Wesley Corpus

5. But if this manner of procuring and tearing negroes is not consistent either with mercy or justice, yet there is a plea for it which every man of business will acknowledge to be quite sufficient. Fifty years ago, one meeting an eminent statesman in the lobby of the House of Commons, said, “You have been long talking about justice and equity, Pray which is this bill? Equity or justice?” He answered, very short, and plain, “D--n justice: it is necessity.” Here also the slave-holder fixes his foot: here he rests the strength of his cause. “If it is not quite right, yet it _must_ be so: there is an absolute _necessity for it_. It is necessary we should procure slaves: and when we have procured them, it is necessary to use them with severity, considering their stupidity, stubbornness and wickedness.” I answer, You stumble at the threshold: I deny that villany is ever necessary. It is impossible that it should ever be necessary, for any reasonable creature to violate all the laws of justice, mercy, and truth. No circumstances can make it necessary for a man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity. It can never be necessary for a rational being to sink himself below a brute. A man can be under no necessity, of degrading himself into a wolf. The absurdity of the supposition is so glaring, that one would wonder any one could help seeing it.