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Show 18 The argument of Dr. C . is as unsound in its logic as it is refined, extravagant and dangerous in its morality and horrible in its consequences. His fallacy is one very common to enthusiasts. He assumes a proposition to be universally true which is true only with important qualifications and many limitations. His conclusion is based on the premises· that no property can be made to exist in a human being. This is but partially true even in Massachusetts. Vv e admit a limited property in human beings. A father has a property in his child ; a master in his apprentice; a ship-captain in his mariners; a general in his soldiers. Their labor belongs to him, and their serv ices, like those of the slave, may be enforced even by stripes. Property is the creature of municipal law. It exists nowhere without law ; and everywhere is inherent in everything which is made property by law. It may be an unwise, impolitic and cruel law, but still it has its effect. ·where is the authority for the declaration that there can be no property in a human being ? In the Bible ? Slavery is recognized under the Mosaic and christian dispensation without censure In History ? Slavery has existed in all time in the fairest regio~s of the earth and among the most civilized portions of mankind. Our own government not long since made a claim on Great Britain for the value of the property of our citizens in some hundt·ed human slaves. The principle was admitted by the English nation. The amount to be paid was referred to the arbitration of the Emperor of Russia. Our claim was allowed, the money received, and distributed to the claimants for their loss of their property in slaves. We acknowledge the existence of such property whenever we seize and return a runaway slave on the application of his master ; and our Supreme Court, refering to the period when Slavery was recognized here by law, have in numerous instances adjudicated important rights on the doctrine that where slavery does exist or has existed by the law of the 19 land, such law did admit and must be now deemed to admit the existence of property in human beings. If it be true now that no law can make man a s]ave, it was true always. Discovery of truth does not make truth. It was as true in the days of Pharaoh that the earth moved round the Sun as it is now, although nobody knew it. If we are to adjudic•te to-day on a law of the last century, and now for the first time discover that what was taken for truth was not truth, we must now declare it. If no human power could make a slave, no human power has a right to say that any man is, or that any man has been a slave. But the doctrine of Dr. C. applied to civ il rights has been overruled by the first statesmen and jurists of the country, and I venture to say never will be received with any favor by practical men. If it is not from scripture or history, legislation or jnrisprudence that Dr. C. derives authority for his argument, whence does it come ? From a refined and elabora te metaphysical subtilty wholly incomprehensible to a great part of mankindfrom new light in the recesses of his study, from some double distillation which by a novel process of alchemy he has been able to effect on the dry bones of ancient morality. But while he has thus in his own estimation converted dross into gold, while he comes forward as the discoverer of a new elixir of life for the mortal and decaying principles of mankind, while he proposes to effect by it an entire revolution in the manners, sentiments and feelings of the civilized world, it would have been kind in him rather to have spoken in the style of pity than of censure, and instead of accusing the slaveholder of his sins and his crimes, have been lenient to past transgressors on the recollection of their ignorance. New discoveries in moral science like the nostrums of the quack win their way slowly into the favor of mankind. We are apt to be jealous of that inventor who assumes to be wiser than past ages, or better than the present. \Ve subject his experiment to a careful analysis; we revise his process with coolness; and when we detect the error of his theory and the |