case of American Slavery, the upper classes of this country, from political considerations, have shewn a change of feeling, and the Clergy of the Established Church have gone with the upper classes, the Free Churches, more unbiassed organs of Christianity, have almost universally kept the faith.
If, then, we look to the records of Christianity in the Bible, we find no sanction for American Slavery there. If we look to the history of Christendom, we find the propagators and champions of the faith assailing Slavery under different forms and in different ages, without concert, yet with a unanimity which would surely be strange if Christianity and Slavery were not the natural enemies of each other.
On the other side of the Atlantic two communities are now grappling in deadly conflict. The principle of one of them is Free Labour, while that of the other is Slavery; and few can doubt that this is the root of their antagonism, whatever may be the immediate cause of the present war.
It can hardly be denied that the community of New England, of which Free Labour is the principle, was founded under the auspices of Christianity, though it may have been Christianity of an austere and narrow kind, such as persecution produces in peasant hearts. The avowed object of the settlement was “the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith;” and one of the fathers of the Colony said, “It concerneth New England to remember that they were originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade. If any man among us make religion as twelve, and the
