at money cannot cancel.
10. _Bondage for crime, or governmental claims on criminals._ Must
innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the
criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes
the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He is
a public defaulter, and will die so. Because laws make men pay their
debts, shall those be forced to pay who _owe nothing?_ Besides, the law
makes no criminal, PROPERTY. It restrains his liberty; it makes him pay
something, a mere penny in the pound, of his debt to the government; but
it does not make him a _chattel_. Test it. To own property is to own its
product. Are children born of convicts government property? Besides, can
_property_ be _guilty_? Are _chattels_ punished?
11. _Restrictions upon freedom._ Children are restrained by parents,
wards by guardians, pupils by teachers, patients by physicians and
nurses, corporations by charters, and legislators by constitutions.
Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing
as they please. Restraints are the web of civilized society, warp and
woof. Are they slavery? then civilized society is a mammoth slave--a
government of LAW, _the climax of slavery_, and its executive a king
among slaveholders.
12. _Involuntary or compulsory service_. A juryman is empannelled
_against his will_, and sit he _must_. A sheriff orders his posse;
bystanders _must_ turn in. Men are _compelled_ to remove nuisances, pay
fines and taxes, support their families, and "turn to the right as the
law directs," however much _against their wills_. Are they therefore
slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery
is a _condition_. The slave's _feelings_ toward it, are one thing; the
condition itself, the object of these feelings, is _another_ thing; his
feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether he _desire_
or _detest_ it, the _condition_ remains the same. The slave's
_willingness_ to be a slave is no palliation of his master's guilt in
holding him. Suppose the slave verily thinks himself a chattel, and
consents that others may so regard him, does that _make_ him a chattel,
or make those guiltless who _hold_ him as such? I may be sick of life,
and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer
because I _consent_ to be made a corpse? Does my partnership in his
guilt blot out his part of it? If the slave were willing t
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