But suppose he had accomplished his end, and the unjust laws against which our fathers fought and bled, had remained in full force upon us until now? I am bold to say, that we should not have suffered wrongs, that ought to be mentioned, in comparison with the wrongs of the slave. There was a heavy and unjust taxation, but it was not stripping us of all our earnings for life. There was a refusal, to give us a just representation, in framing the laws, by which we were to be governed; but it was not stripping us from all protection of law, and reducing us in that respect, to the condition of cattle or swine. It was not stripping us of all our rights, and robbing us of our children, and subjecting our wives, our sisters and our daughters, to wanton and promiscuous violation, with no power to lift a hand in self defence, and depriving us of the power of giving them protection. The husband or father, if he be a slave, may look on, and see his wife or daughter polluted before his eyes, and all the laws of the land, are against his lifting a finger for their deliverance. He may toil ever so hard, during his whole life, and he cannot be worth a farthing. The treason of Arnold, had it prospered, would never have subjected us to such evils as these. Besides, had we remained until this time British Colonies, other things being as they now _are_, this evil of slavery would now have been done away, and perhaps years ago. When I think of this, if I had not confidence in the overruling Providence of God, I could almost weep, that it did not seem best to the God of armies, to leave us under the control of a power, that would have uprooted this destructive Bohon Upas, which is still throwing its broad branches of death and desolation, over such wide spreading portions of our otherwise happy land. Sure I am, that Arnold's treason would never have made our land groan under such woes, and send up to heaven such cries of distress, as are wrung daily from the breasts of the helpless millions whom our nation now enslaves. I say again, therefore, that the system of slavery, is unspeakably worse than treason. But I cannot pursue this parallel farther. I have glanced at what men regard as the worst of evils and crimes; but when weighing the guilt of slavery, we find that everything which we can place in the opposite scale, at once kicks the beam. It has a weight of guilt attached to it, that can be balanced by the guilt of no other _crime_.