which mutually pass between the poor and the rich, the workman or clerk and his employer. No; for these also, and generally for Christians of all conditions, he lays down rules how to behave; as he does in a special manner for sons and fathers, for subjects and sovereigns, and for others; but in the passages mentioned above he speaks to slaves proper. They are clear and positive in the whole context, so that their meaning is unmistakable; but all shadows of doubt, if there could be any, are dissipated by the words he addresses to servants in the above-cited eighth verse of his letter to the Ephesians, where he contrasts their condition with that of freemen. For, after exhorting them to serve to their master with a good will, as if they served, not to men, but to God himself, he concludes: "Knowing that whatever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free:" sive servus, sive liber.

And we must remember that, at the time when the Apostle wrote, under the Roman empire, Slavery was spread over the whole world. In Rome, many a citizen counted his slaves by tens of thousands.

The advocates of Abolitionism appeal also to Humanity and Civilization, representing Slavery as inhuman, barbar ous, not becoming a civilized people. But if Christianity does not forbid Slavery, the necessary conclusion to be drawn from it is, that neither Humanity nor Civilization forbid it unless it were maintained that Christianity is against Humanity and Civilization, or that Humanity and Civilization are against Christianity. They may be, indeed, against her, and in many a thing they are; but then it is they that are in the wrong; for, whenever they are against Christianity, they are against Reason also,—against themselves.

Not to mention that, if the master treats his slaves well, as he is bound to do by strict justice and his own interest, one sees no inhumanity in Slavery, but perhaps some ad

vantages, which it were desirable might be generally found in the condition of free working people.

It is not impossible that upon both those heads these gentlemen have got up their cry,-not from any feeling or persuasion which they might call their own, but in order to copy, or make themselves the echo of, England, whose boast it is: “No slave shall tread on English ground; but he is a freeman who touches it." And yet it is she who has planted Slavery here, as she has helped to plant, or increase and maintain it elsewhere. But even now some people would point to her the East Indians, whose condition, under her sway, seems to be no better than slavery: perhaps it is worse; since they labor in a great measure under its evils, but have not the poor consolation of its advantages: with the aggravating circumstance that their present condition, -of which they themselves are the best judges, and it is to be wished they had assured the world of what they think of it by no such unlawful evidence as they have,—is her own work from the beginning. But the Clockmaker,-and it is an Englishman who speaks through him,-has something to tell her about selling White Niggers at auction, tearing the wife from her husband, the children from their parents.

Lest I should be suspected to be a friend to Slavery, I have hinted before, and do now declare, that I am not. I possess no slaves myself, nor would have any; and if an estate to which slaves belong were by chance to fall upon me, they might account themselves freemen the moment I got possession of it. If one is allowed to express one's own thoughts and sentiments upon this subject, I would feel mortified, and regard as a sort of degradation, even to command and be served by people whom I could not socially look upon and treat as men, knowing that they are men. Perhaps many an Abolitionist does not go so far in his benevolence towards slaves, if it is true that he has their well-being at heart. These mine, however, are only personal sentiments, which have nothing to do with the matter

in hand; and some may possibly ascribe them to extravagancy of taste, on which the proverb says there can be no dispute.

But, touching Humanity and Civilization with regard to Slavery, a wide field opens before one's eyes, wherein one might expatiate and inquire, Whether we are more humane and civilized than Greece was at the time of Pericles, than Rome at the time of Augustus? Useless to mention Egypt, even when she was the Seat of Learning; or any of the Eastern empires up to the remotest antiquity, whose records have reached us. For, in all these places and times, as anywhere else before and after, there was Slavery; and in some of them, it must be regretted, in its most forbidding and shocking features.

There is no doubt but that Christianity has rendered man more humane and civilized, by clearing his ideas of justice and purifying his morals,—hence softening-his manners in all his relations with other men ;-which beneficial influence, spreading by insensible degrees from the individual into the family, and thence into larger numbers in all classes of society, did reach at last and affect the governing powers themselves, and has taken a great part in the very dictating their laws and moulding their institutions; whence, returning back to the individual, and being thus cemented, as it were, kneaded, incorporated with what is the ordinary life of the people, it could not but work in their habits and manners a great change for the better. In this sense, certainly, we are, beyond comparison, more humane and civilized than the best of the ancients. But if Christianity itself, in its purity and entireness, does not forbid Slavery, as has been shown, much less can this be accounted as forbidden by civilization, so far as that part of Christianity may be concerned which has entered and improved it.

It remains, therefore, that Slavery should be forbidden by Civilization left to itself, considered as the work of man, unconnected with, and a stranger to, those advantages

which it has derived from the Christian element. And, in this sense, one might ask again: Are we more civilized than the Greeks? more than the Romans? more civilized than those people would have been who should have composed the Perfect Republic of Plato, and the True Republic of Aristotle, could these have been brought into actual existence among men?

For, each of these philosophers framed his Republic according to that Ideal of Government which he had in his own mind, namely, such as he imagined would be the best of all, if it were planted on earth, made to work and kept agoing,—but such as cannot be hoped will ever be realized among men, they being what they are,—and he endowed it with all the perfections that might belong to a government for its duration, security, tranquillity, and happiness. Yet both of them would have had slaves in their Republics respectively.

And it is to be noticed that Plato, if any of the Ancients, was a most kind-hearted man; insomuch that, a servant of his having highly offended, and deserving punishment, he would not chastise him himself, lest he should have passed the measure, but bid a friend do it for him, saying, “because I am much out of myself," valde commotus; the very reason why some other masters would have chastised him with their own hands.

It were perhaps not uninteresting, nor altogether impertinent to the subject in hand, to institute a comparison between our civilization and that of the Ancients, either in regard to the respective political institutions and governments, or even, leaving Science, Literature, and Art aside, in regard to refinement of manners in private or social intercourse, and, not to mention any things, in regard to delicacy of taste in all that relates to the enjoyment of material life, both in its necessities and in what goes by the name of pleasures and diversions. For it is chiefly, if not wholly, to this latter part people commonly apply the idea of Civilization, and measure this by that. True it is, however, that

the end of a city or community, for those who associate in forming it, is, as Aristotle expresses it, not so much To live, as To live well, or enjoy life.

But though such an inquiry might be not useless, yet still one should here abstain from entering into any detail, because it is unnecessary; the more so, because, as it is certain that neither Christianity nor Civilization, as the world goes, do forbid Slavery, or command its abolition, so it is likewise certain that, even if they did, they could have no part, nor be so much as mentioned, for judging the present controversy. Its decision depends, not on the Code of Civ ilization, if there is any, not on humanitarian speculations, not on the maxims of the gospel itself, but solely on the Constitution of the United States of America.

And I have premised the foregoing observations, in order to free the subject of those embarrassments from foreign matters with which the contending parties seem to have overcharged it. They began with setting down the true terms of the question, Slavery, or No Slavery-To be, or Not to be; but then gradually, I presume, unintentionally, and by the mere force or complication of events, it has been so altered afterwards as not to be now recognized for what it was. What by exchanging words in the heat of the dispute, which has been often renewed under different aspects,-what by multiplying incidents at different times, each carrying a distinct character, and thus adding a new feature and knot to the question,-it seems that the contending parties have raised such a thick mist between them, that they can see each other no longer.

The worst of it is, they make its decision depend on those heterogeneous matters superadded to it, and yet keep on speaking so as though they had always in view its original terms, and relied on the Constitution for its adjustment, -whereas the Constitution, I think, has been lost sight of long since, and perhaps cannot decide the controversy, nor remedy the evil, as matters now stand.

But, whatever the question is, and whether the Constitu