatise on Method, Sect. 2, _Dark Ages_. [9] By the Rev. Thomas Thompson, Vicar of Reculver, in Kent, and printed at Canterbury in 1772. Boswell’s defence of the Slave-Trade was kindred in character. (Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, London, 1848, Vol. VII. pp. 23, 24, Sept. 23, 1777.) Nothing can be more melancholy than the effort of Capitein the African, who, surrendering to the Dutch influences about him, made himself the apologist of Slavery, in a Latin Dissertation, translated into Dutch, and reprinted four times, entitled “_Dissertatio politico-theologica de Servitute Libertati Christianæ non contraria_, quam sub Præside J. Van den Honert publicæ Disquisitioni subjicit J. E. J. Capitein, Afer, in 4to, Lugduni Batavorum, 1742.” In our own country, the Rev. John Beck, of Georgia, dared to preach and print, in 1801, two sermons entitled “The Doctrine of Perpetual Bondage reconcilable with the Infinite Justice of God, a Truth plainly asserted in the Jewish and Christian Scripture.” Good men must join in the thanks expressed to Colonel Humphreys by the philanthropist Grégoire, for his exposure of this baseness in his Valedictory Discourse before the Cincinnati of Connecticut. Grégoire, De la Littérature des Nègres, p. 232. [10] Epistle to Philemon, 10-19. [11] See Parliamentary Papers, 1852, Vol. XXXI.; 1852-53, Vol. LXII.; 1854-55, Vol. XXXVI.; 1856, Vol. LVII.; 1857, Vol. XL.; 1862, Vol. LVII. Also, Davy’s West Indies, pp. 65, 200, 245, 277, 412.