such a process an idea might be conveyed of the state of society there to which there is nothing corresponding in fact. The laws have become obsolete, though they are not repealed; and a true judgment of the state of society there is to be formed, not by an abstract study of the law books in a distant land, but by a close observation of the actual workings of society. I have no doubt that injustice is often done to the southern states of this Union by just this process-as beyond all question injustice is done by collecting all the advertisements of runaway slaves; and all the notices of their marks and brands; and all the accounts of isolated acts of cruelty and severity; and all the instances of the whipping, the imprisonment, and the shooting down of slaves, and by publishing them as if that were a fair representation of the ordinary operations of "slavery as it is." Every one of those individual instances may have occurred-perhaps hundreds of miles apart-but to collect them in a volume does no more justice to society there than would be done by collecting all the cases of rape, and riot, and burglary, and murder, and arson from the records of the courts at the North, and publishing them in a volume in order to give to a stranger a just representation of society here. I should be sorry, therefore, if by copying the laws of the Southern states as contrasted with those of Moses, I should do any thing to extend or perpetuate this injustice, or lead any to suppose that these laws are always executed, or that the state of society is to be inferred from the supposition that they are always executed, and that there is in fact nothing at the South of which these laws may not be regarded as the fair exponent.

(3.) It should be said, however, that while those laws exist unrepealed, they may be put into execution, and that the slave under them is liable to suffer all the oppression and wrong which they appear to justify. It is no uncommon thing for a man to be made to suffer under the operation of an obsolete statute of which he had no knowledge, and the remembrance of which is revived for the very purpose of doing him in

justice. Whether these laws at the South shall or shall not be executed in their severity, depends on the state of the public mind, on the passions that may prevail in any community, and on the will and caprice of particular masters. This is a point over which the slave has no control, and in which the benevolent who might wish a better state of things, and might shudder at the wrong done, have no power. Any or all of these grievous wrongs may be perpetrated by a cruel master, and he will be sustained by the sanction of the laws; and in order to a fair judgment respecting a community, we are to take into the account not only what is done, but what may be done under the sanction of law.

(4.) These laws are a fair expression of the nature of the system of slavery in its essential character. They are what the system has produced. They have grown out of it, as being supposed to be necessary to the best working of the system, and to its perpetuity. They are the result of long and careful legislation, in a country that boasts of being the most enlightened in the world. They are in most instances the result of experience, and are what has been found by experience to be necessary to the perfection of the system. They are what the lawgivers at the South have supposed to be requisite in order that the institution may be perpetuated in this country, and are an exponent of what the master deems to be necessary in order that his right to this species of 'property' may be best secured. For illustration, it would be fair to refer to the laws of Pennsylvania respecting the right of the owners of various kinds of property, and the ways by which they may secure themselves from wrong, as a proof of what has been found necessary in that commonwealth to promote in the best manner the security of society. Those laws are the results of long experience in the case, just as the laws of the South are the results of long experience of the best methods of perpetuating slavery. They may be referred to, therefore, as the fair exponent of the nature of the system.

(5.) Those laws ARE NECESSARY to the system. They are

the shield which protects it. They could not be repealed with safety. The system of slave laws as such could not be safely modified. The repeal of any of those enactments, harsh and severe as they seem to be, would be doing so much to endanger the system. To abolish them, and to introduce the great features of the Mosaic code, would be to peril the system at once. No essential modification of those laws for the better has been made in all the legislation on the subject, and the question is never agitated at the South whether the "negro code" could be meliorated consistently with the perpetuity of slavery. No proposition could be entertained suggesting that the laws should be so modified that the slave should be taught to read; that he should be allowed entire freedom to worship God; that he should be permitted to testify against a white man; that he should be considered as the owner of property; that the marriage contract should be inviolate; that he should be allowed to control his children, or that, if he escaped, he should not be returned by force to his master. Any relaxation of the system at all, bordering on such modifications, would be repelled as tending to abolition, and the nearer such modifications should come to the Mosaic statutes, the more would that danger be felt. It is not unfair, therefore, to refer to these laws as illustrating the working of the system of American slavery, or as showing WHAT IT IS.

(6.) If the system of slavery, as it exists in this country, is right, or if slavery itself is right in any proper sense of the term, then these laws growing out of the system, and necessary to its continuance, are also right. If the master possess the right which is claimed over a slave-a right to oblige him to labour for his benefit without his consent; a right to his time and to the avails of his labour and skill; a right to dispose of that time and skill, and to sell the slave himself, then he "enjoys also a right to use all the means necessary both to enforce it and to render it permanent. He has a right to protect himself against every thing that would interfere with the

exercise of this right. If the intellectual and moral cultivation of the slave would interfere with the master's power to enforce this right, he has the right to arrest this cultivation at any point he chooses, or to abolish it altogether. If the right exist, therefore, no exception. can be taken to the sternest laws which have ever been enacted in any of the Southern states, even though they prohibit, under the severest penalties, the education of negroes, and forbid them to assemble for the worship of God, except under the strictest surveillance."* To these views of Dr. Wayland, no exception, it seems to me, can be taken, and if they are correct, then it is clear that it is proper to place the existing laws in the slave states in contrast with those of Moses, as illustrating the question whether American slavery has the sanction of the Bible.

* Dr. Wayland's Letters to Dr. Fuller, p. 23.

CHAPTER VI.'

Hebrew Servitude in the time of the Prophets.

In the previous chapters, I have gone into an extended examination of the subject of slavery or servitude as it existed among the Hebrew patriarchs, and under the Mosaic arrangements. The general conclusion which has been reached in this investigation is, that while slavery existed in the patriarchal times, and while the laws of Moses contemplated the possibility of its existence, just as they did of polygamy and divorce, yet that, so far as the Mosaic code tolerated it, it was comparatively a mild system, and one which it was the tendency of his institutions ultimately to abolish. He found it in existence, and could abolish it only by mild, but determined legislation. He made servitude under his code a different thing from what it was in surrounding nations. He made it a desirable thing for a slave elsewhere to place himself under his laws. He protected him there, and made it certain that, when once under the jurisdiction of his laws, he could never be returned again to his former master. He elevated the slave to

many of the rights of a man; regarded him as a man, a moral agent, a religious being; gave him an opportunity of acquiring the knowledge of the true religion; allowed him time for the improvement of his mind, and for the acquisition of property; fitted him to be a freeman, and made arrangements which were incorporated in the very constitution of the commonwealth, that at certain periods, not far distant from each other, the whole land should be free from every vestige of slavery. The Mosaic institutions were thus evidently opposed to the system, and contemplated its ultimate