But admit the alleged statement, absurd and false as it is; admit that these three millions of slaves would have belonged to Africa if they had not belonged to America,--that they would have been born of the same fathers and mothers there as here, so that those of them who are American mulattoes would have been Ethiopian mulattoes; and admit, further, that their present condition is better than the alternative condition alleged,--and what then? Is your duty done? Is it enough if you have made the condition of a man or of a race a little better, or any better, if you have not made it as much better as you can? What standard of morals do gentlemen propose to themselves? If a fellow-being is suffering under a hundred diseases, and we can relieve him from them all, what kind of benevolence is that which boasts of relieving him from one, and permits him to suffer under the other ninety and nine? By the law of nature and of God, the slave, like every other man, is entitled “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” he is entitled to his earnings,--to the enjoyment of his social affections,--to the development of his intellectual and moral faculties,--to that cultivation of his religious nature which shall fit him, not merely to feel, but reason of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come;--he is entitled to all these rights, of which he has been cruelly despoiled; and when he catches some feeble glimmering of some of them, we withhold the rest, and defend ourselves and pride ourselves that he is better off than he would have been in some other country or in some other condition. Suppose the Samaritan had bound up a single wound, or relieved a single pang of the bleeding wayfarer who had fallen among thieves, and then had gone to the next inn and boasted of his benevolence. He would only have shown the difference between a “good Samaritan” and a “bigot Samaritan.” The thieves themselves might have done as much.