ates, legislation should restore to the
enslaved population the primitive rights which God has given to all men,
establishing for them, on humane and Christian principles, such
relations as are suitable to their condition of poverty, ignorance, and
dependence, and are adapted to secure at once their improvement and the
general welfare.

This is the logical conclusion to be derived from the premises. As the
central wrong of slavery consists in making men articles of property by
law, the rectification is to lift from them by law the curse of the
false and irreligious doctrine, that they can be rightfully held as
property. Thus the axe is laid to the root of the tree.

This is also the conclusion to which we are forced by other moral
principles bearing on the case. For men to receive services of men is
right. Accordingly, the New Testament allows masters to receive services
of those who are slaves in the sense of human law; but at the same time
the sacred book requires masters, with all who employ labor, to make the
recompenses which are just and equal towards men; for slavery is not
right; and legislators, on their responsibility to the Ruler of nations,
are bound to adjust the laws in harmony with the first principles of
individual and moral obligation.

Furthermore, this is the only practical conclusion. By inevitable
necessity, the slaves, as a body, must remain on the soil of their
bondage. Only exceptional cases of removal can occur. They are the
laborers of the South; and no State will, or can, or is bound, to remove
its laborers. It is simply bound to protect and treat them with
Christian equity and kindness. Banishment of them would be injustice and
cruelty, violating perhaps no less than restoring divine rights.
Moreover, no practicable means of removing them have ever been seriously
proposed; and, till they shall be, the point needs no discussion.

But the question may be raised, "Are the slaves to endure their present
wrongs until the laws shall be thus renewed, or perhaps forever?" We
reply, in showing how slave-holders can cease from guilty connection
with slavery; we have also shown how the situation of the slaves becomes
one of practical righteousness, before the laws can be readjusted; and
for this great obligation of the body politic, sufficient time most be
allowed. Moral principles do not exact natural impossibilities. The
elevation of oppressed millions can be accomplished only in harmony with
grea