fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

to the touches of affection. The robber and the murdererwould often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which ourtempers sustain, provoke us into justice.O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only thetyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the oldworld is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been huntedround the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her.Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given herwarning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and prepare in timean asylum for all mankind.Ben Franklin:Promoting the Abolition of SlaveryAn Address to the Publicfrom the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery,and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in BondageIt is with peculiar satisfaction we assure the friends ofhumanity, that, in prosecuting the design of our association,our endeavours have proved successful, far beyond our mostsanguine expectations.Encouraged by this success, and by the daily progress of thatluminous and benign spirit of liberty, which is diffusing itselfthroughout the world, and humbly hoping for the continuanceof the divine blessing on our labours, we have ventured to makean important addition to our original plan, and do thereforeearnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feelthe tender emotions of sympathy and compassion, or relish theexalted pleasure of beneficence.Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, thatits very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, maysometimes open a source of serious evils.The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute animal,too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of thehuman species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do alsofetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affectionsof his heart. Accustomed to move like a mere machine, by thewill of a master, reflection is suspended; he has not the powerof choice; and reason and conscience have but little influenceover his conduct, because he is chiefly governed by the passionof fear. He is poor and friendless; perhaps worn out by extremelabour, age, and disease.Under such circumstances, freedom may often prove amisfortune to himself, and prejudicial to society.Attention to emancipated black people, it is therefore to behoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, asfar as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far thatattention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, andwhich we mean to discharge to the best of our judgment andabilities.To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restoredto freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty,to promote in them habits of industry, to furnish them withemployments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances,and to procure their children an education calculatedfor their future situation in life; these are the great outlinesof the annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which weconceive will essentially promote the public good, and thehappiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellowcreatures.A plan so extensive cannot be carried into execution without104 fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007