Few) to the Methodist conference, "If the relation be right, the means to maintain it are also right;" for without those means slavery could not exist.

Remove the dreadful scourge--the plaited thong--the galling fetter--the accursed chain--and let the slaveholder rely solely upon moral and religious power, by which to secure obedience to his orders, and how long do you suppose a slave would remain on his plantation?
The case only needs to be stated; it carries its own refutation with it.
Absolute and arbitrary power can never be maintained by one man over the body and soul of another man, without brutal chastisement and enormous cruelty.
To talk of _kindness_ entering into a relation in which one party is robbed of wife, of children, of his hard earnings, of home, of friends, of society, of knowledge, and of all that makes this life desirable, is most absurd, wicked, and preposterous.
I have shown that slavery is wicked--wicked, in that it violates the great law of liberty, written on every human heart--wicked, in that it violates the first command of the decalogue--wicked, in that it fosters the most disgusting licentiousness--wicked, in that it mars and defaces{345} the image of God by cruel and barbarous inflictions--wicked, in that it contravenes the laws of eternal justice, and tramples in the dust all the humane and heavenly precepts of the New Testament.
The evils resulting from this huge system of iniquity are not confined to the states south of Mason and Dixon's line.

Its noxious influence can easily be traced throughout our northern borders.

It comes even as far north as the state of New York.

Traces of it may be seen even in Rochester; and travelers have told me it casts its gloomy shadows across the lake, approaching the very shores of Queen Victoria's dominions.
The presence of slavery may be explained by--as it is the explanation of--the mobocratic violence which lately disgraced New York, and which still more recently disgraced the city of Boston.