dooms thousands of human beings to hopeless ignorance." "If slaves are educated, it must involve some outlay on the part of the master." "It is inconsistent with our knowledge of human nature to suppose that he will do this for them. The present state of instruction among this race answers exactly to what we might thus naturally anticipate. Throughout the whole land, so far as we can learn, there is but one school in which, during the week, slaves can be taught. The light of three or four Sabbath-schools is seen glimmering through the darkness that covers the black population of a whole State. Here and there, a family is found where humanity and religion impel the master, mistress, or children to the laborious task of private instruction." "Nor is it to be expected that this state of things will become better, unless it is determined that slavery shall cease." (Address, &c., p. 8.)

In North Carolina, the "patrols" were ordered to "search every negro house for books or prints of any kind. Bibles and hymn books were particularly mentioned." (Weld's "Slavery as it is," p. 51.)

The appeals and statements made by clergymen, missionaries and others, concerning the religious instruction of slaves, are usually guarded from misapprehension by the use of the phrase "oral instruction," indicating that books are not to be put into their hands! "A Sabbath-school" for colored children at the South, commonly includes nothing more. Forgetful of their anathemas of the Church or Pope of Rome for withholding the Scriptures, most Pro

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testant ministers at the South, and some at the North, insist that mere oral instruction" will answer very well for the negroes! And this introduces to us the subject of our next chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

FREE SOCIAL WORSHIP AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

PROHIBITED.

The Government not only permits the Master to forbid the free Social Worship and Religious Instruction of his Slaves, at his pleasure, but it also steps in with direct prohibitions of its own, which even the Master himself may not relax or abrogate.

It is quite remarkable, that all the real practical restraints which the Slave Codes of the South throw around the slave master, are obviously for the purpose of withholding him from some exercise of humanity or of justice towards the slave; not one of them is for the purpose of restraining him from inhumanity and injustice!

From no act of barbarity, cruelty, or even mui der, is he in reality restrained. The enactments professing to have that object, we have found to be ineffectual, impossible to execute, deceptive, selfcontradictory, and, in fact, sheer pretense! We have found no laws that even professed to guard the highest interests of slaves as human beings, family sanctities, female chastity, education, religious de

velopment. No restraints upon the violation and destruction of these are attempted to be thrown around the slave master. But, on the other hand, he is restrained, as has been shown, from allowing to his slave (for the mutual benefit of both parties) a peculium of property from a tithe of his own earnings, with the benefits of "hiring out" for that purpose! He is restrained, as we have seen, from bestowing upon his slave an education that would increase his usefulness, or of employing him to do any kind of writing! The slave may be "used" so as to be "used up" in seven years; may be used as a "breeder," as a prostitute, as a concubine, as a pimp, as a tapster, as an attendant at the gamingtable, as a subject of medical and surgical experiments for the benefit of science, and the Legislature makes no objections against it! But he may not be used as a clerk! In all this, the master's absolute right of ownership is restrained! It is restrained too, as we shall see, by not permitting even the master to allow his slave the privileges of free social worship and religious instruction, well calculated as these privileges may be to increase in him those Christian virtues for which he is sometimes commended in advertisements, to enhance his value in the market! The master's right we shall also find restrained by the laws forbidding him freely, and at self-discretion, to emancipate! The great solicitude of the law seems to be, to prevent the master from being too kind to his slave!

The philosophy of this is readily seen. A minority

of slave owners are deemed exposed to the weakness of exercising some humanity and justice, of manifesting some feeling of responsibility to God in their treatment of their fellow-men! The majority of slaveholders, who make the laws, will not tolerate this! They enter, fully and understandingly, into the spirit of slave ownership. That "legal relation" must be preserved at all hazards; and they know it is endangered by humanity, by justice, by education, and by religion. They know that if others emancipate, their own tenure will be weakened. The rise of an oppressive oligarchy of slave owners begins here. And religious liberty is the very last thing to be tolerated by it. Religious liberty is the precursor of civil and political liberty and enfranchisement, and must be suppressed. The gospel would indeed abolish American slavery, (as is often said,) if it could only be introduced among the slaves so far as to confer upon them religious liberty. This our American slaveholders understand, as will now be shown.

In Georgia, by an Act of Dec. 13, 1792, with the title, "TO PROTECT religious societies in the exercise of their religious duties," it is required of every justice of the peace, &c., to take into custody any person who shall interrupt or disturb a congregation of WHITE PERSONS, &c., assembled at any church, &c., and to impose a fine on the offender; and in default of payment he may be imprisoned, &c., &c. Yet the same law concludes with these words: "No congregation or company of NEGROES shall, under pretense of divine