such a right to service may exist for life? If
it may exist for one period, why not for a longer, and even for life?
If the good of both parties and the good of the whole community require
such a relation and such a right to exist, why should it be deemed so
unjust, so iniquitous, so monstrous? This whole controversy turns, we
repeat, not upon any consideration of abstract rights, but solely upon
the highest good of all--upon the highest good of the slave as well as
upon that of the community.

"It is plain," says Dr. Channing, in his first argument, "that if any
one may be held as property, then any other man may be so held." This
sophism has been already sufficiently refuted. It proceeds on the
supposition that if one man, however incapable of self-government, may
be placed under the control of another, then all men may be placed under
the control of others! It proceeds on the idea that all men should be
placed in precisely the same condition, subjected to precisely the same
authority, and required to perform precisely the same kind of labor. In
one word, it sees no difference and makes no distinction between a Negro
and a Newton. But as an overstrained and false idea of equality lies at
the foundation of this argument, so it will pass under review again,
when we come to consider the great demonstration which the abolitionist
is accustomed to deduce from the axiom that "all men are created equal."

The third argument of Dr. Channing is, like the first, "founded on the
essential equality of men." Hence, like the first, it may be postponed
until we come to consider the true meaning and the real political
significancy of the natural equality of all men. We shall barely remark,
in passing, that two arguments cannot be made out of one by merely
changing the mode of expression.

The second argument of the author is as follows: "A man cannot be seized
and held as property, because he has rights. . . . A being having rights
cannot justly be made property, _for this claim over him virtually
annuls all his rights_." This argument, it is obvious, is based on the
arbitrary idea which the author has been pleased to attach to the term
_property_. If it proves any thing, it would prove that a horse could
not be held as property, for a horse certainly has rights. But, as we
have seen, a limited property, or a right to the labor of a man, does
not deny or annul all his rights, nor necessarily any one of them. This
argument needs no