eed, in the eighth Psalm, extends his right of property to the
inanimate and brute creation only--not to the flesh and bones and spirit
of his fellow-man.

3d. The very different penalties annexed to the crime of stealing a man,
and to that of stealing a thing, shows the eternal and infinite
difference which God has established between a man and property. The
stealing of a man was _surely_ to be punished with death; whilst mere
property was allowed to atone for the offence of stealing property.

4th. Who, if not the slave, can be said to be vexed and oppressed! But
God's command to his people was, that they should neither "vex a
stranger, nor oppress him."

5th. Such is the nature of American slavery, that not even its warmest
friends would claim that it could recover itself after such a "year of
jubilee" as God appointed. One such general delivery of its victims
would be for ever fatal to it. I am aware that you deny that all the
servants of the Jews shared in the blessings of the "year of jubilee."
But let me ask you, whether if one third or one half of your servants
were discharged from servitude every fiftieth year--and still more,
whether if a considerable proportion of them were thus discharged every
sixth year--the remainder would not be fearfully discontented? Southern
masters believe, that their only safety consists in keeping down the
discontent of their servants. Hence their anxious care to withhold from
them the knowledge of human rights. Hence the abolitionist who is caught
in a slave state, must be whipped or put to death. If there were a class
of servants amongst the Jews, who could bear to see all their fellow
servants go free, whilst they themselves were retained in bondage, then
that bondage was of a kind very different from what you suppose it to
have been. Had its subjects worn the galling chains of American slavery,
they would have struggled with bloody desperation for the deliverance
which they saw accorded to others.

I scarcely need say, that the Hebrew words rendered "bondmen" and
"bondmaids," do not, in themselves considered, and independently of the
connexion in which they are used, any more than the Greek words _doulos_
and _doule_, denote a particular kind of servant. If the servant was a
slave, because he was called by the Hebrew word rendered "bondman," then
was Jacob a slave also:--and even still greater absurdities could be
deduced from the position.

I promised, in a former part of