1. That all his earnings shall belong to his master, notwithstanding his master’s promise to the contrary; thus making them liable for his master’s debts.—Just and equal!
2. That if his master allow him to keep cattle for his own use, it shall be lawful for any man to take them away, and enjoy half the profits of the seizure.—Just and equal!
3. If his master sets him free, he shall be taken up and sold again.—Just and equal!
4. If any man or woman runs away from this state of things, and, after proclamation made, does not return, any two justices of the peace may declare them outlawed, and give permission to any person in the community to kill them by any ways or means they think fit.—Just and equal!
Such are the laws of that system of slavery which has been made up by Christian masters late in the Christian era, and is now defended by Christian ministers as an eminently benign institution.
In this manner Christian legislators have expressed their understanding of the text, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal,” and of the text, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
It certainly presents the most extraordinary view of justice and equity, and is the most remarkable exposition of the principle of doing to others as we would others should do to us that it has ever been the good fortune of the civilized world to observe. This being the institution, let any one conjecture what its abuses must be; for we are gravely told, by learned clergymen, that they do not feel called upon to interfere with the system, but only with its abuses. We should like to know what abuse could be specified that is not provided for and expressly protected by slave-law.
And yet, Christian republicans, who, with full power to repeal this law, are daily sustaining it, talk about there being no harm in slavery, if they regulate it according to the apostle’s directions, and give unto their servants that which is just and equal. Do they think that, if the Christianized masters of Rome and Corinth had made such a set of rules as this for the government of their slaves, Paul would have accepted it as a proper exposition of what he meant by just and equal?
But the Presbyteries of South Carolina say, and all the other religious bodies at the South say, that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ has no right to interfere with civil institutions. What is this church of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they speak of? Is it not a collection of republican men, who have constitutional power to alter these laws, and whose duty it is to alter them, and who are disobeying the apostle’s directions every day till they do alter them? Every minister at the South is a voter as much as he is a minister; every church-member is a voter as much as he is a church-member; and ministers and church-members are among the masters who are keeping up this system of atrocity, when they have full republican power to alter it; and yet they talk about giving their servants that which is just and equal! If they are going to give their servants that which is just and equal, let them give them back their manhood; they are law-makers, and can do it. Let them give to the slave the right to hold property, the right to form legal marriage, the right to read the word of God, and to have such education as will fully develop his intellectual and moral nature; the right of free religious opinion and worship; let them give him the right to bring suit and to bear testimony; give him the right to have some vote in the government by which his interests are controlled. This will be something more like giving him that which is “just and equal.”
Mr. Smylie, of Mississippi, says that the planters of Louisiana and Mississippi, when they are giving from twenty to twenty-five dollars a barrel for pork, give their slaves three or four pounds a week; and intimates that, if that will not convince people that they are doing what is just and equal, he does not know what will.