[Footnote A: The Bible record of actions is no comment on their moral
character. It vouches for them as _facts_, not as _virtues_. It records
without rebuke, Noah's drunkenness, Lot's incest, and the lies of Jacob
and his mother--not only single acts, but _usages_, such as polygamy and
concubinage, are entered on the record without censure. Is that _silent
entry_ God's _endorsement?_ Because the Bible in its catalogue of human
actions, does not stamp on every crime its name and number, and write
against it, _this is a crime_--does that wash out its guilt, and bleach
it into a virtue?]

THE MORAL LAW AGAINST SLAVERY.

Just after the Israelites were emancipated from their bondage in Egypt,
while they stood before Sinai to receive the law, as the trumpet waxed
louder, and the mount quaked and blazed, God spake the ten commandments
from the midst of clouds and thunderings. Two of those commandments deal
death to slavery. "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL," or, "thou shalt not take from
another what _belongs_ to him." All man's powers are God's gift to HIM.
Each of them is a part of himself, and all of them together constitute
himself. All else that belongs to man, is acquired by the _use_ of these
powers. The interest belongs to him, because the principal does; the
product is his, because he is the producer. Ownership of any thing, is
ownership of its _use_. The right to use according to will, is _itself_
ownership. The eighth commandment presupposes and assumes the right of
every man to his powers, and their product. Slavery robs of both. A
man's right to himself, is the only right absolutely original and
intrinsic--his right to anything else is merely _relative_ to this, is
derived from it, and held only by virtue of it. SELF-RIGHT is the
_foundation right_--the _post in the middle_, to which all other rights
are fastened. Slaveholders, when talking about their RIGHT to their
slaves, always assume their own right to themselves. What slave-holder
ever undertook to prove his right to himself? He knows it to be a
self-evident proposition, that _a man belongs to himself_--that the
right is intrinsic and absolute. In making out his own title, he makes
out the title of every human being. As the fact of being _a man_ is
itself the title, the whole human family have one common title deed. If
one man's title is valid, all are valid. If one is worthless, all are.
To deny the validity of the _slave's_ title is to deny the validity of
_