The institutions of slavery and Christianity can never be antagonistic.
Slavery enforces obedience in the inferior to a superior power, for the
reciprocal benefit of both. Any deviation from the law of God pertinent
to the case, to some extent lessens the benefit and diminishes what
should have been the quotient of the general good. Slavery is therefore,
however rude in its obedience or commands, an attempt at civilized life;
and we may therefore judge of the amount of its abuses by its greater or
less success in the cultivation of those virtues incident to that
condition. True, this result is scarcely perceptible where the most
elevated are still deeply degraded, as is for ever the case in all those
regions where the light of Christianity has never been diffused. And it
is from these facts we find the providence of God to be that slavery, in
such regions, is always seeking abroad for a more enlightened master.
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