hould be as much justified in sending a vessel to
Africa, murdering a part of the inhabitants of a village, and making
slaves of the rest, as I should be in hunting a herd of wild animals,
and either slaying them or subjecting them to the yoke."

Now mark the principle on which this most wonderful argument is based:
"If I have a right to a thing after I have gotten it, I have a natural
right to the means for getting it." That is to say, If I have the right
to a slave, now that I have got him, then I may rightfully use all
necessary means to reduce other men to slavery! I may shoot, burn, or
murder, if by this means I can only get slaves! Was any consequence ever
more wildly drawn? Was any _non sequitur_ ever more glaring?

Let us see how this argument would apply to other things. If I have a
right to a watch after I have gotten it, no matter how, then I have a
right to use the means necessary to get watches; I may steal them from
my neighbors! Or, if I have a right to a wife, provided I can get one,
then may I shoot my friend and marry his widow! Such is the argument of
one who seeks to enlighten the South and reform its institutions!

Sec. III. _The third fallacy of the abolitionist._

Nearly allied to the foregoing argument is that of the same author, in
which he deduces from the right of slavery, supposing it to exist,
another retinue of monstrous rights. "This right also," says Dr.
Wayland, referring to the right to hold slaves, "as I have shown,
involves the right to use all the means necessary to its establishment
and perpetuity, and, _of course, the right to crush his intellectual and
social nature_, and to stupefy his conscience, in so far as may be
necessary to enable me to enjoy this right with the least possible
peril." This is a compound fallacy, a many-sided error. But we will
consider only two phases of its absurdity.

In the first place, if the slaveholder should reason in this way, no one
would be more ready than the author himself to condemn his logic. If any
slaveholder should say, That because I have a right to my slaves,
therefore I have the right to crush the intellectual and moral nature of
men, in order to _establish_ and perpetuate their bondage,--he would be
among the first to cry out against such reasoning. This is evident from
the fact that he everywhere commends those slaveholders who deem it
their duty, as a return for the service of their slaves, to promote both
their temporal and ete