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Show 40 the market price, " twelve hundred millions of dollars.'' That this enormous wrong should be perpetuated in the bosom of a Christian and civilized community, is a sad comment on our times. Sad and strange, that a distinguished man, in the face of a great people and of the world, should talk with entire indifference of fellow-creatures, held and labelled as property, to this " immense amount." But this property, we are told, is not to be questioned, on account of its long duration. "Two hundred years of legislation have sanctioned and sa11ctijied negro slaves as property." Nothing but respect for the speaker could repress criticism on this unhappy phraseology. We will trust it escaped him without thought. But to confine ourselves to the argument from duration ; how obvious the reply ! Is injustice changed into justice by the practice of ages ? Is my victim made a righteous prey, because I have bowed him to the earth till he cannot rise ? For more than two hundred years heretics were burned, and not by mobs, not by Lynch law, but by the decrees of councils, at the instigation of theologians, and with the sanction of the laws and religions of nations ; and was this a reason for keeping up the fires, that they had burned two hundred years? In the Eastern world, successive despots, not for two hundred years, but for twice two thousand, have claimed the right of life and death over millions, and with no law but their own wiH, have beheaded, bowstrung, starved, tortured unhappy men without number, who have incurred their wrath ; and does the lapse of so many centuries sanctify murder and ferocious power ? But the great argument remains. It is said that this property must not be questioned, because it is established by law. "That is property, which the law declares to be property."* Thus, human law is made supreme, decisive, in a grave question of morals. Thus, the idea of an «The italics are by Mr. Clay. 41 eternal, immutable justice is set at nought. Thus. the great rule of human life is made to be the ordinance of inte rested men. But there is a higher tribunal, a throne of equal justice, immovable by the conspiracy of all human legislatures. " That is property, which the Jaw declares to be property." Then the laws have only to declare you, or me, or Mr. Clay, to be property, and we become chattels and are bound to bear the yoke ! Does not every man's moral nature repel this doctrine too intuitively to leave time or need for argument ? I always hear with pain, the doctrine, too common among lawyers, that property is the creature of the law ; as if it had no natural foundation, as if it were not a natural right, as if it did not precede all laws, and were not their ground, instead of being their effect. Government is ordained, not to create, so much as to protect and regulate property ; and the chief strength of government lies in the sanction, which the moral sense, the natural idea of right, gives to honestly earned possessions. The notion which I am combating is essentially revolutionary and destructive. We hear much of Radicalism, of Agrarianism, at the present day. But of all radicals, the most dangerous, perhaps, is he, who makes property the cl creature of law" ; because, what law creates, it can destroy. If we of this Commonwealth have no right in our persons, houses, ships, farms, but what a vote of the legislature or the majority confers, then a vote of the same masses may strip us of them all, and transfer them to others ; and the right will go with the law. According to this doctrine, I see not why the majority, who are always comparatively poor, may not step into the mansions and estates of the rich. I see not why the law cannot make some idle neighbour the rightful owner of your fortune or mine. What better support can Radicalism ask than this ? It may be objected, that legislation does, in fact, touch and take a part of the citizens' property, and if a part, why 4* |