"It is a melancholy fact, but it can be abundantly proved, that great numbers of the unfortunate strangers, who are carried from Africa to our colonies, are fraudulently and forcibly taken from their native soil. To descant but upon a single instance of the kind must be productive of pain to the ear of sensibility and freedom. Consider the sensations of the person, who is thus carried off by the ruffians, who have been lurking to intercept him. Separated from everything which he esteems in life, without the possibility even of bidding his friends adieu, beheld him overwhelmed in tears--wringing his hands in despair--looking backwards upon the spot where all his hopes and wishes lay;--while his family at home are waiting for him with anxiety and suspense--are waiting, perhaps, for sustenance--are agitated between hope and fear--till length of absence confirms the latter, and they are immediately plunged into inconceivable misery and distress. "If this instance, then, is sufficiently melancholy of itself, and is at all an act of oppression, how complicated will our guilt appear who are the means of snatching away thousands annually in the same manner, and who force them and their families into the same unhappy situation, without either remorse or shame!" Having proceeded to show, in a more particular manner than I can detail here, how, by means of the Slave Trade, we oppressed the stranger, I made an inquiry into the other branch of the subject, or how far we had a knowledge of his heart. To elucidate this point, I mentioned several specific instances out of those which I had collected in my journey, and which I could depend upon as authentic, of honour--gratitude--fidelity--filial, fraternal, and conjugal affection--and of the finest sensibility on the part of those who had been brought into our colonies from Africa in the character of slaves; and then I proceeded for a while in the following words:-- "If, then, we oppress the stranger, as I have shown, and if, by a knowledge of his heart, we find that he is a person of the same passions and feelings as ourselves, we are certainly breaking, by means of the prosecution of the Slave Trade, that fundamental principle of Christianity, which says, that we shall not do that unto another which we wish should not be done unto ourselves, and, I fear, cutting ourselves off from all expectation of the Divine blessing. For how inconsistent is our conduct! We come into the temple of God; we fall prostrate before Him; we pray to Him, that He will have mercy upon us. But how shall He have mercy upon us, who have had no mercy upon others! We pray to Him, again, that He will deliver us from evil. But how shall He deliver us from evil, who are daily invading the rights of the injured African, and heaping misery on his head!"