e within the province of the
moral philosopher? Is it because fiction alone is worthy of his
attention? Or is it because a blind, partisan zeal has so far taken
possession of his very understanding, that he finds it impossible to
speak of the institution of slavery, except in the language of the
grossest misrepresentation?

Sec. X. _The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth fallacies of the abolitionist; or his seven arguments
against the right of a man to hold property in his fellow-man._

"This claim of property in a human being," says Dr. Channing, "is
altogether false, groundless. No such right of man in man can exist. A
human being cannot be justly owned." The only difficulty in maintaining
this position is, according to Dr. Channing, "on account of its
exceeding obviousness. It is too plain for proof. To defend it is like
trying to confirm a self-evident truth," etc., etc. Yet he advances no
less than seven "arguments," as he calls them, in order to establish
this self-evident position. We shall examine these seven arguments, and
see if his great confidence be not built on a mere abuse of words.

"The consciousness of our humanity," says he, "involves the persuasion
that we cannot be owned as a tree or a brute." This, as every body
knows, is one of the hackneyed commonplaces of the abolitionist. He
never ceases to declaim about the injustice of slavery, because it
regards, as he is pleased to assert, a man as a mere thing or a brute.
Now, once for all, we freely admit that it were monstrously unjust to
regard or treat a man otherwise than as a man. We freely admit that a
human being "can not be owned as a tree or a brute."

A tree may be _absolutely_ owned. That is to say, the owner of a tree
may do what he pleases with his own, provided he do no harm or injury
with it. He may cut it down; and, if he please, he may beat it as long
as he has the power to raise an arm. He may work it into a house or into
a piece of furniture, or he may lay it on the fire, and reduce it to
ashes. He may, we repeat, do just exactly what he pleases with his own,
if his own be such a thing as a tree, _for a tree has no rights_.

It is far otherwise with a brute. The owner of a horse, for example, may
not do what he pleases with his own. Here his property is not
_absolute_; it is _limited_. He may not beat his horse without mercy,
"for a good man is merciful to his beast." He may not cut his hor