se to
pieces, or burn him on the fire. For the horse has rights, which the
owner himself is bound to respect. The horse has a right to food and
kind treatment, and the owner who refuses these is a tyrant. Nay, the
very worm that crawls beneath our feet has his rights as well as the
monarch on his throne; and just in so far as these rights are
disregarded by a man is that man a tyrant.

Hence even the brute may not be regarded or treated as a mere thing or a
tree. He can be owned and treated no otherwise than as a brute. The
horse, for example, may not be left, like a tree, without food and care;
but he may be saddled and rode as a horse; or he may be hitched to the
plough, and compelled to do his master's work.

In like manner, a man cannot be owned or treated as a horse. He cannot
be saddled or rode, nor hitched to the plough and be made to do the work
of a horse. On the contrary, he should be treated as a man, and required
to perform only the work of a man. The right to such work is all the
ownership which any one man can rightfully have in another; and this is
all which any slaveholder of the South needs to claim.

The real question is, _Can one man have a right to the personal service
or obedience of another without his consent?_ We do not intend to let
the abolitionist throw dust in our eyes, and shout victory amid a clamor
of words. We intend to hold him to the point. Whether he be a learned
divine, or a distinguished senator, we intend he shall speak to the
point, or else his argument shall be judged, not according to the
eloquent noise it makes or the excitement it produces, but according to
the _sense_ it contains.

_Can a man, then, have a right to the labor or obedience of another
without his consent?_ Give us this right, and it is all we ask. We lay
no claim to the soul of the slave. We grant to the abolitionist, even
more freely than he can assert, that the "soul of the slave is his own."
Or, rather, we grant that his soul belongs exclusively to the God who
gave it. The master may use him not as a tree or a brute, but only as a
rational, accountable, and immortal being may be used. He may not
command him to do any thing which is wrong; and if he should so far
forget himself as to require such service of his slave, he would himself
be guilty of the act. If he should require his slave to violate any law
of the land, he would be held not as a _particeps criminis_ merely, but
as a criminal in the first degr