rought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked,
whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or "tears be his
meat night and day," fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;--_all this_
ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, _by which every slave_, AS A
SLAVE, _is set apart from the rest of the human family_. Is it an
exercise of love, to place our "neighbor" under the crushing
weight, the killing power, of such a relation?--to apply the
murderous steel to the very vitals of his humanity?

"YE THEREFORE APPLAUD AND DELIGHT IN THE DEEDS OF YOUR FATHERS;
FOR THEY KILLED THEM, AND YE BUILD THEIR SEPULCHRES."[19]

The slaveholder may eagerly and loudly deny, that any such thing is
chargeable upon him. He may confidently and earnestly allege, that
he is not responsible for the state of society in which he is placed.
Slavery was established before he began to breathe. It was his
inheritance. His slaves are his property by birth or testament. But
why will he thus deceive himself? Why will he permit the cunning and
rapacious spiders, which in the very sanctuary of ethics and
religion are laboriously weaving webs from their own bowels, to
catch him with their wretched sophistries?--and devour him, body,
soul, and substance? Let him know, as he must one day with shame and
terror own, that whoever holds slaves is himself responsible for
_the relation_, into which, whether reluctantly or willingly, he
thus enters. _The relation cannot be forced upon him_. What though
Elizabeth countenanced John Hawkins in stealing the natives of
Africa?--what though James, and Charles, and George, opened a market
for them in the English colonies?--what though modern Dracos have
"framed mischief by law," in legalizing man-stealing and
slaveholding?--what though your ancestors, in preparing to go
"to their own place," constituted you the owner of the "neighbors"
whom they had used as cattle?--what of all this, and as much more like
this, as can be drawn from the history of that dreadful process by
which men are "deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be
_chattels personal_?" Can all this force you to put the cap upon the
climax--to clinch the nail by doing that, without which nothing in
the work of slave-making would be attempted? _The slaveholder is the
soul of the whole system_. Without him, the chattel principle is a
lifeless abstraction. Without him, charters, and markets, and laws,
and testaments, are empty