Your candor will not impute to me any unkind or improper motive in entering upon this discussion; and you will permit me, in the outset, to enter a few disclaimers, in order that you may be the better able to appreciate what I have to say. In the first place, it is not my design to throw down the glove for the purpose of enlisting you, or any of your friends, in a controversy; this would be an unpleasant and profitless undertaking. Nor is it to advocate the doctrine, that sustaining the legal relation of master to a slave for a longer or shorter time is in all possible cases sin. I will admit that there may be circumstances in which the relation may subsist without any moral delinquency whatever; as, for instance, persons may become slaveholders in the eye of the law without their own consent, as by heirship; they sometimes become so voluntarily to befriend a fellow-creature in distress, to prevent his being sold away from his wife and family; persons sometimes purchase slaves for the sole purpose of emancipating them. In these, and other circumstances which might be mentioned, no reasonable man either North or South would ever think of pronouncing the relation a sinful one. Nor is it my design to question the conscientiousness or piety of all slaveholders at the South, both among the laity and clergy. Whoever makes the sweeping assertion, that "no slaveholder can be a child of God," gives fearful evidence that he himself is deficient in that "charity" which "hopeth all things." There is an obvious distinction between those who hold slaves for merely selfish purposes and regard them as chattels, and those who repudiate this system, and regard them as men having in common with themselves human rights, and would gladly emancipate them were there not legal obstacles, and could they do it consistently with their welfare, temporal and eternal. Nor is it my purpose to advocate immediate, universal, unconditional emancipation without regard to circumstances. This doctrine is not held by the great mass of northern Christians. There are, no doubt, some cases where immediate emancipation would inflict sad calamities, both upon the slaves themselves and the community. The opinions of northern men have often been misunderstood and misrepresented on this subject. The ground that calm, reflecting opponents of slavery take, is, that slaveholders should at once cease in their own minds to regard their slaves as chattels to be bought and sold and worked for mere profit, and that they should take immediate measures for the full emancipation of every one, as soon as may be consistent with his greatest good, and that of the community in which he lives.