is a point of so much importance, lying as it does at the very
foundation of the whole subject, that it deserves to be attentively
considered. The grand mistake, as we apprehend, of those who maintain
that slaveholding is itself a crime, is, that they do not discriminate
between slaveholding in itself considered, and its accessories at any
particular time or place. Because masters may treat their slaves
unjustly, or governments make oppressive laws in relation to them, is no
more a valid argument against the lawfulness of slaveholding, than the
abuse of parental authority, or the unjust political laws of certain
states, is an argument against the lawfulness of the parental relation,
or of civil government. This confusion of points so widely distinct,
appears to us to run through almost all the popular publications on
slavery, and to vitiate their arguments. Mr. Jay, for example, quotes
the second article of the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, which declares that "slaveholding is a heinous crime in the
sight of God," and then, to justify this declaration, makes large
citations from the laws of the several Southern States, to show what the
system of slavery is in this country, and concludes by saying, "This is
the system which the American Anti-Slavery Society declares to be
sinful, and ought therefore to be immediately abolished." There is,
however, no necessary connection between his premises and conclusion. We
may admit all those laws which forbid the instruction of slaves; which
interfere with their marital or parental rights; which subject them to
the insults and oppression of the whites, to be in the highest degree
unjust, without at all admitting that slaveholding itself is a crime.
Slavery may exist without any one of these concomitants. In pronouncing
on the moral character of an act, it is obviously necessary to have a
clear idea of what it is; yet how few of those who denounce slavery,
have any well-defined conception of its nature. They have a confused
idea of chains and whips, of degradation and misery, of ignorance and
vice, and to this complex conception they apply the name slavery, and
denounce it as the aggregate of all moral and physical evil. Do such
persons suppose that slavery, as it existed in the family of Abraham,
was such as their imaginations thus picture to themselves? Might not
that patriarch have had men purchased with his silver who were well
clothed, well instructed, well co