In the first place, the state of things so rhetorically described is a palpable impossibility. The constitution of the human mind is in flat contradiction to the idea of the absorption of the will, the conscience, and the understanding of one man into the personality of another! This is a state of things which the human mind cannot even conceive to be possible, but does intuitively perceive to be utterly impossible. In the next place, we affirm that the idea of personal rights and personal responsibility pervades the whole system. Both the Divine and human laws which recognize the system assume the personality and responsibility of the slave. Even under the Roman and Grecian codes—which recognized far more stringent forms of slavery than that of the African in this country, at any period of its history—this view of the system will find no support. Paul and Peter, who wrote with special allusion to slaves under these laws, so far from regarding this personality as lost and swallowed up in the humanity of the master, expressly assumed their personality and responsibility. For whilst they recognize him as a servant, they treat him as a man: they declare him possessed, though a slave, of certain rights, which it was injustice in the master to disregard, and under obligation to certain duties, as a slave, which it would be sinful in him to neglect; and, moreover, that it was the office of that religion whose functions they filled, to protect these rights and duties with its most solemn sanctions. Hence they enjoin upon masters the moral obligation of rendering to their bondmen “that which is just and equal,” and upon servants to “be subject to their masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” Was this treating them as beings whose wills were absorbed in the humanity of the master, who therefore was the only accountable person for all their conduct! Nothing could be more alien from truth, and significant of falsehood! No: obedience is never applied, except as a figurative term, and especially by the apostles, to any but rational and accountable beings. And with such inspired requisitions before us—“obedience from the one, and justice from the other”—it is grossly absurd to affirm that the relation of master and slave regards the slave as a brute, and not as an accountable man. “The blind passivity of a corpse, or the mechanical obedience of a tool,” which Channing and Whewell regard as constituting the essential idea of slavery, seems never to have entered the minds of the apostles. They considered slavery as a social and political economy, in which relations involving reciprocal rights and duties subsisted, between moral, intelligent, and responsible beings, between whom, as between men in other relations, religion held the scales of justice.
The right of property in man, as man, is nowhere taught in Scripture, although it distinctly recognizes the relation of master and slave. The right which the master has in the slave, according to the Scriptures, is, not to the man, but to so much of his time and labor as is consistent with his rights of humanity. The master who disregards these claims, denies his slave that which is “just and equal.” The duty which the slave owes, is the service which, in conformity with these rights, the master exacts. A failure in either party is a breach of Scripture.
The only difference between free and slave labor is, that the one is rendered in consequence of a contract, and the other in consequence of a command. Each is service rendered according to the will of another; and each may, or may not, be according to the consent of the party rendering service. The former is often as involuntary, in point of fact, as the latter. Hirelings assent to it, in most cases, as a necessity of their condition. They do not consent to it—they are far from choosing it. A few persons reach that high attainment of a pure Christianity, in which they learn in every state in which they are placed, in the providence of God, “therewith to be content”—they choose it. But in the general, hired service is, in point of fact, as involuntary as slave labor.
A right, therefore, to the time and labor of another to a definite extent, by no means involves the right to his humanity. Such right is a mere fiction, to which even the imagination can give no significance or consistency. “It is the miserable cant of those who would storm by prejudice what they cannot demolish by argument.”
Thus, young gentlemen, that the abstract principle of the institution of slavery, and the principles of natural rights, coincide, and that both have the unqualified approbation of Holy Scripture, cannot be successfully controverted. Natural rights and the principle of slavery do not conflict. No man has a natural right to do wrong. That wherein the principle of slavery is in itself right, is that, when carried out in the form of civil government, it furnishes an instance in which the subjects of government who are liable to injure society by doing wrong, are placed under such disabilities, or in such circumstances, in which they cannot or are not likely to do this wrong, but to do that which they have a natural right to do, that is, do good. In all cases in which this principle enters into the government in such ratio or modification as to secure these ends, it coincides with natural rights, and insures to the subject the highest amount of freedom of which his moral condition will admit; it is to him essentially a free government, although, in adapting itself to his moral condition, it may assume an extreme form of despotism.
Whether the Southern States of this Union have wisely adapted this principle to the moral condition of the African population residing within their borders, and thereby secured to them an essentially free government, remains to be considered.