THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.

Thirteenth-That practice must be criminal which implies a breach of the sixth commandment. But slaveholding is of that description.

1st. Slavery is founded on violence, both in its origin and continuance, to which if the slave would not submit, he would be liable to suffer death-that is to be beaten and abused, to compel him to submit to the cruel yoke, which, should he still refuse to comply with, would at length issue in his death; for with slaveholders there is no medium between punishment and death, but submission. Should the slave persist in refusing submission, he could expect nothing but death. Therefore, slaveholding is founded upon and exists by murder; and murder is essential to its existence. No one will deny that a robber on the highway is a murderer in the sight of God, who obtains his booty on condition of saving life.

2d. Should the slaves attempt to emancipate themselves by force, which every candid mind will grant would be morally right, according to the laws of slave states, death would be their portion; so that murder is the foundation and support of slavery. But murder is not only theoretically interwoven with slavery; but it is practically exemplified; so that there are few settlements, where slavery is practised, in which there is not a number of instances of slaves suffering death, that, in God's account, will be reputed murder, which are caused by either cruel beating, want of clothing, hunger, or hard labor. Besides, there have been numerous examples of their suffering death for making insurrections; or for attempting that which would be accounted heroic virtue in their judges them. selves, were they in the same condition, in Algiers, Tunis, or Tripoli.

3d. The crime of slaveholding may, by a very short process of reasoning, be shown to be much more aggravating than a common act of murder, as

The sin of murder, in ordinary cases, is not restricted to the mere act of depriving the person of life, but it is depriving the innocent person of the enjoyments. of life, and of an opportunity of improving the mind in such branches of religious and scientific knowledge, as

would not only tend to increase his happiness, but to render him useful to society. The great end of man's creation, was that he should glorify God, promote his own happiness and that of others. His labor, his eating, drinking, and sleeping, are means only designed to subserve the other great ends. Suppose a family to be raised to manhood, in a state of brutish ignorance, and live all their days without being taught any of those useful branches of knowledge which are requisite to fit mankind to glorify God, and qualify them for usefulness in society, and to appear in some degree respectable among mankind. They would there be rendered incapable of any enjoyment but sensual gratifications. The great moral end of their existence would then be lost, their persons degraded to the level of the brute creatures, while every person who enjoys the advantages of only a moderate education, would say that if he could be convinced that his children were all to be raised in the condition of slaves, or in any condition in which the whole circle of their active life, their attainments and respectability in life, were to be nothing more than what is common to slaves, he would much rather they would all die in infancy. That such a choice would be lawful, is evident from Eccl. iv. 1 and 2. "So I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter. Therefore I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive." Slaveholding is exactly that kind of crime, which not only deprives the slave of civil liberty, but also prevents him from answering the moral end of his existence by the acquisition of knowledgehinders his usefulness to society, and keeps him from ever attaining to respectability amongst mankind, while he is degraded to a state of the utmost contempt and wretchedness; therefore slaveholders who keep their brethren of mankind in a state of bondage, and in that condition of ignorance which necessarily belongs to slavery, are guilty of a greater crime than if they would kill them all in infancy. A common act of murder takes away the life, but it may not affect the eternal state of the sufferer. But the slaveholder destroys both soul and body for time.

and eternity, by rendering the slave useless for time, and unfit for the kingdom of heaven; therefore it will be more tolerable for Pharaoh, king of Égypt, in the day of judg. ment, than for modern slaveholders. He slew the infants of Israel when born, and prevented them from the miseries of cruel bondage, but our slaveholders subject their slaves to a state of misery, ignorance, contempt and wretchedness, which is much worse than to kill them in infancy, and in their last will entail the same hereditary cruelty upon their own posterity to the end of the world, and the same wretchedness upon the slaves and their posterity to the same period.

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.

Fourteenth-Every practice must be criminal that causes a violation of the seventh commandment, which is, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But slaveholding is of that description.

Involuntary, unmerited, hereditary slavery, agreeable to the laws relative to slavery, supposes the slaves entirely in the power of their masters, to be sold and bought, to be transferred to new masters either in their own neighborhood, or at the distance of fifty, an hundred, or a thousand miles, according to the will of the seller and purchaser, which causes the slave to be separated from all his dear friends and relatives; if he is married, it is putting asunder those whom God has joined together, and is a direct transgression of the seventh commandment, because it is, 1st., A violent prevention of persons married from fulfilling the duties of marriage.

2d. It causes the persons thus separated to contract new marriages, and so to commit adultery. Matt. 5, 32. "Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." The effect of slaveholding in this case is double adultery. On the husband's side, 1. In a separation from his lawful wife. 2. In his marriage to another woman. On his wife's side it is apt to be the same, so that it issues in fourfold adultery-and this adultery is liable to be repeated every time the husband and wife are

parted, by selling and transferring to new masters. Nothing is more common than for male slaves to have from one to five or six wives, and females to have as many husbands, and all perhaps living at the same time. Whatever circumstances of alleviation may be plead in such cases, on behalf of the slaves who are in a manner impelled to it, it bears proportionably heavy upon the slaveholders, who are the primary cause of all this complicated guilt. Therefore, slaveholding involves both masters and slaves in the most aggravated degrees of adultery; and not only so, but it entails it upon all succeeding genera. tions. It cannot effect the validity of the above reasoning, that some masters, when trafficking in their own species, make it a point not to sell a married slave, so as to be removed to any great distance, from his or her partner, this is indeed a small alleviation of the sin of adultery, necessarily attached to slaveholding; yet the heaviest load of guilt still remains while they continue in social compact with slaveholding adulterers and voluntarily occupy a station by which they have power to go to the utmost length of criminality that others do, and as a further aggravation of their sin, they must be conscious that at their death, when houses, lands, horses, cattle, sheep and souls and bodies of men will be exposed to sale, or divided amongst legatees, that their families will be liable to be scattered to the four winds; so that such masters, ever so tender of their slaves, during their own natural life, while they leave this world without emancipating them, they are guilty of the horrid crime of entailing hereditary bondage upon them and their posterity forever, with all the hideous circumstances and aggravations of adultery which necessarily belong to the practice.

THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT.

Fifteenth-Every practice must be criminal which implies a breach of the eighth commandment, which is, "Thou shalt not steal." But slaveholding is a most direct violation of the eighth commandment.

"The sins forbidden in the eighth commandment are theft, robbery, manstealing, and knowingly receiving any thing that is stolen. That slaveholding implies all these

kinds of theft, will appear by analyzing the crime of theft, to discover wherein its principal point of criminality lies. Stealing, like many other crimes, implies a composition of acts and circumstances. But its chief criminality is not confined to the mere act of taking another's property, which maybe lawfully done under peculiar circumstances. But the crime of theft consists in taking from another that which the moral law recognizes to him as his own, without his having forfeited it by either crime or debt. But the crime consists in two things. The first is taking from another what the law makes it his right to possess. The second is, the depriving the owner of the enjoyment of it. It comes to the same thing, whether a person actually takes that which is another man's right; or wilfully holds in his possession what another has taken. The possession is not only a justification of the act of taking it from the owner, but it is that in which the chief point of criminality lies, because it is a preventing the owner from enjoying it. The moral law makes no difference between the first act of theft, and the wilful possession of an article stolen, either as to goods or persons, Exodus, xxi. 16. He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, shall surely be put to death."

If all men are naturally free who have not forfeited their right to freedom, or voluntarily transferred it to another, no one can deprive them of that freedom, or claim their involuntary service, but by the complicated crime of theft and robbery. There is a difference between the right of freedom and the power of freedom. A man may, by his crimes, forfeit both the right of freedom and the power of enjoying it, or he may sell his freedom for life as it respects his labor. But he cannot transfer to another his right to perform the private duties of religion, nor the private relative duties which he owes to If then no man can transfer to another his own right to private relative duties, it would be still more unreasonable to attempt to transfer the natural rights of another to a third person; therefore it is impossible for any man or society of men to transfer the right of freedom from the Africans, and equally impossible to transfer it from their children and their children's children to all generations.

men.