HIS VIEWS ON SLAVERY. 239 



the entire physical system ; " and that we should say 

 to Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas, that slav- 

 ery, " although it is eminently your curse, is also a 

 great national evil." " Slavery," he affirmed, "is 

 now generally acknowledged, in this country, to be 

 an enormous evil." Alluding to the legislative de- 

 bates which followed the then recent slave insurrec- 

 tions in the South, he said : " The statesmen of Vir- 

 ginia and Maryland fully proved that slavery is an 

 intolerable evil : bitter to the slave ; costly to the 

 proprietor ; dangerous to the morals of the youth ; 

 as a reliance for national wealth, unprofitable and 

 wasteful ; as a means of public defence, worse than 

 useless; a blot on our national honor; a reproach to 

 our moral character ; a source of increasing do- 

 mestic danger ; an insult to the purity of our relig- 

 ion; and an outrage on the Majesty of Heaven!" 

 " Having long and anxiously contemplated this sub- 

 ject, I have looked earnestly for the time which 

 seems now at hand when the national conscience 

 should be thoroughly awakened to the sin of slav- 

 ery." He lived to see the enlightened views of those 

 Virginia statesmen repudiated by their children, and 

 slavery defended both as a divine institution and the 

 surest bulwark of Christian civilization ! The re- 

 mainder of his address is mostly devoted to the ad- 

 vocacy of colonization, and of efforts for the intel- 

 lectual and moral improvement of the emigrant 

 blacks. But it became obvious to all discerning 

 men that African colonization would never remove 

 slavery, or even stay its progress, under the power- 

 ful motive afforded by the increased facilities for the 

 culture of cotton, and the great demand for that 



