Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[392] the present day, they have persisted in their evil course until sudden destruction came upon them, or they were compelled to surrender their ill-gotten power in some other manner.

3. That the emancipation of the eight hundred thousand bondmen in the British West India Colonies forms no exception to this lamentable truth—as it was effected by the colossal power of the mother country, and in opposition to the feelings and wishes of the West India planters. That power, it is true, was stirred up by the moral and religious action of the people of England; but, had the liberation of the West India slaves depended upon the triumph of moral suasion in the colonies over the depravity of the planters, there is not the slightest probability that it would have taken place. Indeed, it is certain that the planters would never have allowed any antislavery agitation among them. The mere suspicion, a few years since, that the Wesleyan and Baptist missionaries sympathized with the slave population, and were hostile to slavery, raised such a tempest of fury against them that their chapels were ruthlessly destroyed, and they were either cast into prison or compelled to flee for their lives. The slaveholding power, wherever it holds absolute sway, will never tolerate any movement for its overthrow. There is, therefore, no liberty of speech or of the press in the slave States of America, and, consequently, no chance for the exercise of moral influence against slavery in that section of the country.

4. That, of all oppressors and tyrants who have cursed and afflicted mankind, none have ever equalled the enslavers of the colored race,—especially American republican slaveholders,—in ferociousness of spirit, moral turpitude of character, and desperate depravity of heart. I regard their conversion, as a body, to the side of bleeding humanity, by appeals to their understandings, consciences, and hearts, about as hopeless as any attempt to transform wolves and hyenas into lambs and doves, by the same process. Their understandings have become brutish, their consciences seared as with a hot iron, and their hearts harder than adamant.

5. That nothing will induce them to manumit their slaves but an utter inability to compete with the labor of freemen, in raising those productions which now give life and sustenance to the slave system; in connection with a rectified public sentiment, that shall everywhere regard them as the deadliest enemies of the human race.