- may be dependent upon another to any extent, in certain cirF-cumstances he may be absolutely dependent, without prejudice o, to the morality of the relations between them. But morality 3 is at once violated when the interest of one man is sacrificed to that of another, and a state of things then commences noxious to the moral being of both parties, and more noxious to the moral being of him who commits than to that of him who ~ endures the wrong. Judge Ruffin of North Carolina, in _s to giving judgment on the extent of the master's dominion over . . the slave in that country, said, “The question before the

| • Court has indeed been assimilated at the bar to the other ****, * domestic relations; and arguments drawn from the well-estab-o- lished principles which confer and restrain the authority of 3 the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master ‘... over the apprentice, have been pressed on us. The Court does not recognize their application. There is no likeness - between the cases. They are in opposition to each other, and * there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is - that which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater : cannot be imagined. In the one, the end in view is the hap* piness of the youth, born to equal rights with that governor, so on whom the duty devolves of training the young to usefulJ ness in a station which he is afterwards to assume among * freemen. To such an end, and with such a subject, moral o and intellectual instruction seem the natural means; and for o the most part they are found to suffice. Moderate force is & superadded, only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it <^ is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, * and the ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be * immoderately inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil

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2-2.

that another may reap the fruits. What moral considera-
tions shall be addressed to such a being, to convince him what
it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know
can never be true, – that he is thus to labor upon a principle
of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness.
Such services can only be expected from one who has no will
of his own, who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to
that of another.”
The relation thus judicially described is an immoral rela-
tion, because it sacrifices not merely the personal or political
liberties, but the moral interests of one party to the other.
It is a relation, therefore, which could never exist in any state
of society, however rude, which was founded on morality;
nor be sanctioned under any dispensation really emanating
from the Author of our moral nature. But a relation of the
most complete dependence may be perfectly moral. Nothing
is more moral than the relation between a mother and her
infant child.
Let us observe also that the relation described by the
words of Judge Ruffin is perfectly definite and distinct. It
is that of a slave, not that of a servant bound for a term of
years or for life, or even of a hereditary bondman who retains
any personal rights and is not wholly devoted to the profit
and pleasure of his master. There can be no pretence for
refining it away into a “certain condition of the laborer, acci-
dentally denoted by a name derived from the hatred felt by
other nations for the Sclavonic race.” We may be permitted
to add, that this definite relation is marked by definite charac-
teristics, in regard to the treatment of women, of fathers and of
husbands, which are well known to the whole civilized world.
On approaching the question from the side of the Old
Testament, we are met by an assertion which, if it be true,
sweeps the field of controversy at once. It is said that we
are bound to keep the negro race in bondage forever in order
to fulfil the inspired prophecy of Noah : “Cursed be Canaan;

a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. . . . . Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his . servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant.” So scrupulous is the reverence of the slave-owners for Scripture, so great is their zeal for God's honor, that upon a merely conjectural interpretation of a passage in the most obscure and difficult part of the Bible, they feel bound to condemn to hopeless slavery on their plantations a whole race of mankind who, in common with the other races, have been redeemed by Christ. To all arguments of this kind there is, in the first place, a very simple answer, which has already been given, in effect, to those who thought it their duty as Christians to fulfil inspired prophecy by denying civil rights to the Jews. Man is not charged with the fulfilment of inspired prophecy, which, whatever he may do, will certainly fulfil itself; but he is charged with the performance of his duty to his neighbor. It is not incumbent upon him to preserve Divine Foreknowledge from disappointment, but it is incumbent upon him to preserve his own soul from injustice, cruelty, and lust. If the prophecy had meant that the negroes should always be slaves, it would have been defeated already, for a great part of the negroes in Africa have never become slaves, and those in the English and French colonies, besides a good many in America itself, have ceased to be so. In the second place, those who found slavery on a doom pronounced against the negro race must say no more about the recognition of their institution by the law of Moses or by the New Testament, for the slavery recognized by the law of Moses and the New Testament was not that of negroes, but of other races. But the truth is, that the words of Noah, to whomsoever they may apply, are no prophecy, but only a curse, couched in the language of Oriental malediction ; and all curses have

unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt
possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set
a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me ;
thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the
Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren
shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stran-
ger over thee, which is not thy brother. But he shall not
multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return
to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: foras-
much as the Lord hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth
return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives
to himself, that his heart turn not away : neither shall he
greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. And it shall be,

write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them : that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.” “ The king of Israel is to reign by the will of God and the choice of the people, not like a king of the Medes and Persians by the right of his birth and the sacredness of his line: he is to be, not a human God like the monarchs on Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but a man among his brethren, and his heart is not to be lifted up above them : unlike the neighboring despots, he is to be beneath the law, which he is to study and keep, and upon his keeping which the continuance of his reign is to sdepend. Let this picture of a king be compared with the | Oriental despotism of Nebuchadnezzar and Cambyses, or even

* M when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall s

! with that more artificial tyranny of the Roman Emperors

which has formed a model for the present government of
France. Moreover, the king of Israel is not to debase him-
self by the lusts of the harem; nor to tax his people in order
to lay up a great treasure; and he is strictly forbidden to mul-
tiply horses and chariots, which were the great instruments of
aggressive war, the game of kings and the scourge of nations.
Now suppose the President of the Southern States were to
make himself a king, with the powers of an Eastern monarch,
could he with justice plead the Scripture as establishing mon-
archy and calling on the people to submit to it as a divine and
universal institution ?
We might apply the principle to things nearer the sanc-
tuary. It was the custom of all primitive nations to set apart

certain families or a certain tribe for religious functions;

without which, before letters, or before the general use of
them, there could scarcely be any certainty or stability of
religion. The priest caste of Egypt, the Brachmans, the
Chaldees, the hereditary guilds which kept up the worship
of certain Gods in ancient Greece and Italy, were instances
of the kind. But this separation had a tendency to produce
caste, with all its hateful and pestilential incidents. Probably
there is nothing more depraved or odious in the whole range
of human aberrations than the relations between the Brach-
mans and the Sudras as set forth in the Hindoo laws.
The Hebrew lawgiver sets apart the tribe of Levi to keep
up the religion and ritual of the nation: but in the very act
of setting it apart he takes care that it shall not be a caste.
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the Levites
from among the children of Israel, and cleanse them. And
thus shalt thou do unto them, to cleanse them: Sprinkle
water of purifying upon them, and let them shave all their
flesh, and let them wash their clothes, and so make themselves
clean. Then let them take a young bullock with his meat
offering, even fine flour mingled with oil, and another young
bullock shalt thou take for a sin offering. And thou shalt