By giving me a spiritual nature capable of improvement, God has made it my duty to strive to improve myself,--has declared that I have a natural right to improve myself, and that any wanton or unnecessary infringement of this right is a wrong. No man has the right to prevent me, or the meanest slave, from earnestly seeking after wisdom; to prevent me, or the meanest slave, from becoming pure in heart; or to deaden my affections, or those of the humblest slave that walks. In keeping a slave ignorant or impure, or in blunting his affections, even though he is well fed, clothed, and housed, violence is offered to his nature; his God-given _rights_ are infringed; a _wrong_ is done! Slaveholding is wrong under _all_ circumstances, because it either darkens the minds, brutalizes the souls, and deadens the affections of the slaves, or, without any necessity, renders such spiritual death not merely possible, but almost inevitable. If it is wrong to murder the body, how much more wrong is it to murder the soul! Slaveholding is murder of the soul! CHAPTER II. DIRECT MENTAL INSTRUCTION OF SLAVES. "It is universally the fact throughout the Slaveholding States, that either custom or law prohibits them [_i.e._ the slaves] the acquisition of letters."--_Report made to Synod of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833._ At a recent annual meeting of the American Colonization Society, the Rev. Joel Parker, D.D. of Philadelphia, a member of the Presbyterian Church, speaking of the instruction of the colored race, is reported to have used the following language:--"There seems to me, in connection with this subject, a beautiful illustration of what Hall calls 'a fetch in Divine Providence.' God had a design in bringing these people to this country in the way he did. We cannot probably comprehend the whole of it; but this we can see, he has secured the education of those who, to all human appearance, would not and could not have been educated in any other way. There are now in this country more than three hundred thousand Africans who can read and write, who could not have done it if it had not been for the slave-trade. There are many in this country and in Liberia who are capable of preaching the gospel, editing papers, and performing all the duties of civil life, who must have remained in total darkness but for this trade. How came this people by all this knowledge? Did anybody go to Africa and teach them? No! It has been done by slavery.... And now we send them back to Africa, with a preparation for doing a great work there, which we never could have imparted to them in any other way.... In this view of the subject, we may perceive at least one good which slavery has done to Africa; and the question may with propriety be asked, whether it has not done for Africa more good than harm."