is guarded by constitutional barriers which cannot be overleaped or broken down, and we have done our part by abolishing it wherever it was within our jurisdiction. If it be a crime to have inherited the property of slaves; if it be a crime to decline divesting themselves of it in a manner which all rational reflecting men believe will be equally pernicious to the master and the slave; if it be a crime to resent, resist, or counteract by every means in their power, any interference with a subject involving all that is dear to men, then let them meet the consequences; but let not us, their kindred, neighbours, and countrymen, become instruments to scatter the firebrands of fanaticism among them, and lend a helping hand to insurrection and massacre.

Let us not forget that in our furious zeal to give freedom to the blacks, we are laying the axe to the root of the fairest plant of freedom that adorns the New or the Old World; that in our ardour to bring about a questionable good, we are provoking vast and alarming evils; and that there is no precept of religion or morality more inflexible in its application than that which forbids doing evil that good may ensue. Where the evil is immediate and morally certain, on every ground of reason and experience, and the good remote, contingent, and hypothetical, it is the part of a wise and good

man to shrink from thus arrogating to himself the attributes of Omniscience, and pretending to look into futurity. When mankind are gifted with a prophetic inspiration directly derived from Heaven; or when they acquire the prerogative of planning and controlling the economy of the universe, then, and not till then, should they dare to do evil in the presumptuous anticipation that the miseries they may inflict on the living, will be repaid by the happiness of those yet unborn.

New-York, Nov. 1835.

SLAVERY.

13

CHAPTER I.

Of the Opposition of Slavery to the Law of God.

THE advocates of immediate, unconditional emancipation, having attempted to make it a religious question, by asserting the abstract principle, that slavery is contrary to the law of God,* it becomes necessary to subject this fundamental proposition to the test of examination. If it should be found not to be sustained by those acknowledged manifestations of his will, which are the only foundations of his law, then it would seem, the whole ground of their proceedings is untenable; since it is only by pleading the law of God, in opposition to the laws of man, that they can justify their present course. The maxim, that slavery is contrary to the law of God, and the rights of nature, has been lately revived, and sanctioned by the authority of Lord Brougham, to

* See the declaration of the "National Anti-Slavery Society."

B

whom we have seen it ascribed. But whatever may be our respect for his lordship's learning and abilities, we cannot recognise him as the interpreter of the Divine will. We look to a higher and far purer source: to the precepts of the Old and New Testaments, as the only authentic manifestations of the Divine law, and to them we shall appeal in the proper place.

It is presumed that none will deny the existence of slavery in every quarter of the known world, at the period when the law of God was promulgated from the judgment seat on Mount Sinai. That it was hereditary bondage, will appear from the passages that will be presently cited. It is frequently alluded to; frequently recognised as a part of the social system of the nation to which the Scriptures were addressed, and never denounced as a crime or a curse by name or by description.

A reference to the Old Testament will show that the abolitionists can derive from it no authority to sustain their position, that slavery is contrary to the law of God. The only text they have been able to bring to bear directly upon the subject, is that which denounces the penalty of death to the "man-stealer;" while, on the contrary, slavery is made the subject of express regulation in the social institutions of the Jews, and this without a single expression of disapprobation on the part of