274 ENGLAND S GUILT AS TO AMERICAN SLAVERY. 



that the southerners would bear more patiently the plain 

 truths they were about to speak to them. 



Now, I believe there are not many persons in Great 

 Britain at present unless they are in some way interested 

 in tropical culture or commerce who will attempt even 

 to palliate the great share which England, as a nation, 

 has had in the prosecution of the slave-trade, for the 

 supply both of her own colonies and of those of Spain 

 and Portugal. And the national guilt is probably none 

 the less, that the great mass of the people were wholly 

 ignorant of, and untainted by, the vices of the system. 

 They were culpably indifferent, because of this ignorance, 

 but it was at a time when knowledge was difficult to 

 spread, and when the arrow must pass through many 

 obstacles which should reach their hearts. 



Yet there are a few considerations which, candidlv 

 weighed, will, I think, go far to remove, not the guilt of 

 our conduct, but the present sting and reproach which 

 our Transatlantic brethren are anxious to find in it. 



It may be said with truth of all the moral and social 

 evils, almost without exception, which now disturb the 

 United States, that they were introduced into the north 

 ern part of their Continent by the arrival of the Anglo- 

 Saxon race, and that for all, therefore, we are answer 

 able. But how far back are we to go, if nation is to 

 shuffle off upon nation the evil habits and vices they 

 have severally inherited ? 



Then if slavery was introduced by England, or main 

 tained in the colonies in spite of the remonstrances of 

 some of them as of that of Massachusetts, made at an 

 early period and was left as a legacy, or rather wrested 

 from her as a prize, at the Revolution, it ought to be 

 borne in mind, that there was at the very time of the 

 American Revolution a larger body of men in Great 

 Britain petitioning against, and in active opposition to 

 slavery, than the entire white non-slave-holding popula- 



