CHARLES B ABB AGE. 197 



If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the earliest murderer the 

 indelible and visible mark of his guilt, he has also established laws by 

 which every succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the 

 testimony of his crime ; for every atom of his mortal frame, through 

 whatever changes its several particles may migrate, will still retain, 

 adhering to it through every combination, some movement derived from 

 that very muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated. 



The soul of the negro whose fettered body, surviving the living char- 

 nel-house of his iufected prisou, was thrown into the sea to lighten the \ 

 ship, that his Christian captor might escape the limited justice at length 

 assigned by civilized man to crimes whose profit had long gilded their 

 atrocity, will need, at the last great day of human account, no living 

 witness of his earthly agony. When man and all his race shall have 

 disappeared from the face of our planet, ask every particle of air still 

 floating over the unpeopled earth, and it will record the cruel mandate 

 of the tyrant. 



