es,
and of having recognized the worst of human beings as Christians. We
say, therefore, that an institution which deprives a certain portion of
the community of their personal liberty, places them under obligation of
service to another portion, is no more necessarily sinful than one which
invests an individual with despotic power (such as Mr. Birney would
consent to hold); or than one which limits the right of government to a
small portion of the people, or restricts it to the male part of the
community. However inexpedient, under certain circumstances, any one of
these arrangements may be, they are not necessarily immoral, nor do they
become such, from the fact that the accident of birth determines the
relation in which one part of the community is to stand to the other. In
ancient Egypt, as in modern India, birth decided the position and
profession of every individual. One was born a priest, another a
merchant, another a laborer, another a soldier. As there must always be
these classes, it is no more necessarily immoral, to have them all
determined by hereditary descent, than it was among the Israelites to
have all the officers of religion from generation to generation thus
determined; or that birth should determine the individual who is to fill
a throne, or occupy a seat in parliament.

Again, Dr. Wayland argues, if the right to hold slaves be conceded,
"there is of course conceded all other rights necessary to insure its
possession. Hence, inasmuch as the slave can be held in this condition
only while he remains in the lowest state of mental imbecility, it
supposes the master to have the right to control his intellectual
development just as far as may be necessary to secure entire
subjection."[270] He reasons in the same way, to show that the religious
knowledge and even eternal happiness of the slave are as a matter of
right conceded to the power of the master, if the right of slaveholding
is admitted. The utmost force that can be allowed to this argument is,
that the right to hold slaves includes the right to exercise all
_proper_ means to insure its possession. It is in this respect on a par
with all other rights of the same kind. The right of parents to the
service of their children, of husbands to the obedience of their wives,
of masters over their apprentices, of creditors over their debtors, of
rulers over their subjects, all suppose the right to adopt proper means
for their secure enjoyment. They, however,