wrong. Our author then, taking it for granted that his posi. tion is just, with an air of triumph asserts, "That they may be used in their present condition of servitude, with full conformity to that summary of the divine law, Do to others as you would they should do to you.' This rule is not to be applied to our passions or appetites. It goes up. on principles of equity, and does not afford relief to all those demands which might exist in the breast of our neighbor.

Many of the covetous and extortioners have strained their inventive powers to wrest this text, but it will speak for itself. Our author, either from a consciousness of the impregnable force he had to encounter, or else from mere modesty, only undertakes the exposition of one part of the text, leaving out that part which is essential to the true application of the whole, the words as recorded, Matthew vii. 12, read thus: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.' If he had taken in the first clause of the text, all things, it would have embraced every thing without exception, and in particular the right of freedom as well as the power of it. The sense of the words cannot be mistaken by any rational being, except such as are disposed to wrest it in accommodation to their own peculiar prejudices. It sufficiently guards against any such abuse as our author insinuates; the sense is plain and determined, "all things whatsoever,"&c. That is, let the thing be what it may, if you wish another to do it to you, it lies imperiously upon you to do the very same for them also. So that the more that we give way to ungenerous and extravagant wishes of service from others around us, the heavier and more is the load of duty, which we bring upon ourselves; therefore the words can mean no other than this, that in all things in which it would be just and lawful for us to wish another to do a favor to us we should allow ourselves to do the same unto him. As this text relates to the case of slavery, we may put the same question to ourselves. If I and my posterity were subject to a state of unmerited, involuntary, hereditary slavery, could I reasonably wish that such as withhold liberty from me and my posterity, would release us from that bondage? If this would be a lawful wish,

which none will dispute, it will necessarily follow that we should do the same to them who may be in bondage to us.

Again. If we wish the Africans to be in bondage to us, could we, upon their wishing our servitude to them, consent to be their slaves as they have been to us? If we could not, it is manifest that this text is at open war with our author's views of slavery, and it is impossible to keep any of mankind in a state of unmerited, involuntary slavery, with conformity to it as a summary of the divine law.

ARG.-1. A late writer on the subject of moral science whose name in the literary world is distinguished by the initial letters of graduation, D. D., LL. D., asserts in one page of his lectures, that slavery is contrary both to justice and humanity, and that the African trade for slaves is among the most atrocious inroads upon justice and humanity which have ever been practised in any age or nation; yet in the very next page he says, that neither justice nor humanity require that the master, who has becoine the innocent possessor of that property, should impoverish himself for the benefit of his slaves.

ANSWER.-It is impossible for a man to innocently pos. sess what he knows to have been stolen. The act of removing the Africans froin their native country, is not that in which the peculiar aggravation of man-stealing lies, but it consists in robbing them of their liberty, labor, time, and all their natural rights. If, then, the great sin of manstealing lies in robbing men of all these, rather than in a violent removal of their persons from their native soil, it is impossible that another person, by paying a sum of money to purchase a right and power to continue the same robbery can be innocent, as if wickedness, by a mere transfer of the power of committing it, could by that remove of the agency become virtue.

It is certain that when a man makes a purchase of a slave, he buys him, soul and body; but it is obvious at first view that the soul and body, abstractly considered, are not the object of his purchase, but the man's time, liberty, labor, and all his natural rights are his chief objects, in order to make them serve his worldly interest, and this was the alone object the first man-thief had, when he removed him

soul and body from Africa, therefore the man who pays his money to a slave trader for a slave, pays it for a power to act and carry into operation the same thing, which was the alone motive the first man-thief had in view in stealing the man, and is that property of the whole transaction which is most criminal. It is true that the man who buys a slave pays his money for him ; but it is also true that the first man-thief was at some expense to obtain him; he spent his time, and risked his life, which are as valuable as money.

2d. The first act of stealing the man, and the second act of holding him in bondage, when both are considered abstractly, will be found to be equally criminal; but the last, when its circumstances and consequences are taken into view, will be found to be much the worst. The first act implied double robbery; it was a violent separation of husbands from their wives, and wives from their husbands, parents from their children, and children from their parents; so that it implied double robbery, though one and the same transaction; because in all cases wherein the husband is taken from the wife, the wife is taken from the husband, even though the local situation of the one remains stationary. The same holds true respecting the parents and children. But common slaveholding implies the same double robbery. As

If an husband is purchased, and removed from his wife and children, he is then robbed from them, and his wife and children are equally robbed from him. The robbery is the same, whether the husband is by violence taken from his wife, or the wife from her husband, it is still double robbery; and if the parents are sold from the children, or the children from the parents, it is robbery in relation to both, or double robbery. Let the crime, then, of man-stealing in the first instance be considered abstract from the mere local removal of their persons, and compared with common slaveholding, it will be found that the crime of stealing men from Africa and holding them in slavery in America, are essentially the same, and of equal aggravation; their removal from their place of nativity in Africa, is no worse than their removal in America from their places of nativity, which is constantly done by

slaveholders. But it has been already demonstrated that the common slaveholder is much more criminal in other respects than the first man-thief; the first only steals and sells the first generation, but obliges no purchaser to steal their children, yet slaveholders steal every child as soon as it is born, and entail the same theft upon their own posterity to all generations, and the same bondage upon the slaves and their children to the end of time. When the two citations from the doctor's book are compared, they exhibit a perfect paradox in the science of morals, and when further illustrated in the same lecture, tend to show and establish one of three things; either that long habit or custom has a power of turning the most atrocious wickedness into virtue, or else that the most atrocious wickedness, by a transfer of the power of committing it, will turn it to virtue; or that this hideous metamorphosis is effected by the sanction of civil authority; all or any of which might have very consistently dropped from the pen of an infidel philosopher, some of whom have denied the existence of any law but the civil authority. But to come from the pen of a Christian divine, exhibits a character resembling that beast that came up out of the earth, which had two horns like a lamb, but spake as a dragon.-Rev. xiii, 11.

CHAPTER V.

THE ARGUMENT FROM SCRIPTURE.

Having now proved by a course of abstract reasoning, that slaveholding is sinful, we shall attempt to establish the same position from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.

The first portion of scripture to which the reader's attention is directed, is Job xxxi. 39. In this chapter, Job pleads his cause against the harsh insinuations of his friends. Let the 39th verse be compared with verse 13, in which he shows how equitably he dealt with his servants. The two places, when compared, will show that the servants mentioned in the 13th verse, whose cause he

vindicated, were hired-servants, and that he not only abhorred the idea of slavery, but even called down the vengeance of heaven upon his estate, if he exacted labor from his servants without wages, v. 39: "If I have eaten the fruits of my land without money, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life, let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." In chapter xxiv, Job gives the character of the wicked by their cruel oppression of the poor, which comes precisely up to the practice of modern slaveholding. Verse 7: "They cause the naked to lodge without covering in the cold, they are wet with the showers of the mountain, and embrace the rock for want of shelter. They cause him to go naked without clothing, and take away the sheaf from the hungry, who make oil within their walls, and tread their wine presses and suffer thirst." It cannot be proved that slavery was sanctioned in the days of Job, by the laws of any state or kingdom, yet it appears to have been so far patronised by some petty tyrants, as to have the principal features of modern slavery; such as that of making their domestics to go in a manner naked without clothing, so as to be exposed to the inclemency of the weather. It was also a practice with tyrannical masters to separate the children from the parents by violence: "They pluck the fatherless from the breast." To withhold wages from the laborer, is called taking the sheaf from the hungry. They also withheld a due allowance of vietualing, significantly expressed by oil, even when they made it within their walls, and withheld drink from them, though forced to tread their wine presses. All this corresponds with the condition of slaves in our slave states, many of whom suffer hunger, thirst, and nakedness, amidst the abundant fruits of their own labor.

Ex. xxi. 16: "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." Though this divine command was given to the people of Israel, it is moral, and proceeds upon the same principle with that prohibition in the decalogue, "Thou shalt not steal."

So Paul, with reference to this, says " The law is not made for a righteous man, but for murderers of fathers,