FOR THE UNIONIST.

“Philosophy, though eagle-eyed in nature’s tendencies” has not succeeded in drawing a line of discrimination between the members of the human family, so marked as to proscribe from the commonwealth of humanity those who Cowper says are “guilty of a skin not colored like his own.” Indeed if my complexion does afford proof that I am not so nobly born, not endowed with the same unalienable privileges and rights as those of a different color, I declare that I am not ambitious of attaining their prerogatives, by changing skins with any of them—and much less do I repine at the decrees of Him who has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.

Though in the New-England States color is not deemed a sufficient offence to consign the limbs of the tawny inhabitant to the shackle, and his back to the scourge, yet the prejudices of the South are not wholly unfelt in the North; although the fetter falls from the limb of the African, when his foot touches the New England soil, still there lingers about the heart of a yankee some of that bitterness and contempt towards his colored brethren, which forged galling chains for that oppressed race.

Many specious arguments have been advanced to prove the justness of African Slavery, and although many honest men have met and refuted them, others have allowed themselves to be wheedled into the comfortable idea, that they are made of better clay, and entitled to more consideration, than their degraded sufferers. Let me call upon you , who have still a small proportion of humanity left in your bosoms, to start from the siren flaterers, who would lull you to repose, while thousand of your fellow creatures groan beneath the lash of unfeeling tyrants, under the flag of a nation professing to be guided by the law of Liberty, and Equal Rights! Have you not professed to the world, that “ALL MEN ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL.” Is not this mockery? Are not these very letters shaded by the crimson blood of your suffering brethren? Or are not Africans men? Tyrant, does not your bleeding slave while kneeling to you for mercy, address you in the language of human nature—and do not you prove yourself incapable of appreciating that language? ‘Tis you who seem less than a man, and most devoid of every principle, every attribute of humanity.

One miserable refuge, behind which the slave-holder retreats, is this; that many slaves are very well satisfied with their situation and would not wish to change it!” Very fine indeed! Because you have reduced them to this abject dependence, and perverted all the noble independence of their nature, you have a right to trample upon their undeniable rights, and continue the iniquitous business! Because a blind man loves the taste of arsenic, (being ignorant of its deadly tendency) you will thrust it down his throat! From what must that contentedness arise, which induces the slave to embrace the scourge and hub the fetter. Would you be content to drudge for a master, and crouch at his feet like a dog? You say “death before slavery,” and you would despise a white man who would submit to the degradation of unlimited subordination. Because a wretch who is weary of life requests you to shoot him, would you be justified in blowing his brains out with a pistol? Answer these questions ye advocates for slavery, and if “custom has not steeled your hearts” to every principle of rectitude, you will see that mercy to a negro entitles you to no praise, since he has the same claim to liberty and respect as a European.

CATO.