New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-05-09
TEE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

This Society hOldS ltB annual pusihcSS "''''"o
this morning. Did the managers know ana
acknowledge the fearful work they have helped 70
accomplish during the past year, their report woud
fall with startling effect upon the large BODY oil
Christians whom they represent. In the great
struggle between Freedom and Slavery, they have
taken their part on the side of the oppressor and
against the helpless victim of his avarice; and
they have stamped Slavery with the seal OF
q Evangelical Christianity" However this may
be doubted by amioble persons at the North, 1t IS
well understood By the masters and overseers on
slave plantations; and The Journal Of Commerce
declared with exullaion that in case life members
were enabled to vote by proxy the managers could
rely upon the votes OF the entire Southern
States, however remote"
The Society was originally founded. "to promote
The interests of morality and vital Goodness by
the circulation OF tracts calculated to receive the
APPRECIATION of all evangelical Christians" The
RELIGIOUS Tract Society Of London, based upon q
similar principle, has published numerous tracts
against Slavery, a., for instance, Jamaica En-
" shaved and Frec;" Il" SlavcTrado and Adolf
tion;" Demoralizng Influence OF Slavery;
| Freedom" and the like, and very many OF their
| publications contain passages implying that slave
traders are thieves, that slaveholding is crime
and that the system of Slavery as it now exists is
monslrous violation not alone Of Evangelical Re
liqion but of the commonest morality and Justice
The management of the American Tract Society,"
of less cearness of vision as to what constitutes
Evangelical Christianity" and becoming more
and more the representative OF the commercial
spirit of this city, dictated tie adoption of com
promising system, whose bitter fruits are now seen
in the generalization of public sentiment, and that
practical national atheism which has eliminated
in the reopening of the slave-Trade.
With no open ayowal that they intended to extern
uate or approve Slavery and the slaye-trade, they
have, in reproducing the standard works OF English
evangelical writers, sometimes mutilated them by
omissions. and sometimes interpolated iabrications
of their own to suit the slave market Of the South
They " treated them as class of feons treat the
coin of the realm, clipping their golden edges
I" and sweating them out of their sterling value,
and then circulated the base counterfeit without
ga sign that it was not genuine" One instance
of mutilation is thus noted by DR.. Keith in the new
edition of bis " Evidences Of Prophecy"
at is worthy of remark that in copies Of this treat
ise repfblished and extensively circulated "a The sFe
| States of America, tbs paragraph IS omitted.
| In the same manner, from n tract of the Rev
Leigh Richmond, still circulated by the Society
was struck out sentence about " the price whic
"sordid unfeelDg avarice has affixed to the bod
"of poor negro slave" OF the forgeries, Sigh
perhaps in seeming, but immensely significant
meaning, it will be sufficient to quote two; on
from tract entitled 1.-The African Servant,
where verse in the original runs