of moral and intellectual culture, in many states making it a high penal offense to teach them to read; thus perpetuating whatever of evil there is, that proceeds from ignorance:

"4th. To set up between parents and children an authority higher than the impulses of nature, and the laws of God; which breaks up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and at pleasure separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child; thus abrogating the clearest laws of nature, thus outraging all decency and justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of beings created like themselves in the image of the Most High God.

"This is slavery as it is daily exhibited in every slave state. This is that dreadful but unavoidable necessity,' for which you may hear so many mouths uttering excuses, in all parts of the land." [African Repository.]

759. Further, slavery deprives men of the dignity of human beings, and degrades them to a level with mere beasts of burden. They are converted, by slave laws, from persons to things, and treated as no longer possessing the recognized attributes of human nature. They are, in the eye of the law, no longer acknowledged as men. Their pleasures and pains, their wishes and desires, their thoughts and feelings, are of no value whatever. Even their crimes are not acknowledged as wrongs, any more than those of a brute, lest it may be supposed that being regarded as capable of doing a wrong, they ought to be regarded as capable of suffering a wrong.

They of course are thus legally deprived of their nature as moral beings, having no law but the will of the master, like the brute property of the master.

760. It is pleaded, in favor of slavery, that the negro is a being inferior to the white man in his faculties. He is asserted to approach in his nature to the inferior animals; and hence it is inferred that he may be possessed as a thing, like those animals.

761. This defense of slavery may easily be overthrown. The same faculties of mind have appeared in the negro as in the white, so far as the condition of negro nations has afforded opportunities for their development. The negroes do not appear to be duller, ruder, or coarser, in mind or habits, than many savage white nations, or than

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nations, now highly cultured, were in their early condition.

The negro has a moral nature, discriminates between right and wrong in actions. He has the same affections and springs of action as ourselves. He can buy and sell, and promise and perform. He has, equally with other races of men, moral sentiments: can admire and love what he considers good, and condemn and hate what he considers bad. He has the sentiment of rights and wrongs also. In short, there is no phrase which can be used, describing the moral and rational nature of man, which may not be used of the negro, as of the white. The assertion that there is, between the white and the black race, any difference on which the one can found a right to enslave the other, is utterly false.

Various races of men differ somewhat in their external form, but are furnished substantially with the same physical organization. They differ also greatly in color, but why a white color, rather than a black, should be an attribute of man as such, it would be difficult to show.

The use of language is a plain and simple criterion of the difference between man and the brutes; and we have shown that the negro possesses other distinguishing attributes of the human nature.

Again, the laws which prohibit slaves to be taught to read or write suppose the capacity of negroes for intellectual culture; and are an implicit confession that it is necessary to degrade their minds in order to keep their bodies in slavery.

The claim of the negro to be regarded as a man being thus briefly established, the charge will hold good against slavery as a system, that it is a violation of the Eighth Commandment, being a system of robbery and oppression of the most decided and willful character.

[Whewell's Elements.], 762. It comes in conflict also with other expressions of the will of God. 66 Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." James v. 4. "Rob not the poor because he is poor." Prov. xxii. 22. "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that

useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." Jer. xxii. 13. "The laborer is worthy of his reward." 1 Tim. v. 18. These passages condemn the system of slavery, in which a fair equivalent is confessedly not rendered for the labor performed, so that the master may live in indolence. If a fair equivalent were rendered, the system would become so utterly unprofitable, that it must soon be abandoned.

Further, the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament condemns oppression, as well as the withholding of just wages. "What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord of hosts." Is. iii. 15. See also Ps. xii. 5; James ii. 13; v. 4.

Mr. Barnes has remarked, that if it were the design to originate a system of laws for the very purpose of oppression, scarcely any new element could be introduced into the laws of the Southern states; and that if all that properly comes under the name of oppression were removed from those laws, slavery, as a system, would soon come to an end.

763. It is a question of some interest, whether any moral wrong attaches to those who hold slaves by inheritance and not by purchase. To this the reply may be given in the forcible language of Mr. Dymond :—

'He who had no right to steal the African can have none to sell him. From him who is known to have no right to sell, another can have no right to buy, or to possess. Sale, or gift, or legacy imparts no right to me, because the seller, or giver, or bequeather had none himself. The sufferer has just as valid claim to liberty at my hands as at the hands of the ruffian who first dragged him from his home. Every hour of every day the present owner is guilty of injustice. Nor is the case altered with respect to those who are born on a man's estate. The parents were never the landholder's property, and therefore the child is not. Nay, if the parents had been, rightfully, slaves, it would not justify me in making slaves of their children. No man has a right to make a child a slave, but the child himself (nor even has he). What should we say of a law which enacted, that of every criminal who was sentenced to labor for life, all the children should be sentenced to labor also?

"That any human being who has not forfeited his lib

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erty by his own crimes, has a right to be free, and that whosoever forcibly withholds liberty from an innocent man, robs him of his right, and violates the moral law, are truths which no man would dispute or doubt, if custom had not obscured our conceptions, or if wickedness did not prompt us to close our eyes."

764. În palliation of the wrong of holding men as property, it has been said, that a man has property in his wife, in his children, in his domestic animals, in his fields and forests; and where it is said that one man is the property of another, it can only mean that the one has the right to use the other as a man, but not as a brute, or a thing. When this idea of property comes to be analyzed, it is found to be nothing more than a claim of service either for life, or for a term of years.

But the error of this assumption has been fully exposed in the recent work of Mr. Barnes. He has shown that slavery is not a mere condition of apprenticeship; that the service which a slave is bound to render to his master is not that which the apprentice is bound to render to his employer; that while the relations resemble each other in certain circumstances, they differ in the following of the highest moment, namely, that the relation of an apprentice is designed to be temporary; is formed for the good of the apprentice himself; contemplates his future usefulness and happiness, and provides what is considered a full equivalent for the labor he is to perform; implies moreover no claim of property in the apprentice; and involves no right to transfer him to another.

He has further shown that slavery is not to be confounded with the condition of a minor.

He has shown also that there are important differences between the American slave, and the serfs of Russia and the "villains" of the feudal system; above all, that the kind of property which a slaveholder has in his slave is entirely different from that which a man has in his wife or child that the relation of parent and child is a natural relation; that of master and slave is not: that the relation of husband and wife is voluntary; that of master and slave is not that wives and children are treated in all respects as human beings; slaves, according to the system authorized by law, are not that in the relations of husband and wife there is no right of property in any such sense as that in

which the word property is commonly used: there is, for example, no right of sale; no right to sunder the relation for the mere sake of gain, at least as these relations are generally understood in Christian lands.

765. It is a matter of primary importance to determine in what light slavery is presented in the sacred writings: and here Mr. Barnes, upon a critical examination of them, seems to have conclusively shown that slavery is an institution which God has never originated by positive enactment; that his legislation has tended from the beginning to mitigate its evils; that his providential dealings have been adverse to it; that he has asserted great principles in his word which cannot be carried out without destroying the system; that he has enjoined on man, in the various relations of life, certain duties, of which slavery prevents the performance; that slavery engenders certain bad passions, which are wholly contrary to religion; and that it is the tendency and the design of the Christian religion, when fairly applied, to abolish the system.

766. Yet, if God does not approve, but has designed gradually to abolish the relation of master and slave, how can it be accounted for that he does not condemn it in express terms, as he condemns idolatry and oppression? and that, instead of this, he prescribes the duties belonging to the so-called criminal relation of master and slave, just as he prescribes the duties of parent and child? To these questions Mr. Barnes offers the following reply:

"To prescribe the duties of certain persons while sustaining a certain relation to each other, cannot be construed as an approbation of the relation itself. It might not be desirable for him who gave directions about the right mode of acting in a certain relation, to attempt to disturb it at that time, or it might be impossible at once to remove certain evils connected with it, and yet there might be important duties which religion would enjoin while that relation continued. Even on the supposition that the apostles regarded the system as a great evil, and desired the immediate abolition of slavery, as long as the relation continued, they would require that the Christian spirit be exhibited."

The apostles enjoined on the oppressed certain duties; but this does not prove that the relation of oppressor is a harmless one: they prescribed the duties also of those