Slavery. By William E. Channing [pp. 268-306]

Slavery.
ing no additional alliances; making no compromises, for
the sake of gaining either money or men; receiving none,
either as ministers or elders, but those who appeared truly
and sincerely to love her system as a whole, and decisively
to prefer it to all others; were she, henceforth, simply to
take this course; turning neither to the right hand nor to the
left for the purpose of enlarging her borders; and exerting
herself to the utmost, to give her system, in its simplicity
and purity, as far as possible, to all nations; her growth
would be not, perhaps, quite so rapid; but it would be healthful, homogeneous, and peaceful. Every accession to her
numbers, instead of introducing disaffection and division into
her camp, would be an increase of real strength. Such a
policy, faithfully pursued, would be the precursor of the most
happy and prosperous day she has yet seen, and render her
a richer blessing than she has ever yet been, to the religious
denominations around her, to our country, and to the world.
ART. VI.-Slavery. By William E. Channing. Boston:
James Munroe and Company; 1835. pp. 166.
EVERY one must be sensible that a very great change has,
within a few years, been produced in the feelings, if not in
the opinions of the public in relation to slavery. It is not
long since the acknowledgement was frequent at the south,
and universal at the north, that it was a great evil. It was
spoken of in the slaveholding states, as a sad inheritance
fixed upon them by the cupidity of the mother-country in
spite of their repeated remonstrances. The known sentiments of Jefferson were reiterated again and again in every
part of his native state; and some of the strongest denunciations of this evil, and some of the most ardent aspirations
for deliverance from it ever uttered in the country, were
pronounced, but a few years since, in the legislature of Virginia. A proposition to call a convention, with the purpose
of so amending the constitution of the state as to admit of
the general emancipation of the slaves, is said to have failed
in the legislature of Kentucky by a sfigle vote.* The sen * It is probable that many reasons combined'to make a convention desirabl6
to those who voted for it. But to get rid of slavery, was said to be one of the
most prominent.
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