or life." But he is not a
slave. That is, he is not the _thing_ which slavery would mark its
subject. He is still a man. Offended justice has placed him in his
present circumstances, because he is a man: and, it is because he is a
_man_ and not a _thing_--a responsible, and not an irresponsible being,
that he must continue in his present trials and sufferings.

God's commandments to the Jews, respecting servants and strangers, show
that He not only did not authorize them to set up the claim of property
in their fellow men, but that He most carefully guarded against such
exercises of power, as might lead to the assumption of a claim so
wrongful to Himself. Some of these commandments I will bring to your
notice. They show that whatever was the form of servitude under which
God allowed the Jews to hold the heathen, it was not slavery. Indeed, if
all of the Word of God which bears on this point were cited and duly
explained, it would, perhaps, appear that He allowed no involuntary
servitude whatever amongst the Jews. I give no opinion whether he
allowed it or not. There are strong arguments which go to show, that He
did not allow it; and with these arguments the public will soon be made
more extensively acquainted. It is understood, that the next number of
the Anti-Slavery Examiner will be filled with them.

1st. So galling are the bonds of Southern slavery, that it could not
live a year under the operation of a law forbidding the restoration of
fugitive servants to their masters. How few of the discontented subjects
of this oppressive servitude would agree with Hamlet, that it is better
to

--"bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of."

What a running there would be from the slave States to the free!--from
one slave State to another!--from one plantation to another! Now, such a
law--a solemn commandment of God--many writers on slavery are of the
opinion, perhaps too confident opinion, was in force in the Jewish
nation (Deut. xxiii, 15); and yet the system of servitude on which it
bore, and which you cite as the pattern and authority for your own,
lived in spite of it. How could it? Manifestly, because its genius was
wholly unlike that of Southern slavery; and because its rigors and
wrongs, if rigors and wrongs there were in it, bear no comparison to
those which characterize Southern slavery; and which would impel
nine-tenths of its adult subjects to fly from their homes, did they but
know