The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1843-08-31
D. S. MURRAY, PRINTER.

} onies should be suppressed. France and
Spain had been ao0rned Of the remote
consequences to tn en- as owneYs of colo
naeS of the success of tho Anglo-Amer-
leans. But neither Turgot nor YER
gennes,nor any one European or Amer
lean statesman Of that age, foresaw or
imagined what would be tho conse-
quence, by no means remote, upon their
own governments at home, OF the dis
memberment of the British empire and
the triumphant establishment by a seven
years war on the continent of North
America, of an Anglo Saxon confederate
nation, on the foundation Of the natural
equality Of mankind, and the inalienable
rights of man.
After Louis 18th lost his crown, he
remembered and bitterly repented the
part he had taken on the side of the
natural equality of mankind, and the
rights of human nature in the American
revolutionary war. For the revolution
in France, by which he lost his throne
and his life, was another fruit of the
same self-evident truth, that all men are
born equal, and have a RIGHT to life.
liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
wathout Infringing upon the same right
Of all other men,.
Until the day of the Declaration of
Independence, the condition of slavery
was recognized as lawful in ALL the
English colonies, The Constitution of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
established three years after the Decla.
ration of independence, adopted its self.
evident truths, and the judges of the
Supreme Court Of the Commonwealth
under that Constitution judicalIy decid-
ed that slavery within the Commonwealth
was thereby ipso facto abolished. Since,
that day, there has not been a slave
within the State.
The author Of the Declaration Of In
dependence was u STAKEHOLDER. His
self-evident truths taught him that slave
holding was an outrage upon the NATURAL
rights of mankind, at least as great as
parliamentary taxation without represent
alton. He held that opinion to his dy-
ing day. He introduced it into his draft
Of the Declaration Of Independence it.
self, imputing the existence of slavery in,
Virginia to George the third, as one Of
the crimes which proved him to be ty--
rant unfit to rule over free people.
Among the signers ofthe Declaration
of Independence there were at least
twenty slave holders probably thirty
They could not stomach tho application
of this self:evdent truth to themselves,
and they Topped it off as an unsightly
excrescence upon the tree of liberty
But his grandson and executor has care,
fully preserved it in the double form of
print and fac smile, in the edition which
he has published of his writings, and
there it stands, an unanswerabIe testi--
monial TO posterity, that on the roll Of
American abolition e, first and foremost
after the name of george Washington.
is that of Thomas Jefferson.
The result Of the North American
revolutionary war had prepared the minds
of the people Of the British Islands, to-
contemplate with calm composure the
new principle engrafteG upon the asso-
citation Of the civilized race of man, the.
self-evident truth, the natural equality of
mankind and the rights of man. They
had waged against it cruel and dlsas-
trous war OF seven years. Hundreds of
thousands of valiant Britons had fallen
victims, hundreds of millions of British
treasure had been squandered to sustain
:he principle of illimitable sovereignty
against the principle of illimitabe human
rights. The prize Of the conflict was
the liberty of the immortal soul of her
children. The Lord of Hosts had de-
cided the wager of battle. Human lib
erty was triumphant, and new confed-
GRAFTON entered upon the field OF humans
affairs, with the Urim and Phummim Of
the law of Sinai Right and Light
inscribed upon her banners, and upon tho
dadem around her brow, Holiness to-
the Lord
But while this contest had been i'm
progress, both of intellectual conflict.
and Of mortal combat, the same question
of human right against lawless power
had been started in the land Of both the
combatant parties to this controversy
The question of the American revolu-
ton had been of political government in
the relations of sovereign and subject.
Anthony Benezet, native of France,
settled i'll Pennsylvania, member Of the
Society of Friends, and Granville Sharp,
an English philanthropist at London,
were at tho same time blowing the bugle-
horn of human liberty, and the natural
equality of mankind against the institu-
ton of slavery, practised from time i'm
memorial by all nations, ancient and
modern. There were two modes of
slavery which had crept in upon the re-
lations of mankind to one another, first
as the results of war, by the right of con-
quest, and secondly by the voluntary
servitude of the feudal system. They
had both become odious by the silent
nrnUreSs IF Christiaritv The nracf;o0