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Show 100 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. Janthropic merit, thus sums up the law: 'The cardinal principle of slavery-that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient* beings, but among tl!ings-as an article of property-a chattel personal-obtains as undoubted law in all these (the slave) .States."' We thus learn from this very " careful WI'iter" that slaves among us are "not ranked among sentient beings," and that this is "the cardinal principle of slavery." No, they are not fed, nor clothed, nor treated as sentient beings ! They are left without food and raiment, just as if they were stocks and stones ! They are not talked to, nor ~;easoned with, as if they were rational animals, but only driven about, like dumb brutes beneath the lash ! No, no, not the lash, for that would recognise them as " sentient beings!" They are only thrown about like stones, or boxed up like chattels; they are not set, like men, over the lower animals, required to do the work of men; the precise work which, of all others, in the grand and diversified economy of human industry, they are the best qualified to perform ! So far, indeed, is this from being "the cardinal principle of slavery," * The ltalic8 o.re hi!! own. AROUMENTS OF AHOLITIO~ISTS. 101 that it is no principle of slavery at all. It bears not tho most distant likeness or approximation to any principle of slavery, with which we of the South have any the most remote acquaintance. That man may, in certain cases, be held as property, is a truth recognised by a higher authority than that of senators and divines. It is, as we have seen, recognised by the word of God himself. In that word, the slave is called the "possession"* of the master, and even "his money."t Now, is not tJ1is language as strong, if nC't stronger, than that adduced from the code of South Carolina 1 It certainly calls "the bondman" his master's "money." Why, then, did not the Senator from Massachusetts denounce this language, as divesting "a man of his hun1an character," and declat~ng him to be mere money 1 W11y did he not proceed to condemn the legislation of lleaven, as well as of the South, out of its own month 1 Most assuredly, if his principles be correct, then is he bound to pronounce the law of God itself manifestly unjust and iniquitous. For that law as clearly recognises tho * Lev. chnp. z:r.v. ,. t Exod. chn.p. ui. |