412 
THE SLAVE QUESTION. 
ticular vortex ; and the only difference between the 
vortices, is in the one, a certain prospect of a life of 
toil, with an accompanying portion of comfort, which 
is not fallacious because interested ; — in the other, a 
dim, indefinable, — and to the victims who are hurried 
into it, — an inappreciable vista of freedom and happi- 
ness. They have no choice ; but if they had, they 
could see no difference in the probationary sufferings. 
Such anomalies should no longer exist : they recoil on 
ourselves. 
After the sacrifices made by England, for the purpose 
of repairing the injuries inflicted, she has at least a right 
to claim the meed of sincerity in her repentance. She 
may also try to awaken other nations to a sense of their 
guilt; but remorse at the recollection of her own 
crimes should gnard her against the assumption of in- 
fallibility : and if in our strenuous efforts to attain a 
blessed end we find the road loads wider and wider 
from it, let us have the magnanimity to retrace our 
stops to find a safer though a more circuitous path. 
If we look back on that already trodden, we shall 
find it too surely indicated by the blood of millions, 
shed in great part by our efforts, suddenly and vio- 
lently to cure a gangrene which has been festering for 
ages. 
During four hundred years the knowledge has been 
spreading in Africa, that the white man required her 
sons to spend their lives in hopeless and excessive toil 
to minister to his wants ; and he sanctioned the em- 
