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Show 52 or labor is their whole fortune. To seize on this would be to rob them of their all. In truth, no robbery is so great as that to which the slave is habitually subjected. To take by force a man's whole estate, the fruit of years of toil, would by universal consent be denou11ced as a great wrong; but what is this, compared with seizing the man himself, and appropriating to our use the limbs, faculties, strength, and labor, by which all property is won and held fast? The right of property in outward things is as nothing, compared with our right to ourselves. Were the slave-holder stript of hrs fortune, he would count the violence slio·ht compared wi th what he would suffer, wcr·e 0 hi~ person seized and devoted as a chattel to another's use. Let it not be said that the slave receives an equivalent, that he is fed and clothed, and is not, therefore, robbed. Suppose another to wrest from us a valued possession, and to pay us his own price. Should we not think ourselves robbed? '¥auld not the laws pronounce the invader a robber? Is it consistent with the rialn of property, that a man should determine the ~qui valent for _what he takes from his neighbour? Especrally rs rt to be hoped, that the equivalent due to the laborer will be scrupulously weighed, when he himself is held as property, and all his earnings are declared to be his master's? So great an infraction of human right is slavery! 53 In reply to these remarks, it may be said that the theory and practice of slavery differ; that the rights of the slave are not as wantonly sported with as the claims of the master mioht lead us to infer; that some of his possessions ar~ sacred ; that not a few slave-holders refuse to divorce hu sband and wife, to sever parent and child; and that in many cases the powet· of punishment is used so reltictantly, as to encourage insolence and insubordination. All this I have no disposition to deny. Indeed it must be so. It is not in human nature to wink wholly out of sight the rights of a fellowcreature. Degrade him as we may, we cannot altogether forget his claims. In every slavecountry, there are, undoubtedly, masters who desire and purpose to respect these, to the full extent which the nature of the relation will allow. Still, human rights are denied. They lie wholly at another's mercy; and we must have studied history in vain, if we need be told that they will be continually the prey of this absolute power.- The Evils involved in and flowing from the denial and infraction of the rights of the slave will form the subject of a subsequent chapter. |
