The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

3. Taxation without representation. Then three-fourths of the people of Rhode Island are slaves, and all in the District of Columbia.

4. Privation of one's oath in law. Then the free colored people of Ohio are slaves. So are disbelievers in a future retribution, generally.

5. Privation of trial by jury. Then all in France and Germany are slaves.

6. Being required to support a particular religion. Then the people of England are slaves. [To the preceding may be added all other disabilities, merely political.]

7. Cruelty and oppression. Wives are often cruelly treated; hired domestics are often oppressed; but these forms of oppression are not slavery.

8. Apprenticeship. The rights and duties of master and apprentice are correlative and reciprocal. The claim of each upon the other results from the obligation of each to the other. Apprenticeship is based on the principle of equivalent for value received. The rights of the apprentice are secured, and his interests are promoted equally with those of the master. Indeed, while the law of apprenticeship is just to the master, it is benevolent to the apprentice. Its main design is rather to benefit the apprentice than the master. It promotes the interests of the former, while it guards from injury those of the latter in doing it. It secures to the master a mere legal compensation, while it secures to the apprentice both a legal compensation, and a virtual gratuity in addition, the apprentice being of the two decidedly the greatest gainer. The law not only recognizes the right of the apprentice to a reward for his labor, but appoints the wages, and enforces the payment. The master's claim covers only the services of the apprentice. The apprentice's claim covers equally the services of the master. The master cannot hold the apprentice as property, nor the apprentice the master; but each holds property in the services of the other, and BOTH EQUALLY. Is this slavery?

9. Filial subordination and parental claims. Both are nature's dictates, and indispensable to the existence of the social state; their design the promotion of mutual welfare; and the means, those natural affections created by the relation of parent and child, and blending them in one by irrepressible affinities; and thus, while exciting each to discharge those offices incidental to the relation, they constitute a shield for mutual protection. The parent's legal claim to the services of his children, while minors, is a slight boon for the care and toil of their rearing, to say nothing of outlays for support and education. This provision for the good of the whole, is, with the greater part of mankind, indispensable to the preservation of the family state. The child, in helping his parents, helps himself—increases a common stock, in which he has a share; while his most faithful services do but acknowledge a debt that money cannot cancel.

10. Bondage for crime, or governmental claims on criminals. Must innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He is a public defaulter, and will die so. Because laws make men pay their debts, shall those be forced to pay who owe nothing? Besides, the law makes no criminal, PROPERTY. It restrains his liberty; it makes him pay something, a mere penny in the pound, of his debt to the government; but it does not make him a chattel. Test it. To own property is to own its product. Are children born of convicts government property? Besides, can property be guilty? Are chattels punished?

11. Restrictions upon freedom. Children are restrained by parents, wards by guardians, pupils by teachers, patients by physicians and nurses, corporations by charters, and legislators by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing as they please. Restraints are the web of civilized society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then civilized society is a mammoth slave—a government of LAW, the climax of slavery, and its executive a king among slaveholders.

12. Involuntary or compulsory service. A juryman is empannelled against his will, and sit he must. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders must turn in. Men are compelled to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support their families, and "turn to the right as the law directs," however much against their wills. Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a condition. The slave's feelings toward it, are one thing; the condition itself, the object of these feelings, is another thing; his feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether he desire or detest it, the condition remains the same. The slave's willingness to be a slave is no palliation of his master's guilt in holding him. Suppose the slave verily thinks himself a chattel, and consents that others may so regard him, does that make him a chattel, or make those guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer because I consent to be made a corpse? Does my partnership in his guilt blot out his part of it? If the slave were willing to be a slave, his voluntariness, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master in holding him as property, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a MAN, and thus break the sorcery that binds his soul, cheating it of its birth-right, and the consciousness of its worth and destiny.