This is the definition of actual slavery. This law of South Carolina, with the consequent fact, that " a slave can acquire nothing, can possess nothing, but which belongs to the master," is a re-enactment of the Roman English code. For this one property-holding principle contains, and includes in itself every principle and element of the slave code. Not only is this one grand, all-pervading, and all-controlling principle of chattelism, taken literally from the Roman code, but also the minor enactments, such as the law by which the slave who is inhumanly treated, may be sold for the benefit of the master; and the statute giving the owner damages for the mal-treatment of his slaves, are copied from the same source. I will not dwell on the incidents of slavery; but beg you to mark, that this slave-holding is the slave-holding of American holders. It is the tenure by which all the owners, however kind or pious, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, or Baptist, hold their human chattels. The noose of chattelism is around the neck of every slave, and brings back every fugitive to the most pious master, not as a man, but as an animal, a chattel, a thing! Thus slave-holding is degrading men to the level of brutes as completely as the nature of the case will admit. Will my friend tell us that the law which makes men property is only an incident of slavery, and not the thing itself? Will he say that the law "partus sequitur ventrem" is one of those "cruel laws" which may be repealed and yet slavery exist, or a law which is "a mere dead letter?" Does not the slave's child follow the condition of its mother? Is not that practice as well as law? Is there a place in Kentucky, a county in Maryland, or town in Virginia where the child of a slave is not the slave of the man who owns its mother, let who will be the father? And what law of slavery can be more cruel than this? Yet to pretend to oppose this law as cruel, and still justify slave-holding as not sinful is-I had almost used a severe expression, and said, it is an insult to common sense. Gentlemen, I ask you all who have minds to receive and understand truth, what law of slavery can be so cruel, as that which makes the man a slave? This is the cruelty of slavery, that it is SLAVERY. Away, then, forever, with such stuff as saying that you are opposed to the cruel laws of slavery, but not to slave-holding itself! Bear with me while I dwell on this point. As our friend regaled our senses with Mr. Foster's adultery cases, I will follow his example as far as severe justice to the cause of truth requires. It is the law "partus sequitur ventrem” that distinguishes slaves from men. You know that by the law of God the man is the head of the woman as Christ is head of the church, and the father also, of the house, and gives name to the child. But as slaves cannot marry,- -as it never was designed that they should exist in families, they are put under the same law which applies to brute animals in the field, where, if progeny is found, the owner of the cow drives away and owns the calf! Does any one think these disgusting details are out of taste in this assembly? why then should christians be allowed to practice a law which is too shocking for me to describe? God knows I did not make the law,-and I would not even name it, but with the hope of contributing something to bring it to an end. But, as you see, this first principle of slavery utterly destroys, among slaves, God's law of paternity. The "Our Father," which begins with the eternal Father of all, and connects by heads of families the whole chain of intelligent being to its source, is annihilated. Slave-children, stript of parentage and subject to masters, cannot feel the sweet and awful force of the words, "Our Father which art in Heaven." For the great principle of paternity is swept from the slave code, and so far as possible from slave hearts. See yon southern Tamar, as she goes weeping from the couch of her master, to which she has been first dragged, and then thrust away, in that after-hate which in mean minds sated lust generates towards its victims. Behold her, as she goes weeping from the house, to the plantation of her rav isher, or, it may be, sold to the far South at the instance of a jealous mistress, going along weeping and bearing all the weaknesses and woes of maternity alone-the weaknesses of mother-hood alone! yes! alone; amid the evening scourgings, the brief and broken slumbers—the morning shell-blow, and wasting toil, and drivers' blasphemies, and hurried meals of insufficient food, and all the paraphernalia of that hell on earth, a southern cotton plantation: and tell me, what one evil has been perpetrated upon the person of that wretched young woman which is not provided for and sanctioned by the law of slavery-which is not of the essence of the slave-holding power? You know, and there are plenty of living instances to show, that adultery is no crime when perpetrated upon a slave. Why? Because the principle of slavery is the cattle principle. The slave code, here, and every where, formerly and now, and ever, places female slaves precisely in the condition of female cattle on a common. It was never contemplated that they should have husbands, and their children, fathers. Oh listen, when I shall sit down, and weep for sorrow while you listen, to a minister of the gospel, justifying slavery itself as no sin, yet turning round and telling us that he is opposed to the cruel laws of slavery? Another circumstance showing the unique and terrible nature of slavery, is, that amid the world's revolutions and modifications it alone remains the same. While civil government has been advancing; while the ancient despotisms have softened into regular monarchies; the monarchies into aristocracies; and hoary and haughty aristocracies have thence again melted into democracy;-while war itself has put off half its ferocity; and even the deliberate murderer's right to life is vindicated against capital punishment; slais the same. very It exists to-day, in Kentucky, precisely as it did on the Roman Campagna eighteen hundred years ago. The only remedy for it, is destruction. The dire principle on which it rests, the property-holding of men, admits of no amelioration. Civilization has not humanized it; letters have not liberalized it; nor has Christianity reconciled it with the gospel of Christ. Like the carnal mind, of which it is the offspring, it "is enmity against God, for it is not in subjection to the law of God, neither indeed can be." It has remained, and, until destroyed, must remain forever unmitigated and immitigable. And for this plain reason: being no part of civil society, but pure crime, it does not improve with civil society. It is the same dark and damning curse now, that it was eighteen centuries ago. Why? Not only because, like all crime, it is by nature incapable of improvement, but also because it is so bad a thing that it makes every one grow worse, who is connected with it. "Oh!" said the late Charles Hammond, of this city, upon his death-bed; "Oh! slavery is not the thing it was when I first knew it in Virginia. Then the slaves were treated like servants-called in to family worship, and considered members of the family. But men have grown sordid now; and God knows where things will end." I saw large tears steal down his cheek, deep-furrowed with emotion, as he uttered these monitory truths. Ah! gentlemen and fellow citizens, that which is so bad that it makes all those sinners who partake of it, is itself a sin-evil only evil; uniformly and forever evil. The very poetry of the Irish bard becomes sober prose in the lips of a slave :— "One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws I have simply to repeat, that while for eighteen hundred years every relation and department of civil society has been revolutionized and regenerated, slavery has remained the same. It has steadily held the same deadly antagonism to God and man. Nothing can be added to it-nothing taken from it which will change its nature. And the only human sentiment which it leaves free to the breast of its victims, is despair. 4 What is still worse, while slavery remains absolutely the same, relatively it is perpetually growing worse. By a principle which is plain and obvious, just in that proportion in which the light of liberty increases, the darkness of adjacent slavery grows more dense. For as civilization. advances, it creates new wants and luxuries, and the burdens of society grow more numerous. And, as slavery is a condition of things which gives all the benefits of society to one class of the people, and lays all its burdens upon another, the increase of the slave's miseries keeps pace with the increase of the conveniences and comforts of the free. And thus, as the light increases in the Goshen of our Liberty, the darkness in the Egypt of our Slavery becomes more and more terribly "a darkness which may be felt.” [Time expired. [MR. RICE'S SECOND SPEECH.] I propose, in the present speech, to follow the gentleman, step by step, and reply to what he has now offered in support of his proposition. Mr. Foster, he says, is as much opposed to his views, as to slavery itself. Mr. BLANCHARD. I said to the party, not to the views. Mr. RICE. Mr. Foster is opposed to Mr. Blanchard's party, not to his views. So, then, Mr. Foster's views, after all, are the views of the abolitionists, just as I had supposed! Still the gentleman would escape the odium justly attaching to Foster's views, by representing him insane! Whether he is insane or not, I pretend not to know; but I have rarely seen an essay in which a writer has presented more clearly, or presented in a stronger light his views, than Foster has done in this. I have little doubt, that he was about as sane as any man who holds the ultra abolition doctrine can be. But I was pleased to hear the gentleman give to Duncan's pamphlet, published by the Cincinnati Anti-slavery Society, an unqualified recommendation; for Foster has not, I believe, advanced one sentiment more ultra, than those con |