But there is another inquiry which the champions of slavery have got to answer before the world and before Heaven. If American slaves are better off than native Africans, who is to be thanked for it? Has their improved condition resulted from any purposed plan, any well-digested, systematized measure, carefully thought out, and reasoned out, and intended for their benefit? Not at all. In all the southern statute books, and legislative records, there is no trace of any such scheme. Laws, judicial decisions, the writing of political economists,--all treat the slave as a thing to make money with. Agricultural societies give rewards for the best crops. Horse-jockey societies improve the fleetness of the breed for the sports of the turf. Even the dogs have professional trainers. But not one thing is done to bring out the qualities of manhood that lie buried in a slave. Look through the southern statute books, and see what Draconian penalties are inflicted for teaching a slave to read,--see how he is lashed for attending a meeting to hear the Word of God. On every highroad patrols lie in wait to scourge him back if he attempts to visit father, mother, wife, child, or friend, on a neighboring plantation. By day and by night, at all times and every where, he is the victim of an energetic and comprehensive system of measures, which blot out his senses, paralyze his mind, degrade and brutify his nature, and suppress the instinctive workings of truth, generosity, and manhood in his breast. All the good that reaches him, reaches him in defiance of these privations and disabilities. If any light penetrates to his soul, it is because human art cannot weave a cloud dense and dark enough to be wholly impervious to it. There are some blessings which the goodness of God will bestow in spite of human efforts to intercept them. It is these only which reach the slave. And after having built up all barriers to forbid the access of improvement; after having sealed his senses by ignorance, and more than half obliterated his faculties by neglect and perversion, the oppressor turns round, and because there are some scanty, incidental benefits growing out of the very deplorableness of his condition, he justifies himself before the world, and claims the approval of Heaven, because the slave is better off here than _he_ would be in Africa. Sir, such an argument as this is an offence to Heaven. I consider it to be as much worse than atheism as Christianity is better. And when such an argument comes from a gentleman belonging to a free state; when it comes from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] from a representative of the city of William Penn; when he, without motive, without inducement, offers such a gratuity to the devil, I can account for it only on the principle of the man who, having a keen relish for the flesh of swine, said he wished he were a Jew, that he might have the pleasure of eating pork and committing a sin at the same time.