This is the motto of all persons sincerely disposed to embrace the cross of the anti-slavery enterprise. The duty it imposes is two-fold; 1. To toil for the spread of the truth; and 2. To trust to the dissipation of error. The most potent barrier set up against the opponents of slavery is made of the prejudices carefully instilled into the popular mind against them. I propose, in brief, to point out their origin.

It is sedulously inculcated:

1. That anti-slavery is a pure sectional feeling, and springs from jealousy of the South.

Fifty years ago this idea might fairly have been entertained. Many of the arguments then used have no better root than political jealousy. But it is not so now. The ruling objection at present is, that slavery is WRONG, no matter where it may be found; that it is a moral evil, and an offence against religion, not less than a great political curse; that indifference to it among good men encourages its extension among bad men; and that nothing but resolute and universal condemnation of it in every form will stimulate to its abolition. How far these views are from jealousy of the South, must appear obvious enough to all who reflect that those who entertain them, consider the result to be arrived at as one which must spring from the voluntary convictions of those most affected by it, that they are getting rid of the only serious drawback to their own prosperity. Of course, then, it is the best interests of the South,—their strength, moral, social, and political,—that anti-slavery men believe they are promoting, by their course.

2. That the enemies of slavery desire to subvert the Constitution and to dissolve the Union.

Possibly, a few impatient spirits may have got so far. They constitute, however, but a very small portion of the number included in the term. Nine-tenths of these hold that neither the Constitution nor the Union should be brought into question at all. They consider that the resort to them as a protection and safeguard to slavery, by ill-judging and rash conservatives, has done more to put them into serious danger, than the acts of all others combined during the present century. Any man who relies upon a good government to sustain acknowledged evil, does much to modify the notions of goodness which honest and conscientious men have entertained respecting that government. He furnishes an entering wedge for doubt and distrust, which, if not removed, will grow into aversion. Anti-slavery men reason differently. They separate slavery from the Constitution and the Union, and, by seeking to destroy the former, desire to perpetuate the latter. They hold, that against the concentrated moral sentiment of the whole country, acting through its legitimate public channels, and aided by the prayers and the hopes of all the civilized world, it would be much more difficult to maintain slavery in the States, than if the dangers of general misgovernment and disunion were to come in to distract the public attention, and open up social disasters of a worse kind than those which they seek to remedy.

3. The spirit of this reform is denunciatory, violent, and proscriptive.

It is inevitable that all movements directed against the established errors of communities originate with men more or less fanatical in spirit. None but they have the necessary elements of character to advance at all. But, as others become convinced of the fundamental truths which they utter, the tendency of their association is to modify and soften the tone, and make it more nearly approximate the correct sentiment. At this period, there is quite as much of liberality among anti-slavery men as is consistent with a determined maintenance of their general purpose. Though disposed to be just to all who conscientiously differ with them in opinion, they cannot overlook the fact that many honest persons are too indifferent, and more are too compromising in their views of slavery. To rouse the one, and alarm the other class into a conviction of their responsibility for their apathy, is one of the most imperative duties. It may be that this is not always done in the most courtly or the choicest terms. Some allowances must be made for the spirit of liberty. These cases form, however, the exception, and not the rule, among anti-slavery men. The great majority well comprehend that the greatest results will follow efforts made without bitterness of temper. They remember that whilst the Saviour denounced without stint the formal scribe, the hollow Pharisee, and the greedy money-changer, he chose for his sphere of exertion the society of publicans and sinners.

4. Anti-slavery men seek to set slaves against their masters, at the risk of the lives and happiness of both.

This impression, which is much the most common, is, at the same time, the least founded in truth of all. No evidence, worthy of a moment's credit, has ever been produced, implicating any class of them in a suspicion of the kind. Nothing proves the absence of all malignity towards the slaveholders more clearly than this. If they sought really to injure them, what could be more easy than to stimulate disaffection along so extensive a line of boundary as that of the slave States? Probably few of them entertain any doubt of the abstract right of the slave to free himself from the condition in which he is kept against his own consent, in any manner practicable. How easy then the step from this opinion to an act of encouragement! That it has never been taken furnishes the most conclusive proof of the falsity of the popular impression, and of the moderations of the anti-slavery men, who seek only, in the moral convictions of the masters, for the source of freedom to the slaves.

But though it be true that all these common impressions are delusions strewn in the way of anti-slavery men to impair the effect of their exertions, it by no means follows that they should be induced by them to assume a moderation which encourages sluggishness. No great movement in human affairs can be made without zeal, energy, and perseverance. It must be animated by a strong will, and tempered by a benevolent purpose. Such is the shape which the anti-slavery reform is gradually assuming. Its motto, then, should be, as was said in the beginning:

TOIL AND TRUST.

Quincy, 10 July, 1853.