abilities, and they constitute an anomalous class between the bond and the free.

The theory of society in all that portion of the Union, is that the state consists only of one class, the free; and that the enslaved race have no rights, no being, as members of the body politic. The state is considered as having its existence in and for its white inhabitants only. Laws are enacted, magistrates are chosen, justice is administered, society itself exists, not with the remotest reference to the welfare of the negro as an end, but only for the protection and the interests of that part of the population which belongs to what naturalists call "the Caucasian variety" of the human species. If certain forms and degrees of cruelty are prohibited by the laws, it is not on the ground that the negro has any human rights, but only as "cruelty to animals" is prohibited by the laws of every civilized community, because it is offensive to human sensibilities, and because it tends to brutalize the temper and manners of the people. The theory of society there regards the black population as in the state but not of it. The state does nothing for their improvement or elevation; it cares not for their morals; it takes no cognizance of any of their wants as human beings. With the inconsiderable exception of the anomalous class of free blacks, it knows them only as property like other cattle. In the theory of society-in the laws-and generally in the administration of law-they are regarded not at all as persons, but only as chattels. In Virginia, I believe, and perhaps under some other jurisdictions, the state does not even hang a negro for murdering his

master, without first buying him of the master's heirs, and so making him public property for that public use.

Accordingly, the law, throughout those States, presumes every black man to be somebody's property, till his exemption from the rule is made out by positive evidence; just as elsewhere every horse, every cow, every pig is presumed to have an owner, and whoever pretends to be the owner is so unless another claimant appears with superior evidence of legal ownership. In most of those slave States, the most stringent regulations make it well nigh impossible for a slave to become a freeman; and generally the free individuals of the enslaved race were made free long ago, before the present policy was fully established. If a master abdicates his power over his slave, the state concerns itself immediately to put that slave under another master, by requiring the sheriff to sell him sub hasta.

In other words, the structure of society throughout that portion of the Union is such, that the state refuses to take the African population under its protection or government. That entire moiety of the population the state regards not as citizens, nor even as its own subjects, but only as property belonging to citizens. It insists that every black shall have a master, as his proprietor, and therefore his protector and governor; it guaranties to the master all the physical force necessary to keep his slaves in subjection; it allows him to inflict almost any punishment short of death at his own discretion; it interferes between him and his slaves only to prevent certain extreme cruelties on the one hand, and on

the other to forbid those acts of indulgence and beneficence which are considered inconsistent with the permanence and security of the system. For all that protection which every subject has a right to expect from the government that is set over him, and for nearly all that salutary control which it is the business of civil government to exert over the actions of its subjects, the black man must look not to the state, but to his master. The master upon his plantation is a petty monarch, with the powers of an African or Oriental despot; the negroes upon his soil are his subjects. If he needs a military force to suppress an insurrection of his subjects, or to compel their obedience, the state comes to his aid. If one of his slaves commits some crime particularly dangerous not to him only or to his plantation, but to the public considered as consisting of white men, the state takes the work of trial and punishment into its own hands. If his administration of his power becomes in certain particulars too oppressive, or in certain particulars too lax and beneficent, the state counteracts that "evil example" by the infliction of penalties upon him. If he abdicates his power, the state will commit that power to some other person. The state considers the blacks as a barbarous hostile population which it utterly refuses to take under its protection; and it tolerates their existence within its boundaries only on the condition that all the most essential duties of government, in respect to them, shall be performed by individuals sustaining towards them the relation of proprietorship.

Such is the system of society-the structure and

arrangement of civil relations-which in fifteen of these United States is established under the name of slavery. The institution is entirely and essentially barbarous. No form of government on earth is more at war with every just conception of the nature of man and of his rights as a member of society. All that I know of the ordinary operation of this form of government, in its influence on industry, on morals, on all the interests of the individual and of the commonwealth, is in harmony with its theory. And in proportion to the progress of civilization among the enslaved portion of society, the intrinsic wickedness of that mode of government becomes more glaringly evident, and more offensive to the moral sensibilities of mankind. The system of arrangements for the government of the negroes was established long ago, when the ancestors of those negroes, captured in the ambushes and fights of hostile tribes on the banks of the Zaire and the Gambia, were introduced by crowded shiploads into dependent and feeble colonies under the relentless legislation of the mother country. In that age those arrangements might have seemed to be excused by the plea that there was no other way of dealing with savages so desperate, under the sense of recent enslavement, and so ignorant even of the language of their masters; though even then they must have been condemned, by a thoughtful sense of justice, as inexcusable. But now the atrocity of those arrangements stands out in strong relief against the sky before the gazing world; for now the negroes are as native to the soil as their masters; and notwithstanding that tyrannical opposition to their im

provement and progress which is kept up by the state and generally by the individual masters, they are slowly but steadily rising towards a level with the superior race in all the essentials of civilization, and are already as unlike the barbarians that were brought from Africa, as the high-bred Virginian lady, than whom, perhaps, there lives no specimen of womanhood more admirable, is unlike her fair ancestor, warranted "incorrupt," who was sold to a planter husband some two hundred and thirty years. ago, for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco.

The question before us is not whether the political system which puts the black population of the southern States into the power of individual masters, absolute and irresponsible, and which studiously withholds from them all human rights, is consistent with the law of God. Nor is it the question whether the free people of those States, in their sovereignty, ought to enter at once upon the longneglected work of reforming their barbarous institutions. Nor are we to inquire here respecting the duty of the slave-whether he owes any allegiance to the state which refuses to protect him or to recognize him as a man--whether in all circumstances he retains the right which our national legislation, our diplomacy, and our last war with Great Britain. have challenged for all mankind, the right of expatriating himself and renouncing his allegiance to the government under which he was born--whether, or in what circumstances, he may rise up with his brethren in bondage to throw off the yoke, to assert their freedom, and to form a new constitution. Nor have I any occasion here to answer the question