When I remember, too, the long and profound slumberings, even of Christians on this subject, while their brethren were groaning under all the injuries, and cruelties, of iron-handed and steel-hearted oppression; I cannot suppress the feeling, that it was necessary, that that those who would arouse them, should break forth as in thunder tones, and gird up all their energies, to shake off the sloth in which their fellow men were bound. They had themselves but just awoke as from a dream, and found that they had long been sleeping, as on the overhanging brink of a burning crater; and when they saw the whole multitude of their fellow countrymen, still asleep in the same situation of fearful peril; who can wonder that they should cry out at the top of their voice, and resort to every possible expedient, to awaken those around them before it was too late? They heard the suppressed and terrific mutterings of the incipient earthquake below, and felt the ground beneath them already giving way, what less could they do, than to lay about them with all their strength, in the use of the first expedient, that seemed calculated to awaken and save? They had no time to devise a multitude of measures, and then choose from among them, such as would be most likely to satisfy those who were unwilling to be awaked. They must do something, and do it then. Previous measures, though entered upon ostensibly for the purpose of arousing men from sleep, had only served as a lull-a-by. The oppressors of their fellow men, were but becoming more secure in their claims of property in God's image--the chains of the slave were getting more and more firmly rivetted, and the whole nation were fast binding themselves in a willing bondage to those, who found it conducive to their ease, and interest, and shameful indulgence, to be permitted to inflict all the wrongs they pleased on their fellow men, with none to utter a single note of remonstrance or rebuke. It was seen that the press was bribed, and the pulpit gagged, and the lips of the multitude padlocked, and nearly the whole population of the free States bound, by chains either of prejudice, or interest, or ignorance, to the tremendous car of Slavery; and those who loved to have it so, had mounted the engine and were driving at rail-road speed, withersoever they would; and when a few awoke, and saw the nation thus hastening to the precipice of ruin, to be dashed in the abyss below--what less could they do, than to cry STOP--and that too, even at a pitch of remonstrance, which should subject them to the imputation of fanaticism or madness. It is not unlikely that some of my readers, may regard the language which I shall use as unreasonably severe; and yet I do not believe, nor can I think that any man, after looking candidly at the subject, will believe that it expresses more than the truth.