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the father may be! The same usage, whether with or without written law, prevails in all our slave States; and under its sanction, the slave "owner" very frequently holds and sells his own children as property," though sometimes as white as himself. "That Is property which the law declares TO BE property. Two hundred years of legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property." (HENRY CLAY; Speech, U. S. Senate, 1839.)

So also Mr. Gholson, in the Legislature of Virginia: "The owner of land has a reasonable right to its annual produce, the owner of brood mares to their products, and the owner of female slaves to their increase."

Thus the perpetuity of slavery grows out of its hereditary transmission, and this again comes from its tenure of chattelhood. If the "legal relation" be valid and innocent, there can be no argument admitted against the right of its perpetuity; and slave property may be held so long as other property is held. The duty of a future liberation would imply the unlawfulness of present possession. Intelligent slaveholders, perceiving this, are careful to fortify their present claims upon human chattels, by enactments seeking the perpetuity of the system.

In Jamaica, before emancipation, the mixed breed, at the fourth degree of distance from the negro ancestor, were liberated by express law. In the other British West India Islands, a similar custom prevailed. (See Stephen's West India Slavery, p. 27, and Edwards' West Indies, book 4, chap. 1.) In the

Spanish and Portuguese colonies, (probably, also, in the French,) a similar usage is believed to prevail. (Vide Stroud's Sketch, p. 14.) Not so in our North American slave States, where biblical defenses of slavery, on the pretended foundation of Hebrew servitude, forget to define it by the Hebrew usages, and are resorted to in defense against the proclamation of the Hebrew Jubilee! By this process, and by defenses of or apologies for "the legal relation” of slave ownership, the idea of “rights of property” is sustained, which includes the right of perpetuity, of course, and makes it a work of supererogation to emancipate. Refusing to do so, the citizen remains as good as the laws; and the Christian (so he is taught) as good as the apostles and Moses, so far as the slave question is concerned. With "fanatics" he leaves it to attempt being better. Hence, the people (with few exceptions) are "no better than their laws" in this matter.

CHAPTER XXII.

RIGHT TO EDUCATION--RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE.

The Slave, being held as a Chattel, is held by a tenure which excludes any legal recognition of his rights as a thinking and religious being.

WE are not now speaking of laws or of usages that directly infringe such rights and prohibit their exercise. There are such laws, and we shall give some specimens of them, when we come to inquire after The condition of the slave in relation to civil society.* At present, we are only unfolding to view "the legal relation of master and slave." We affirm that a recognition of the validity or lawfulness of that relation is equivalent to a denial of the literary and religious rights of the slave. And if that relation be an innocent one, then the denial and the withholding of those rights, AS RIGHTS, are innocent likewise. The mere bestowal of privileges, with the permission to enjoy them, is not the recognition of rights; it is rather an implied denial of their existence. Men do not grant permission nor confer privileges where

*Chapters VI. and VII. Part II.

they recognize rights. The power to permit and to confer, carries with it the power to refuse and to withhold. Both the master and the slave understand this, where permissions are most frequently given. It is injurious to confer, as it is degrading to accept as a boon, what belongs to every man AS man, by absolute and inherent RIGHT. The rights of investigation, of free speech, of mental culture, of religious liberty, and of conscience, are of this class. Man may no more affect to confer them or permit their exercise, than he may presume to take them away.

The statement, then, is not that slave masters do not educate nor permit the education of their slaves, nor allow nor furnish them the benefits of religious instruction and social worship. As a general statement, with particular and local exceptions, it might be made and sustained, as will appear in its allotted place. But we waive and pass by all this, for the present, to affirm distinctly that "the legal relation" of slave ownership, in America, as defined by the code that upholds it, is a relation that cannot and does not consist with the recognition (either in theory or practice) of the intellectual and religious RIGHTS of the slave.

But chattels have no He is a chattel "to all purposes whatsoever."

The slave "is a chattel." literary or religious rights. intents, constructions, and He is "in the power of a master, to whom he belongs "-" entirely subject to the will of his master' -"not ranked among sentient beings, but among things." It would be an absurdity for such a code to

recognize the slave as possessing religious rights. It is free from any such absurdity.

Except the provisions, in some of the States, for the "baptism" of slaves, and for their "spiritual assistance when sick," (see Chap. VII., Part II.,) we have found no recognition of their religious wants, their religious natures, or immortal destinies. Even here they seem to be considered passive beings, whose salvation is to be bestowed by their masters. The American Slave Code, from beginning to end, knows no rights of conscience in its subjects. The master is to be implicitly obeyed. His will is to be law. The slave is allowed no self-direction, no sacred marriage, no family relation, no marital rights-none that may not be taken away by his master.

Religion and its duties are based on human relations, including family relations. These relations, the "relation of slave ownership" and chattelhood abrogates. Religion requires and cherishes self-control; but the "owner's" authority supersedes and prohibits self-control. Religion implies free agency; but "the slave is not a free agent." His "condition is merely a passive one." So says the Slave Code, and so says ecclesiastical law, and therefore releases him from the obligations of the seventh commandment. Witness the decision of the Savannah River Baptist Association, while allowing its slave members, without censure, to take second or third companions, in obedience to their masters, by whom their original connections had been severed!

Rights of conscience require, and therefore au