The Just Inference.

But even if the highest blacks were lower than the lowest whites, that would not justify enslaving them. For they are men and brethren still, and have the sacred rights of manhood. The more debased they are, the stronger is their claim upon the sympathy and help of their more favored brothers. If “we who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak,” our brother’s weakness is a poor excuse for making him our beast of burden. Instruction is the right of ignorance; kind care, of helplessness; and wholesome moral influences, of a low moral state. Slavery gives neither. They can all be better given without it. We never offer it to the degraded, ignorant, and helpless here among ourselves. Nay, such an offer would be deemed an outrage on the feelings of the public, and insulting to the very vilest of our paupers; and to urge in its behalf that “they cannot take care of themselves,” would be thought an aggravation of the wrong. How then can we pretend to think it suited to the case of colored men, if they are helpless, ignorant, degraded?