The keen retort of Daniel O'Connel, in 1831, in the British Parliament, to Mr. Burge, is worth noticing in this place. Mr. Burge, a stout pro-slavery advocate, in his speech, took occasion to ask, indignantly, “What! would you come in between man and his freehold?" To this O'Connel, in his reply, made the following prompt retort: "I started, as if something unholy had trampled on my father's grave, and I exclaimed, with horror, 'A FREEHOLD IN A HUMAN BEING!' (London Antislavery Reporter, vol. iv, p. 268.)

Take another replication of the same sort. In 1832 Sir C. B. Cardington, an extensive slave-owner in the West Indies, in a letter to Mr. Buxton, speaking of the negro, said: "He is a slave by no act of the planter, but by the laws of England; by the same laws he is my absolute property, of which I can not justly be deprived without compensation." Mr. Buxton replies: "You call the slave your absolute property. Here is precisely the point on which we are at issue. I venture to call your property in him, however acquired, A USURPATION. I deny that any human being, or body of men, can have had power to give him to you. My creed is, that to every individual born into the world belongs the absolute right to his own limbs—his own labor—his own liberty—to his wife-to his children—to his enjoyment of entire freedom--AND TO THE UNRESTRICTED WORSHIP OF HIS GOD. I know, in short, no claim you can plead to extort from him unrequited labor, which an Algerine might not plead with equal force to hold in bondage his Christian captives — ABSOLUTE PROPERTY IN OUR FELLOWMEN!" (Antislavery Reporter, vol. v, pp. 307-309. Lon'don, 1833.)

To the same purpose is the following declaration of Wilberforce, uttered June 25, 1824: "Every man is endowed with various faculties, for the use of which he is responsible to his Creator. He has no right to transfer that responsibility to another; and for another to take it away from him,

except for some crime which justifies such a punishment, is a downright infringement on the rights of God, as well as a usurpation of the rights of man. Slavery in any condition and any form is insufferable, because it is, in fact, to give to man that which the corrupt nature of man ought not to possess-absolute and uncontrolled power over a fellow-creature." (Antislavery Reporter for 1824, London, p. 99.]

15. Now a few words as to the just right of the master to the slave, especially the slave child. There are some whose notions of justice are so confused, and confounded by slavery, as to suppose the master has something like an honest title to the person of the slave. We have been so long accustomed to talk of "my slave," and "your slave,” and of what he would fetch, if sold, that we are apt to imagine that he is really yours or mine, and that we have a just right to keep, sell, or give him away by gift or will. Let us test this point by a very plain parable. Here is a very valuable commodity; and here it-a white man and a black man. body of the black man. The white The black man says, "it is mine." every man had his own, to whom would that black body belong? The claim of the black man to his own body is just this: God gave him his own body. He holds it by God's grant. Will any one say, he came by his body in an illegal manner? Does any man suspect, that he played the knave and purloined his limbs? It must be admitted, the negro has a pretty good prima facie claim to his own body. If any man thinks he has a better, the onus probandi lies on him.

are two claimants for The commodity is the man says, "it is mine." Now, the question is, if

Next we come to the claim of the white man to the body of the black man. What is the foundation of your right? It shall be the best that the case will admit of. You received him from your father. Very good! Your father

bought him from a neighboring slaveholder. The slaveholder bought him from a trader, in the District of Columbia. The trader bought him from a man-merchant in Africa. But how did the man-merchant obtain the black man? He stole him; he kidnapped him. The very root of your claim is theft, robbery, violence, inconceivable wickedness. If any thing ever was proved on earth by evidence, it was proved, and is now universally acknowledged, that the method of obtaining slaves in Africa was theft, robbery, violence, manstealing, and murder. If your slave came direct from Africa your right to his person is absolutely nothing. But your claim to the child born in Kentucky, Virginia, or Maryland is still less. The new-born infant has done-could have done—nothing to forfeit his right to freedom. And to talk about rights, justice, equity, and law, as connected with slavery, is to talk downright nonsense. If we had no interest in the case, and were only speaking of the conduct of other nations or individuals, we would all use the same language; and we should all speak of slavery as we now speak of the piratical slave-trade—that is, we would call slavery in the United States rank, naked, flagrant, and undisguised injustice. Whatever may be the excuse for the master against the cruel slave-laws which first enslaves the infant, and then forbids his emancipation, he can pretend to no claim to the person of a child because he happens to be born of a slave mother, who, in her turn, was unjustly deprived of her freedom, and prevented from exercising her just right to it. (See Mr. James Buxton's speech before house of Parliament, May 15, 1823, p. 19. London, 1823.) just title to the

16. The slaveholder, therefore, has no slave; but, on the other hand, the slave has a just title to himself. Property that is stolen, or taken by unjust violence, though it pass through a thousand hands, even by honest purchase, still belongs to the original owner; and to him, according to the plainest principles of justice, it must revert.

The ancestors of the Africans were originally free, but were unjustly seized and sold into bondage; and, by an unjust and arbitrary power, their offspring are still enslaved, and are the same as stolen property. As no one had a right to steal them, so no one since has had any just right to sell, buy, or hold them as slaves, and the title to them is properly the title to stolen property, the owner of which is present, is undoubtedly known, and now claims it, as in the case of the black and white man, given heretofore, contending about the owner of the black man's body. And, though the state authorizes such injustice, it is, nevertheless, unjust. The man who will be just no farther than the state compels him, is a rogue in his heart. And the man who will take away the liberty of another because the laws permit him, would also take the property of another, if similar permission were given him.

17. It is objected here, "that if slaveholders have no just title to their slaves, because they were bought from kidnappers, that argument would prove that our title to lands, which were by force or fraud wrested from the Indians, is also null." To this we reply, that justice and right law give stolen property to the true owner when he can be found. But if no owner is found, occupancy and possession give a just title. If an Indian can show as good. a title to the land as the colored man can to his body, then the Indian should in justice have the land. The colored man was the original possessor of his own body; he now, by presenting his body, furnishes the true claimant. And as he was, without doubt, the original possessor, and is the present occupier, he is the true owner of himself; unless the claimant can show that he has forfeited his right to his liberty by a crime against the state. And even here the slave master is ousted, because the public criminal has forfeited his liberty to the state, and is, therefore, consigned first to the jail, and then to the penitentiary. The state is

then his owner, for safe-keeping, to prevent him from injuring society. Not, however, his owner for gain, but for the public good. Convicts are not sent to the plantations of masters to work for their benefit, but they are consigned to the public officers for safe-keeping.

18. Besides, every case in which a child is made a slave, is a new case of enslavement, as original as that which occurs in the case of an African stolen from Africa; for the fact of the mother being a slave or free has nothing to do with the matter. Every child enslaved is, therefore, an act of original theft, or robbery, very easily traced out, in almost all cases; and in the case of infants and minors, no man can ever claim them as slaves, because their infancy or minority are themselves proofs that they have never by crime forfeited their liberty, and, therefore, they now possess it; and all such as even claim infants or minors as slaves, are, by prima facie evidence, guilty of attempted theft or robbery, and ought, therefore, to be punished severely by fine, imprisonment, or even death, for such an outrage on the liberties of the human race.

19. The following, from the pen of Mr. Wesley, will close this chapter:

"Had your father, have you, has any man living, a right to use another as a slave? It can not be, even setting revelation aside. Neither war nor contract can give any man such a property in another, as he has in his sheep or oxen. Much less is it possible that any child of man should ever be born a slave. Liberty is the right of every human being, as soon as he breathes the vital air; no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature. If, therefore, you have any regard for justice, to say nothing of mercy or of the revealed law of God, render to all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is dueto every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. * et none serve you but by his own act and deed-by his