The tract is to be entitled, “Prayer for the Oppressed.” The offerer nominates and requests the gentlemen named below to act as committee of award, to wit: Rev. Elnathan Davis, Fitchburg, Mass.; Rev. George Trask, Fitchburg, Mass.; John W. Sullivan, Boston, Mass.; Charles B. Wilder, Esq., Boston. Mass.; Rev. E. H. Nevin, Chelsea, Mass. The tract should not exceed 24 pages of common size when printed, and should be sent to the committee of award in season to be examined, and the prize one transmitted to the publication committee of the A. T. S., Boston, by the 1st of June next. NOAH EMERSON, For the offerer of the Prize. HOLLIS, N. H., January 21, 1859 Last winter, a Christian gentleman, by advertisement in the New York Independent, offered a premium of $100 for the best tract which might be submitted on “_Prayer for the Oppressed_.” The undersigned were nominated and requested to act as a committee of award in this case, and have received and examined a large number of manuscripts, many of which were of marked ability and power; but finding no _one_ of these so fully to answer the call of the offerer of the prize as to allow them to award the whole of it to _that_, they have awarded the same in equal divisions, to the authors of the _two best_ manuscripts, viz.: Rev. GEORGE W. BASSETT, Washington, D. C., and Rev. JAMES A. THOME, of Cleveland, Ohio. And they have strong confidence that these tracts will soon come before the public, and that God will mightily bless them as an instrumentality in inciting the Church universal to benevolent action and believing prayer, for the overthrow of slavery and oppression. ELNATHAN DAVIS, EDWIN H. NEVIN, GEORGE TRASK, JOHN W. SULLIVAN, C. B. WILDER. BOSTON, August, 1859. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Geo. C. Rand & Avery, Printers, 3 Cornhill, Boston. PRAYER FOR THE OPPRESSED. Who are the oppressed? Those who suffer wrong from the more powerful. They are to be found in all conditions of society, in the bosom even of the family and the church. All relationships which involve authority are liable to be abused to the infliction of injustice and outrage. Who are THE OPPRESSED, distinctively? _The enslaved._ These differ from all other victims of abused power in this essential point, that, by the law, they are regarded not as _men_, but _things_, the property of men. Denied humanity, they are denied all human rights, and excluded from all human relations. They have under the slave code as administered, no legal protection; the show of it which the letter of the law, in some instances, affords, being designed rather to guard their value as property than their interests as men.[1] Outcasts in society, they are outlaws in the State.