they are placed. The slave laws are, beyond all question, most infamous. They do treat them as "brute beasts" or "chattels personal." On the majority of the community there rests a fearful amount of guilt, which could scarcely be exaggerated, &c. The law makes the slaves chattels personal. The necessary consequence is, that a man becomes, whether he will or not, the possessor of slaves. They are his, and he cannot get rid of them. *** The sum and substance of what is commonly asserted by the church, is just a denial of the abolition principle that slavery is sinful in such a sense, that mere slave-holding in all circumstances is a crime, and an adequate ground for expulsion from the Lord's table: and they have beyond all question, the example of the apostles and apostolic churches to justify them." Again"I have not the slightest hesitation in repudiating American abolitionism."

You observe, when speaking of abolitionists, he speaks of them as on "the other side." Is he one of them? Or does he not hold my principles precisely? I told you that the slave laws were many of them infamous. Dr. Cunningthe same. He the law makes them chattels personal; but, he also says, concerning many masters, their slaves are theirs, and he cannot get rid of them.

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says

says,

[Time expired.

Friday Evening, 9 o'clock.

[MR. BLANCHARD'S TWELFTH SPEECH.]

Gentlemen Moderators, and Gentlemen and Ladies, FellowCitizens:

My whole speech, fortunately, will be in reply to the one just fallen from my brother, without departing from my prescribed course. It will be, throughout, upon the scripture argument, after about five minutes' reply to what he said before he himself came to the scriptures.

!

When he said that the Sixth Presbyterian Church, of which I am pastor, "was preached almost to death," I felt sorry that such a remark should have escaped him, first, because my success as a pastor has nothing to do with the truth of my arguments here, and therefore the charge was entirely gratuitous; and secondly, I do not like to say a word in my own case, in reply to such a remark, nor would I (for my work, as a pastor, is with God,) but for the sake of a beloved church, which has been faithful to me: and for the sake of those theological students in the audience, who might be misled, by his remark, to suppose that opposing slave-holding is against pastoral success.

When I took charge of the church, seven years ago last March, I was inexperienced and unpopular with those who hate all religion, except that which, like the piety of Mr. By-ends in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, " always jumps with the times." We had then but one hundred and twenty members, and have since been bereaved of several leading members by death. We have, through the mercy of God, enjoyed frequent revivals, and as the fruits of about seven years' labor, have received more than four hundred members. Through the rapid multiplication of new churches of the same order to which colonies we have largely contributed, the number of dismissions have been large, so that our present number is about two hundred and fifty, or about double that with which we commenced. A debt of five thousand dollars, incurred in the purchase of a house of worship, during the times of pecuniary pressure, was, on the first day of January last, entirely cancelled, being paid down, or assumed by responsible men, and the church and congregation were never more united, prosperous and happy, than at present. I shall not bring my brother's want of pastoral ability to refute his arguments in this debate, nor go into Kentucky to enquire whether he has preached his former churches into death or into life.

My brother thinks me guilty of an inconsistency in saying that his doctrine was acceptable to slave-holders; and saying,

also, that it was unacceptable to them. I did utter both those remarks, and both are true, and both consistent. The explanation is simply this, that like all defenders of error, his arguments are inconsistent with, and destroy each other, one part being acceptable to slave-holders, the other, not. What he said, declaring that "slave-holders have no right to hold their slaves, as property, for gain," they will not thank him for saying; but the vilest of them will own him as their champion, while contending that "slave-holding is not sin." So that, as I said, what he teaches is unacceptable to slave-holders, and what he teaches is acceptable to

them.

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Again: He says that I, in the figure of the rats, represented, that to go to Hebrew and Greek is to go into darkness. But he is mistaken. I said no such thing. This is what I said. That there is a class of men who seek to climb by sectarian services to the top of old ecclesiastical establishments founded by the piety of past generations:-that these men are slaves to authorities, weighing men's opinions against plain justice that they dive into the lumber-room of antiquity to fetch out what instances they can find of the curtailment of human freedom in dark and despotic ages, before the empire of force had yielded to that of reason; and twist them into a coil of precedents, to bind American Christianity to the toleration of American despotism in an age of liberty and light. That is what I said; and not that Hebrew and Greek, the original tongues of the scriptures, were a source of darkness. Much good may his Hebrew and Greek do him; I apprehend he will have need of all he is master of, before he gets through this debate. He further remarked that there could not be found one respectable commentator who did not hold that slave-holding is not sinful," he will confess that he could find none." I have an argument upon commentators which I will introduce in its place. Meantime I observe that Dr. Adam Clarke, whom Methodists at least will respect, in commenting upon the Ephesians vi, 5, says, that; In heathen countries slavery had some sort of excuse.

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Among Christians it is a crime, and an outrage for which perdition has scarcely an adequate punishment!"

There is one commentator at least who does not quite agree with my brother.

MR. RICE rose. I will beg leave to correct the gentleman. I said he could not find one respectable commentator who ever gave a different interpretation to the passages of scripture which I quoted, from mine.

MR. BLANCHARD. Perhaps you are right. I will however, give other commentators in their place. I thought I would read this just here by way of spice. [Great laughter.]

Now, Gentlemen Moderators, and Fellow-Citizens. I am happy to be in a situation to follow my brother pari passu in his scripture argument. His first main argument was from authorities. That I shall hereafter consider. His second was from scripture language, and that I am to consider

now.

In the scripture argument for slavery, there are two texts so much relied on by slave-holders, and their apologists, that (if any part of the Bible could be) they might be called "the slave-holders, texts;" as their whole Bible argument hangs on their understanding of them. If these are taken from under them, their whole argument drops to the ground. They are Leviticus, chapter, xxv, 45, and Exodus, xxi, 21.

It is not pretended by them that the general principles of the Bible give the slightest countenance to slavery. They therefore do not attempt to show, by reference to the whole scope of the Bible, that slavery is consistent with its principles, for the principles of the Bible are justice and righteousness. But they rely upon individual texts and parts of texts, which, taken out from the connexion, seem to teach that slavery was not a sin under the circumstances there found. Though their texts by no means prove their doctrine when an enlightened and just criticism is applied to them. As I have observed, their whole argument radiates from these two texts as from a centre, while all their subordinate and infe

rior inferences, drawn from other texts, as well as from these, are founded upon the same false view of the Bible, and are chickens of the same brood of error. I will come now; though contrary to the usual course pursued in forensic argument, (which is, to prove your proposition before stating and answering objections; so as to arm your hearers with truth, before staggering them with errors which you have not yet prepared them to meet.) I will come first to the very heart and core of their "Bible argument," reading the texts on which they mainly rely, and on which they are harping from July to June. The first is Levit. xxv, 45.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers (i. e. Canaanites,) that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you; which they beget in your land and they shall be your possession, and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession: they shall be your bondmen forever: but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule, one over another with rigor."

I have an hour and a half speech, to prove that these bondmen or bound-men were not slaves. But I am now simply replying to his arguments. His position is that this passage proves that the Hebrews held slaves, and that by God's permission.

I wish here, in the outset, to protest against being understood, even if I admitted the Hebrew bond-servants to be slaves, as also admitting that their slavery could sanction ours. (But I do not admit that those bond-servants were slaves, and my main argument will be, to prove that they were not.) For even if they had been slaves, they were Canaanites, a race of men accursed of God, having filled the measure of their iniquities, and doomed to extermination from the earth. Surely, if God saw fit to enslave these people for their crimes, and commanded his people to execute this wrath upon them, that would not justify an American in enslaving indifferent, unoffending persons. This must be clear to every understanding. If the court issue a war