double of _the same kind._ Why was not the rule
uniform? When a _man_ was stolen why was not the thief required to
restore double of the same kind--two men, or if he had sold him, five
men? Do you say that the man-thief might not _have_ them? So the
ox-thief might not have two oxen, or if he had killed it, five. But if
God permitted men to hold _men_ as property, equally with _oxen_, the
man-thief could get men with whom to pay the penalty, as well as the
ox-thief, oxen. Further, when _property_ was stolen, the legal penalty
was a compensation to the person injured. But when a _man_ was stolen,
no property compensation was offered. To tender money as an equivalent,
would have been to repeat the outrage with intolerable aggravations.
Compute the value of a MAN in _money!_ Throw dust into the scale against
immortality! The law recoiled from such supreme insult and impiety. To
have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double,
would have been making the repetition of crime its atonement. But the
infliction of death for _man-stealing_ exacted the utmost possibility of
reparation. It wrung from the guilty wretch as he gave up the ghost, a
testimony in blood, and death-groans, to the infinite dignity and worth
of man,--a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, "MAN IS
INVIOLABLE"--a confession shrieked in phrenzy at the grave's mouth--"I
die accursed, and God is just."

If God permitted man to hold man as property, why did he punish for
stealing that kind of property infinitely more than for stealing any
other kind of property? Why did he punish with death for stealing a very
little of _that_ sort of property, and make a mere fine, the penalty for
stealing a thousand times as much, of any other sort of
property--especially if God did by his own act annihilate the difference
between man and _property,_ by putting him on a level with it?

The atrociousness of a crime, depends much upon the nature, character,
and condition of the victim. To steal is a crime, whoever the thief, or
whatever the plunder. To steal bread from a full man, is theft; to steal
from a starving man, is both theft and murder. If I steal my neighbor's
property, the crime consists not in altering the _nature_ of the article
but in shifting its relation from him to me. But when I take my neighbor
himself, and first make him _property_, and then _my_ property, the
latter act, which was the sole crime in the former case, dwindle