"But many who admit the advantages and practicability of the
plan we have proposed, will be tempted to despair of success, by
the apparent difficulty of inducing an effort for its
accomplishment. Similar difficulties, however, have been
experienced and overcome. The abolition of the slave trade, and
the suppression of intemperance were once as apparently hopeless
as the cessation of war. Let us again recur for instruction and
encouragement to the course pursued by the friends of freedom
and temperance. Had the British abolitionists employed
themselves in addressing memorials to the various courts of
Europe, soliciting them to unite in a general agreement to
abandon the traffic, they would unquestionably have labored in
vain, and spent their strength for nought. They adopted another
and a wiser course. They labored to awaken the consciences of
their own countrymen, and to persuade them to do justice and to
love mercy; and thus to set an example to the rest of Europe,
infinitely more efficacious than all the arguments and
remonstrances which reason and eloquence could dictate.
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