: No Compromise with Slavery An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle New York by Garrison William Lloyd - Slavery United States; Enslaved persons Emancipation United States; Slavery and the church Slavery

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the morality of the pirate ship, the diabolism of the pit. They insult the common sense and shock the moral nature of mankind. Take them to Europe, and see with what scorn they will be universally treated! Go, first, to England, and gravely propound them there; and the universal response will proudly be, in the thrilling lines of Cowper,

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Inhale our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall!"

Every Briton, indignant at the monstrous claim, will answer, in the emphatic words of Brougham: "Tell me not of rights; talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves! I deny the right--I acknowledge not the property! The principles, the feelings of our nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it." And Curran, in words of burning eloquence, shall reply: "I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil--which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been offered upon the altar of Slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust--his spirit walks abroad in its own majesty--his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation."

Again--take these slaveholding pleas to Scotland and from the graves of the dead and the homes of the living, they shall be replied to in thunder-tones in the language of Burns: "A man's a man, for all that."

"Who would be a traitor knave? Who would fill a coward's grave? Who so base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee!"

Pass over to Ireland, and there repeat those excuses for Slavery, and eight million voices shall reply, in the words of Thomas Moore:

And the testimony of O'Connell, in behalf of all Ireland, shall pass from mouth to mouth: "I am an Abolitionist. I am for speedy, immediate Abolition. I care not what caste, creed or colour, Slavery may assume. Whether it be personal or political, mental or corporeal, intellectual or spiritual, I am for its instant, its total Abolition. I am for justice, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God." "Let none of the slave-owners, dealers in human flesh, dare to set a foot upon our free soil!" "We are all children of the same Creator, heirs of the same promise, purchased by the blood of the same Redeemer--and what signifies of what caste colour or creed we may be? It is our duty to proclaim that the cause of the negro is our cause, and that we will insist upon doing away, to the best of our human ability, the stain of Slavery, not only from every portion of this mighty empire, but from the whole face of the earth." "Let the American Abolitionists be honoured in proportion as the slaveholders are execrated."

Proceed to Austria, and there defend the practice of reducing men to Slavery, and the Austrian code shall proclaim: "Every man, by right of nature, sanctioned by reason, must be considered a free person. Every slave becomes free from the moment he touches the Austrian soil, or an Austrian ship."

Finally, enter the Tunisian dominions, and there urge the claim of property in man, and Musheer Ahmed Bashaw Bey shall reply: "We declare that all slaves that shall enter our kingdom, by land or by sea, shall be free; and further order, that every one born a slave in our dominions shall be considered as free from the very instant of his birth, and that he shall neither be sold nor bought."

Thus do I prove that, in regard to personal liberty--the right of every man to the ownership of his own body--even Italy, Austria and Tunis are in advance of this boasted Republic, and put it to open shame!

"Does, then, th' immortal principle within Change with the casual colour of the skin? Does matter govern spirit? or is mind Degraded by the form to which 'tis joined?"

What if I am rich, and another is poor--strong, and he is weak--intelligent, and he is benighted--elevated, and he is depraved? "Have we not one Father? Hath not one God created us?"

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