It shows us, again,
_how_ this emancipation may be brought about. The process is so clearly
detailed, that any one may follow it. It is also a case for
encouragement, inasmuch as it was attended with success.
I have now considered no less than six cases of slaves emancipated in
bodies, and a seventh of slaves, who were led up to the very threshold
of freedom, comprehending altogether not less than between five and six
hundred thousand persons; and I have considered also all the objections
that could be reasonably advanced against them. The result is a belief
on my part, that emancipation is not only _practicable_, but that it is
_practicable without danger_. The slaves, whose cases I have been
considering, were resident in different parts of the world. There must
have been, amongst such a vast number, persons of _all characters_. Some
were liberated, who had been _accustomed to the use of arms_. Others at
a time when the land in which they sojourned was afflicted _with civil
and foreign wars_; others again _suddenly_, and with _all the vicious
habits of slavery upon them_. And yet, under all these disadvantageous
circumstances, I find them all, without exception, _yielding themselves
to the will of their superiors_, so as to be brought by them _with as
much ease and certainty into the form intended for them_, as clay in the
hands of the potter is fashioned to his own model. But, if this be so, I
think I should be chargeable with a want of common sense, were I _to
doubt for a moment_, that emancipation _was not practicable_; and I am
not sure that I should not be exposed to the same charge, were I to
doubt, that emancipation _was practicable without danger_.
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