Читать книгу Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader - Benj. N. Martin - Страница 47

A people used to labor moderately for their living, training up their children in frugality and business, have a happier life than those who live on the labor of slaves. Freemen find satisfaction in improving and providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery during life, have not the like inducement to be industrious. … Men having power, too often misapply it: though we make slaves of the negroes, and the Turks make slaves of the Christians, liberty is the natural right of all men equally. … The slaves look to me like a burdensome stone to such who burden themselves with them. The burden will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable to us. … I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, and, in some pressure of spirits, said the love of ease and gain are the motives, in general, of keeping slaves; and men are wont to take hold of weak arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable. …

I was silent during the meeting for worship, and, when business came on, my mind was exercised concerning the poor slaves, but did not feel my way clear to speak. In this condition I was bowed in spirit before the Lord, and, with tears and inward supplication, besought him so to open my understanding that I might know his will concerning me; and at length my mind was settled in silence.

At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God, have made deep and lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide wealth and to uphold a delicate life has grievously entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring, and though some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the humbling power of truth, they have continued in these entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply, and in answering this call, the faces of the poor have been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing. …

… In the uneasiness of body which I have many times felt by too much labor, not as a forced but a voluntary oppression, I have often been excited to think on the original cause of that oppression which is imposed on many in the world. The latter part of the time wherein I labored on our plantation, my heart, through the fresh visitations of heavenly love, being often tender, and my leisure time being frequently spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such as had great estates, generally lived in that humility and plainness which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things useful, that labor both for men and other creatures would need to be no more than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which serve chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which at present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather, might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued.

[Footnote 5: A Quaker preacher, a native of New Jersey, whose Travels and Autobiography have been much admired abroad, notably by Charles Lamb.]

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=John M. Mason,[6] 1770–1829.=

From the Address in behalf of the Bible Society.