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NOTE.
The author of this Discourse delivered a lecture last winter in New York, on
"( American Morals and Manners," in which he touched upon the subject of slavery.
Words and sentences were caught up from newspaper reports of that Lecture, and
wrested into a charge against the author of advocating slavery. Nothing could be
farther from the truth; nor is there any discrepancy between that Lecture and the
present Discourse, The object of the Lecture was, on the point now in hand, to
defend the country, against the charge of immorality founded on the bare fact that
we possess slaves, or that we do not emancipate them immediately. The origin of the
system was therefore pointed out, the hereditary nature of the possession, the difficulty
of the case, and the fact that the physical sufferings of the Slave, were apt to be
overrated by Abolition and Foreign writers. This has been called obsequiousness,
time-serving, and by various other hard names. Whether it be such to defend the
country he honors and loves, against a storm of foreign reproach, mingled with gusts
of domestic spleen and discontent, the author is content that wise and sensible men
should judge,