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Show 52 LIBERTY AND SLAVER~ § ill. The tltird fallacy of the abolitionist. Nearly allied to the foregoing argument is that of the same author, in which he deduces from the right of slavery, supposing it to exist, another retinue of monstrous rights. "This right also," says Dr. Wayland, referring to tho 11ght to hold slaves, "as I have shown, involves the right to usc all the means necessary to its establishment and perpetuity, and of course the right to crush !tis intellectual and social nature, and to stupefy his conscience, in so far as may be necessary to enable me to enjoy this right with the least possible peril." This is a compound fallacy, a many-sided error. Bul we will consider only two phases of its ab surdity. In the first place, if the slaveholder should reason in this way, no one would be more ready than the author himself to condemn his logic. If any slaveholder should ~ay, That because I have a right to my slaves, therefore I have tho right to crush the intellectual and moral nature of men, in order to establish and perpetuate their bondage,-he would be among the first to cry out against such reasoning. This ie evident from the fact that he everywhere com· ARGUMENTS OF ADOLITIONISTS. 53 mends those slaveholders who deem it thilit· duty, as a return for the service of their slaves, to promote both their temporal and eternal good. lie everywhere insists that such. is the duty of slaveholders; and if such be their dutv they surely have 'no right to viobte it, by crusi,: ing the intellectual and moral nature of tJwse whom they are bound to elevate in the scale of being. If the slaveholder, then, should. adopt such an argument, his logic would be very justly chargeable by Dr. Wayland with evidencing not so much the existence of a clear head as of a bad heart. In the second place, the above argument overlooks tl1e fact that the Southern statesman vindicates tho institution. of slavery on the ground that it finds the Negro race already so degraded as to unfit it for a state of freedom. lie does not argue that if is rigllt to seize those who, by tlw possession of cultivated intellects and pure morals, are fit for freedom, and debase them in order to prepare them for social bondage. lie does not imagine that it is ever right t,o shoot, burn, or coTrupt, in order to reduce any portion of the enlightened universe to a state of servitude. He merely insists that thoso only who arc alrca<1y 5~nfit for a higher an<] |