s assembled in convention solemnly affirm in view of
northern agitation of the subject, that "masters have the same right to
their slaves which they have to any other property."

This asserted and exercised right is the vital principle and substance
of the institution. It is the central delusion and transgression; and
the evils of the system to white and black are its legitimate
consequences. The legal and the leading idea concerning slaves is that
they are property: of course, the idea that they are men, invested with
the rights of men, practically sinks; and, from the premise that they
are property, the conclusion is logical that they may be treated as
property. Why should _property_, contrary to the interests of the
proprietor, be exempt from sale, receive instruction, give testimony in
court, hold estate, preserve family ties, be loved as the owner loves
himself, in fine, enjoy all or any of the "inalienable rights" of _man_?
It is because they are held as property, that slaves are sold; because
they are property, families are torn asunder; because they are
property, instruction is denied them; because they are property, the
law, and the public sentiment that makes the law, crush them as men.

We do not here call in question the mitigations with which Christian
masters temper into mildness the hard working of an evil system. Those
mitigations do not, however, logically or morally defend slavery. Nay,
they condemn it; for they are practical tributes to the fact that the
laws of humanity, not of property, are binding in respect to the slaves.
Hence they really show the inherent inconsistency of the idea, and the
unrighteousness of the system which regards men as property.

Notwithstanding those mitigations, the system itself, like every wrong
system, produces characteristic evils, which can be prevented only by
removing their cause, the false doctrine that men can be rightfully held
in ownership. Fallen as man is, no prophet was needed to foretell at the
first the dreadful facts that have been recorded in the bitter history
of man's claim of property in man. Such a history must always be a
scroll written within and without with lamentations and mourning and
woe. Man is not a safe depositary of such power. A human institution
which subverts a divine institution, and which carries with it the
assumption of a divine prerogative in constituting a new species of
property, naturally saps the foundations of every other divi