Vermont Telegraph

Our Principles.—We recognize the inherent, eternal and unalterable distinction and opposition between right and wrong; the rectitude and supreme authority of God's law; the mutual obligations, and corresponding duties and rights of all moral beings.

We hold human rights to be inalienable: because their corresponding duties are unchanging; because moral qualities are indelible; because the human soul is immortal; because the law of God is irrepealable: because the throne of God is immovable; because the Sovereign Benefactor who ordained and conferred them is not man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should repent.

The Magna Charta of these rights we peruse in the sacred scriptures—their signet we see enstamped upon every son of Adam—their evidence we feel interwoven in the very fibres of our own existence. Their denial we consider to be a denial of the law and of the gospel—a libel upon human nature, and a blasphemy against Him who created man in his own image.

We claim these rights for ourselves, and consequently for all men. We claim them on the ground of our common human nature. We claim them because we are men, not because we are Americans, or Europeans, or Asiatics, or Africans. We claim them because we sustain responsibilities which require their exercise, not because our fathers successfully resisted certain encroachments upon them. We claim them as men, not as rich men, or as poor men;—not as learned or unlearned men;—not as tall men, or as short men;—not as having straight hair, or crisped hair; or blue eyes or black eyes; or as being white, or red, or olive, or tawny, or sable, in our complexions! We claim them as men, not as "men of property and standing:"—as men; not as laborers, still less, as idlers!

Our Objects.—It is for the rights of MAN that we are contending—the rights of ALL men—our own rights—the rights of our neighbor—the liberties of our country—of our posterity—of our fellow men—of all nations and of all future generations.

It is for principles, GREAT principles, fundamental and unalterable principles, the principles of truth, of righteousness, and of freedom.

It is for practices in accordance with correct principles—

It is with the weapons of truth, in the warfare against error—

It is to the death struggle between American Slavery and American Freedom that we have come up:—it is in the great moral conflict between the practices of oppression and the precepts of righteousness, that we gird on our armor. Lower objects than these we disclaim from whatever quarter they may be attributed to us.

By the principles of peace and righteousness addressed to the master, we hope for the enfranchisement of the slave in season to avert the bloody catastrophe, anticipated by Mr. Jefferson.

By the wise and prompt use of the liberties we enjoy under the Constitution, we hope to terminate these glaring infringements of it which now threaten its existence.

We hope to bury sectional jealousy in the grave of the only demon that, in our country, has ever engendered it:—we mean Slavery.

By persuading our Southern brethren voluntarily to remove "the curse entailed upon them" by their own criminal consent, we hope to see the entire South budding and blossoming as the rose, and becoming as the garden of God. The redemption of the oppressor from the bondage of sin; his rescue by timely repentance from the long deferred judgments of heaven: and his participancy in the rich blessings of many ready to perish, are among the objects dearest our hearts.

We seek nothing less than the overthrow of despotism by the principles of freedom; the termination of oppression by the reign of righteousness—the establishment of liberty by the supremacy of law—the conformity of law to the spirit of liberty.

We hold that emancipation should be immediate, unconditional, and universal.

It should be immediate—because since slavery is a sin, it cannot be continued without a continuance of sin:—Because if inalienable rights may be withheld, on the score of an expediency of which the legislator or the interested party may be the judge, there can be no possible security for the liberty of any man, or of any community. So that a denial of this duty is a denial of human rights and a warfare against universal liberty.

It should be unconditional—for the reason just stated; Because all sin should be unconditionally abandoned: Because it is an abrogation of all law and all liberty, to extend to a man his rights on conditions: Because, there can be none but unrighteous conditions imposed upon a man as an indispensable pre-requisite for allowing him the exercise of his inherent rights! A man has a perfect right, for example, to a certain house. May the unlawful occupant restore it to him on conditions! No. But what is any man's right in a house compared with every man's right in himself?

It should be universal—for all the reasons already enumerated: Because every man is as much entitled to his inalienable rights as any man can be. If there be a slave on earth who ought not to be immediately emancipated, then there is no freeman on earth, who holds any substantial and valid title to his freedom.—Phila.