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Show 148 UBERTY AND SLAVERY. maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if be continue a day or two, he shall not be punished, for be is his money."* In one of the ten commandments this right of property is recognised: "Thou shalt not covet thy . neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet th~ neighbor's wife, nor lds man-servant, nor lns maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." 2. They might be sold. This is taken for granted in all those passages in which, for particular reasons, ·the master is forbidden to sell his slaves. Thus it is declared: "Thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her." And still more explicitly: "If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her to a ..strange nation, he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her."t 3. The slavery thus expressly sanctioned was hereditary and perpetual: "Y e shall take them * Exod. n.i. 20, 21. t Exod. xxi. 71 8. AROU"ENT FROM TilE SCRIPTURES. 149 as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever." Even the Hebrew servant might, by his own consent, becon1e in certain cases a slave for life: "If thou buy a lie brew ser1•ant, six years shall he serve; and in the seventh shall he go out ft·ce for pothing . If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges: he shall also bring him to the door or unto the door-post, and his mastet· shall bore his ear through with an awl, and lte shall serve ltim jo1'ever." Now it is evident, we think, that the legislator of the IIebrews was not inspired with the sentiments of an abolitionist. The principles of his legislation at·e, indeed, so diametrically opposed to the ]..JOiitical notions of the abolitionist, that the Iattet· is sadly perplexed to dispose of them. While some deny 13• |