al confederation, the
rights of man, as a human being, are trenched upon; and visionary have
proved and will prove all projects of constructing and fashioning
society according to philosophical notions and theories of abstract
unalienable rights. That piracy or any civil institution interferes
with the property of a man, or a class of men (as, for instance,
merchants), does not then make it necessarily, and, amid all
circumstances, a crime."

Mr. Gracelius here paused, and gave Mary an opportunity to put in a
word.

"But," said she, "after taking off what you call the rubbish, Mr.
Gracelius, and pruning the question down as much as you please, I
cannot possibly admit that the Bible anywhere justifies piracy under
any circumstances whatsoever, either abstractly or practically. I call
upon you for anything in all the Bible that gives the slightest
countenance to such a mode of life, or such a government, as you are
pleased to term it."

"I should rather require of you," replied the learned divine, "to make
out from the Bible your charge that piracy is a crime. I know not a
word from the first of Genesis to the end of Revelation where piracy
is once condemned. But I pass this, and, waiving my clear logical
rights, undertake to prove the negative, and to show that the Bible
does, most explicitly, both by precept and example, bear me out in my
assertion, that piracy is not necessarily, and always, and amidst all
circumstances, a sin. WHAT GOD SANCTIONED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND
PERMITTED IN THE NEW, CANNOT BE SIN.

"I begin with the patriarch Jacob, whose name Israel has been
appropriated from his day to this time to the true church. How did
Jacob acquire his great riches? Was it not by appropriating the
property of Laban to himself? And did not God bless him in thus doing?
There is not a word of condemnation; but, on the contrary, Jacob, in
telling his brother that he had much property, remarked, that God had
dealt graciously with him. Here, you see, is a marked case of an
appropriation of another's property by a very adroit stratagem, which
is fully justified by the Old Testament, and uncondemned by the New.

"Had Jacob not represented in his person a different community from
Laban's, of which he was to be the Patriarch, his mode of acquiring
wealth out of Laban would have been censurable. But his conduct
towards Laban was consistent with what was subsequently allowed under
the Mosaic laws on the part of the Jews t