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Show 44 an unprincipled man. I cannot doubt, that multitudes at the South, if thoroughly convinced of holding what IS not their own would renounce it in obedience to God and JUStice. B~t a more important objection remains. Me~ of .honor and principle, who recognise immediately the obhgatwn of individuals to restore what is not their own, will tell me, that, in the present case, not merely individuals, but states, bodies politic, with their order and essential interests, are concerned ; that when a particular kind of property becomes inwoven with all the possessions, transactions, and habits of a community, sudden changes in it may induce universal bankruptcy, and threaten society with ?issolution; and they may ask whether I am prepared, m such cases, to insist punctiliously on giving every man his due ? I answer, that this reasoning applies only to what may be lawfully held as property, to material things, such as houses and lands. It is acknowledged, that a man's right to these is controlled and superseded in extreme cases, when the assertion of it would bring great evils on the state. This is a fundamental restriction on the right of property. But in allowing this, I do not allow, that human beings, God's rational and moral creatures, who cannot be held as property without unutterable wrong, may still be retained as chattels, from apprehension of evils, which restoration of their rights may bring on the state. No fear of consequences can authorize us to violate an eternal, immutable law of justice. I deny, however, that the dreaded consequences of doing right, in the case before us, can occur. I deny, that Providence has ordained, or can ever ordain, remediless injustice, as an essential condition of social security. On what around is this wide-spreading ruin to be feared, from destro;ing property in slaves ? Is emancipation an untried thing ? Has it not been carried through again and again, in countries where social order was less confirmed, and ideas of property were looser, than among ourselves ? In the West Indies, has not the revolution been suddenly 45 accomplished without the least shock to property ? Have we not reason to believe, that the price of real -estate has risen under the change ? The slave is a working machine ; and is his power to work paralysed by liberty ' Docs not the master, possessing as he does the soil and capital, possess unfailing ffif:;ans of obtaining from the colored man, whether bond or free, the labor required for the cultivation of the earth? And with this grand original source of all wealth untouched1 is not society secured against univeraal insolvency ? How apt are men to raise phantoms to terrify themselves from an unwelcome duty ! Mr. Clay insists, that the slaveholder has a right to full compensation from those who call on him to surrender his slaves. I utterly deny such a right in a man who surrenders what is not his own. I cheerfully acknowledge, however, that whilst, in strict justice, the slaveholder has no claim to indemnity, he has a title to sympathy and equitable consideration. A man, who, by conscientious and honorable relinquishment of what he discovers to be another's, makes himself comparatively poor, deserves respect and liberal aid. There are few at the North, who would not joyfully acquiesce in the plan of that distingui::;hed statesman, Rufus King, for large appropriations of the public land to the indemnifying of sufferers under an act of universal abolition. It is believed, however, that compensation, even on the most liberal scale, would not be a great amount ; for the planters, in general, would suffer little, if at all, from emancipation. This change would make them richer, rather than poorer. One would think, indeed, from the common language on the subject, that the negroes were to be annihilated by being set free ; that the whole labor of the South was to be deotroyed by a single blow. But the colored man, when freed, will not vanish from the soil. He will stand there with the same muscles as before, only |