The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English StyleWebster, Daniel
History
The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861; Webster, Daniel, 1782-1852
I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister
at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of
the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its
denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the
authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever
there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its
voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant,
who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging
from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean,
which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence to waft the burden of an
honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a conscious
pride,--that ocean, which hardy industry regards, even when the winds
have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil,--what is it to
the victim of this oppression, when he is brought to its shores, and
looks forth upon it, for the first time, loaded with chains, and
bleeding with stripes? What is it to him but a wide-spread prospect of
suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the
air longer fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman
and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth,
from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which
his Creator intended for him.
The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of religion and
letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent
of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts make some almost
imperceptible progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the
general improvement of the natives who are immediately about them. Not
thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad
passions which the subjects of Christian states carry to the land. The
slave-trade having touched the coast, its influence and its evils
spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, making savage wars
more savage and more frequent, and adding new and fierce passions to the
contests of barbarians.
I pursue this topic no further, except again to say, that all
Christendom, being now blessed with peace, is bound by every thing which
belongs to its character, and to the character of the present age, to
put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful traffic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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