without blushing. What Virginian or Carolinian would not blush, to be told at a northern wateringplace, in the presence of enlightened foreigners-Sir, the laws of your State permit a man to sell his own son, as he would a mule; or his own daughter, only a shade yellower than himself, as he would sell a horse. What stuff is that chivalry made of, that would not cower to be told that in the chivalrous land of the sunny south, the chastity of more than a million of women is without a shadow of legal protection that the father, the brother, or the husband of one of those women, if he should lift his hand against the seducer or the ravisher, might be killed on the spot, as if he were a mad dog? I cannot believe that the people of the south-the more intelligent portion of them particularly-are so insensible to the public opinion of the world as not to care what the world thinks of these laws of theirs, which, instead of requiring the master to render to his servants that which is just and equal, forbid his paying them wages; which, instead of requiring the master to see that his servants receive such an education as an enlightened State ought to furnish for every human being reared under its jurisdiction, make it a crime to teach a slave the alphabet; and which, instead of regarding the slave as a being having personal rights, even against his master, make it impossible for the master to endow him with any rights whatever.

Your correspondent, Mr. Editor, and what is of more consequence, your readers, can see whether my language is, as he affirms, "sufficiently indiscriminate and abusive to gratify the feelings of the

most thorough-going political revilers of the day." In my views, and in my language, I discriminate' carefully between the relation of a master to one whom society has made a slave, and the conduct of that master in that relation-or in other words, between the power of doing wrong which the law gives to the master as against the slave, and the use which the master makes of that power. I'discriminate' carefully between the churches of the south and the offences of individuals in communion with those churches, and instead of excommunicating all slaveholders simply as such, and all churches which contain slaveholders, I would, in the discharge of a fraternal duty, call upon the southern churches themselves to put in force the discipline of Christ's house against specific sins, which their own moral sense acknowledges to be incompatible with the credibility of a Christian profession. I also 'discriminate' between the laws of the Southern States respecting slavery and the blacks, and the individual citizens of those States; and while I regard those laws with unlimited abhorrence as a disgrace to my country and a disgrace to the human species, I regard the people of those States as better than their laws-thousands of them a great deal better. I am willing to treat individual citizens of slaveholding States with all the courtesy and respect due to gentlemen and to American fellow-citizens, except as I find individuals unworthy of such treatment. But they on the other hand must allow me, here at home, a freeman's privilege of abhorring slavery and of uttering my abhorrence. So I could treat a gentlemanly Turk or Persian with courtesy and hospitali

ty in my New England home, but he must not require me to give up my Christian and American opinions, out of complaisance to his Islamism and his polygamy.

Your correspondent seems to intimate that I, as living in a free-labor State, am necessarily too ignorant on the subject of slavery to have any opinion worth regarding. As if a man could not tell whether it is wrong to buy and sell human beings at public auction "in lots to suit purchasers," without living in a slave State. As if the public opinion of a slave State, armed with the furies of Lynch law, and assuming an unlimited arbitrary power over every man's private judgment (unless it is very private indeed) were a necessary guide for erring human nature to a knowledge of the right and wrong about slavery. As if I, living here, where every man is free to think and free to speak on every side, and where I have had the privilege of receiving through the post-office no fewer than three copies of Gov. Hammond's defence of slavery, were less competent to form an unbiased opinion, than I should be if I lived where no man is allowed to speak but on one side, and where, if I should be so unfortunate as to form an opinion contrary to public opinion, and should be found out in it, the least that I, as a northern man, could expect, would be to be arrayed in tar and feathers, unless I should make my escape as a felon flees from justice.

Your correspondent farther suggests that if I "would reform the institutions of the south," I ought to "come and dwell" there, where the work is to be done. Let me say then, that I have not un

dertaken to reform the institutions of the south. I leave that work in the hands of the people of the south to whom it belongs, and whom God will hold accountable for it. I acknowledge the kindness of your correspondent's hospitable invitation, but God has given me a better lot. "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places." I find myself where all the work that I can do comes daily to my hands; and I do not conceive that, considering all my relations, I could do more for the kingdom of Christ, or the welfare of my country there, than I can here. If God had cast my lot there, I would stay there; for nowhere upon earth can more good be done by a good man who is native on the soil and has the confidence of the people, than there. I would not go on a foreign mission, and leave that field behind it were as wise to go from China on a foreign mission to Kamschatka. Least of all would I, like some southern ministers, seek a settlement at the north for the sake of getting away from slavery.

me;

Respectfully yours,

New-Haven, Sept. 8, 1845.

LEONARD BACON.

THE COLLISION

BETWEEN THE

ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY AND THE AMERICAN BOARD,

[NEW YORK EVANGELIST, 1846.]

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW-YORK EVANGELIST:

GENTLEMEN :-I have felt myself called to prepare the following papers, because I see, in some quarters, evidence that the question between the Anti-Slavery Society and the Foreign Missionary Board needs once more to be distinctly stated, and that the position of the Board is not fairly understood. I send the papers to you, asking a place for them in the columns of your journal, instead of attempting any other form of publication, because 1 know not in what other way I can reach so many of those readers who are in a state of mind to be influenced by the views which I wish to present.

The extent to which my name has been used in connection with this subject, seems on the whole to require that what I publish shall be on my own responsibility.

New-Haven, Jan. 22, 1846.

Yours, &c.,

LEONARD BACON.

NO. I. THE QUESTION STATED.

AMONG the many mischievous effects of slavery in its unnatural connection with our republican and Christian institutions, is that erratic philanthropy which has usurped the name of abolitionism. There is so much in slavery that excites the mind to indignation; the subject, at the same time, is so compli