f all the parties concerned, which arrays the Mosaic system
in robes of glory, and causes it to shine as the sun in the kingdom of
our Father. By this law, the children had secured to them a mother's
tender care. If the husband loved his wife and children, he could compel
his master to keep him, whether he had any occasion for his services or
not, and with such remuneration as was provided by the statute. If he
did not love them, to be rid of him was a blessing; and in that case,
the regulation would prove an act for the relief of an afflicted family.
It is not by any means to be inferred, that the release of the servant
from his service in the seventh year, either absolved him from the
obligations of marriage, or shut him out from the society of his family.
He could doubtless procure a service at no great distance from them, and
might often do it, to get higher wages, or a kind of employment better
suited to his taste and skill, or because his master might not have
sufficient work to occupy him. Whether he lived near his family, or at a
considerable distance, the great number of days on which the law
released servants from regular labor, would enable him to spend much
more time with them than can be spent by most of the agents of our
benevolent societies with _their_ families, or by many merchants,
editors, artists, &c., whose daily business is in New York, while their
families reside from ten to one hundred miles in the country.

We conclude this Inquiry by touching briefly upon an objection, which,
though not formally stated, has been already set aside by the whole
tenor of the foregoing argument. It is this,--

_"The slavery of the Canaanites by the Israelites, was appointed by God
as a commutation of the punishment of death denounced against them for
their sins."_--If the absurdity of a sentence consigning persons to
_death_, and at the same time to perpetual _slavery_, did not
sufficiently laugh in its own face, it would be small self-denial, in a
case so tempting, to make up the deficiency by a general contribution.
For, _be it remembered_, the Mosaic law was given, while Israel was _in
the wilderness_, and only _one_ statute was ever given respecting _the
disposition to be made of the inhabitants of the land._ If the sentence
of death was first pronounced against them, and afterwards _commuted_,
when? where? by whom? and in what terms was the commutation? And where
is it recorded? Grant, for argument's sake,