Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/140

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DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION AMERICAN SLAVERY?

blood. It has led men in all ages to reduce their fellow men to slavery for their own profit. It leads men now to put their own children under the lash of the overseer. Nor does the Slave Power fail, in its extremity, to receive the sympathy of the element from which it is sprung. The heart of capitalist tyranny everywhere is with that supreme tyranny of capital which makes its victims slaves. Feudalism, too, knows its own, and feels its affinity to a system under which, as in the times of serfdom, the labourer is under the absolute dominion of the lord.

Christian England tampered with Slavery for wealth. She has paid the penalty of her offence in the depraving influence of the West Indian slave-owners on the character and manners of this nation, in the heavy sum which, when the hour of remorse arrived, was given to purchase Emancipation, and in the burden and expense of holding a number of useless dependencies in the West Indies; a burden and expense which will probably be greatly increased if a great Slave Power is established on the neighbouring shore. The Christian States of North America have tampered with Slavery for Empire and for the pride of a great Confederacy; and they have paid the penalty, first in the poison which the domination of the Slave-owner has spread through their political and social system, and secondly, in this dreadful and disastrous war.


Printed by Messrs. Parker, Cornmarket, Oxford.