in his servants,
would have been far more likely to sweep them and him into captivity, as
they did Lot and his household. Besides, Abraham had neither
"Constitution," nor "compact," nor statutes, nor judicial officers to
send back his fugitives, nor a truckling police to pounce upon
panic-stricken women, nor gentleman-kidnappers, suing for patronage,
volunteering to howl on the track, boasting their blood-hound scent, and
pledging their "honor" to hunt down and "deliver up," _provided_ they
had a description of the "flesh marks," and were stimulated in their
chivalry by _pieces of silver_. Abraham seems also to have been sadly
deficient in all the auxiliaries of family government, such as stocks,
hand cuffs, foot-chains, yokes, gags, and thumb-screws. His destitution
of these patriarchal indispensables is the more afflicting, when we
consider his faithful discharge of responsibilities to his household,
though so deplorably destitute of the needful aids.

6. _We infer that servants were voluntary, from the fact that there is
no instance of an Israelitish master ever_ SELLING _a servant_. Abraham
had thousands of servants, but appears never to have sold one. Isaac
"grew until he became very great," and had "great store of servants."
Jacob's youth was spent in the family of Laban, where he lived a servant
twenty-one years. Afterward he had a large number of servants.

When Joseph sent for Jacob to come into Egypt, the words are, "thou and
thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds,
and ALL THAT THOU HAST." Jacob took his flocks and herds but _no
servants_. Gen xlv. 10; xlvii. 6; xlvii. 1. His servants doubtless,
served under their _own contracts_, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they
_chose_ to stay in their own country.

The government might sell _thieves_, if they had no property, until
their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine. Ex.
xxii. 3. But _masters_ seem to have had no power to sell their
_servants_--the reason is obvious. To give the master a _right_ to sell
his servant, would annihilate the servant's right of choice in his own
disposal; but says the objector, To give the master a right to _buy_ a
servant, equally annihilates the servant's _right of choice_. Answer. It
is one thing to have a right to buy a man, and a very different thing to
have a right to buy him of _another_ man.

Though there is no instance of a servant being bought of his, or her
master,