Free Produce (Article)

Free Produce (Article)

It is evidently wrong to pay the slaveholder for his plunder, either personally or through a series of agents, except where it is expedient, to avoid considerable loss or injury, while yet abstinents are so few as not to affect the market, for in dealing with so extreme an evil as Slavery, the expediency principle is not to be wholly rejected. But his does not apply where several can join in sending to a Free Produce depot. Our moral power depends upon our consistency. Extensive abstinence from slave-sugar inaugurated that phase of Anti-Slavery in England which proved successful. The willing consumers of Slave Produce are responsible for Slavery, and such are all who would refuse to sign the following Pledge: We pledge ourselves to promote the Free Produce Movement by all reasonable means, especially by contributions in the way of premiums, &c.; to stimulate the supply of free cotton and substitutes; and we pledge ourselves that when a number of families, suppose two millions, at home and abroad, sufficient to materially affect the slaveholders and their patrons, the manufacturers and merchants, shall have signed this pledge, we will league together in first appealing to those classes to move at once for Abolition or lose our custom; then if unheeded, in at least making an earnest trial to abstain totally and inflexibility from the staple products of Slavery. How much more noble this than to propose a "compensation" (horrid misnomer) to the slaveholder for emancipation! This, I think, would be more effectual than all other peaceable measures, though I am for carrying onward all together.

L. CLOUGH.

L. Clough

7.20.1855