incurred by its
removal. Society inflicts these forfeitures for the security of the
lives of its members; it inflicts them for the security of their
property, the great essential of civilization; it inflicts them also for
the protection of its political institutions, the forcible attempt to
overturn which, has always been justly regarded as the greatest crime;
and who has questioned its right so to inflict? "Man can not have
property in man"--a phrase as full of meaning as, "who slays fat oxen
should himself be fat." Certainly he may, if the laws of society allow
it, and if it be on sufficient grounds, neither he nor society do wrong.

And is it by this--as we must call it, however recommended to our higher
feelings by its associations--well-sounding, but unmeaning verbiage of
natural equality and inalienable rights, that our lives are to be put in
jeopardy, our property destroyed, and our political institutions
overturned or endangered? If a people had on its borders a tribe of
barbarians, whom no treaties or faith could bind, and by whose attacks
they were constantly endangered, against whom they could devise no
security, but that they should be exterminated or enslaved; would they
not have the right to enslave them, and keep them in slavery so long as
the same danger would be incurred by their manumission? If a civilized
man and a savage were by chance placed together on a desolate island,
and the former, by the superior power of civilization, would reduce the
latter to subjection, would he not have the same right? Would this not
be the strictest self-defense? I do not now consider, how far we can
make out a similar case to justify our enslaving of the negroes. I speak
to those who contend for inalienable rights, and that the existence of
slavery always, and under all circumstances, involves injustice and
crime.

As I have said, we acknowledge the existence of a moral law. It is not
necessary for us to resort to the theory which resolves all right into
force. The existence of such a law is imprinted on the hearts of all
human beings. But though its existence be acknowledged, the mind of man
has hitherto been tasked in vain to discover an unerring standard of
morality. It is a common and undoubted maxim of morality, that you shall
not do evil that good may come. You shall not do injustice or commit an
invasion of the rights of others, for the sake of a greater ulterior
good. But what is injustice, and what are the ri