Another New Year is born, and, after the similitude of man’s inevitable fate, in a little space must die. Brief as it will prove, how serious and important will be its history—to individuals, as well as to nations! How many thrones may it not shake, or fetters sever, or revolutions witness! The crisis of the world hs not yet come: scarcely the preface of its eventful history is writ. Empires are to be re-fashioned, and a large portion of the earth reclaimed from superstition and barbarism, from oppression and idolatry. We talk of the march of the mind; we marvel at the age of creation;—but does knowledge keep pace with ignorance, or virtue with vice, or benevolence with suffering, or liberty with tyranny, among mankind? Most evidently not. How long will it take to regenerate and disenthral benighted Africa? how long to christianize Asia? how long to reform republican America? how long to redeem the world? Surely time is in its infancy. Strange that men predict a millennium at so early a day.
The past has been an eventful year; the present will probably be yet more troublous. Europe has just begun to feel the upheavings of the earthquake which isto overthrow its strong towers, and the heat of a fire which is to melt every chain. There are signs in the political firmament of Great Britain which portend sudden and disastrous convulsions; but known only to God are the hidden things of time.
In this country, of those who hailed the opening of the past year, there have died at least three hundred thousand. More than a million mourners have gone about the streets.
How frail is man! Who and how many must die the present year? Perhaps half a million. Of this number, how many shall we or our friends make? O Life! O Death! O Eternity!
In this free and christian republic, too, be it remembered, there were kidnapped during the past year, and reduced to remediless bondage, more than fifty thousand infants, the offspring of slave parents!!! A greater number, this year, is to meet a similar doom! Have we no reason to fear the judgments of Heaven upon our guilty land?
Original Document
To-day in The Liberator Vol. I No. 1 (January 1, 1831). 3.- This is the first article.
- This is the last article.