7. Again, he says.

honest mind, as true,

"True moral principles strike every and, by their own force, command assent." And he asks, "if the doctrine be true that slaveholding is sin, why does it not so strike every mind?"

Answer. It does strike every mind when themselves or their families are concerned. No sane man is willing that himself and posterity, in all time, should be slaves. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Let the slave law strike one of Dr. Rice's children, and the wickedness of it would certainly strike him.

8. He told you I was willing to "keep the slaves from voting, after they are emancipated." What I said upon that point was, that I leave their political rights to political men, to be determined by exact political justice. Abolition has done with them when they are free as unnaturalized foreigners, who are free, though they cannot vote.

Tell an Irishman, before he is entitled to vote, that he is a slave, and my word for it, Patrick will show that his fist is free, at least. [A laugh.]

If he made any other points which my present arguments do not answer, I am willing he should have all the benefit of their going unanswered, and that they may have, with you whatever weight they deserve. I hope now, that my brother will not continue to complain of me, as if I were unwilling to answer him to the best of my ability. Of course, it is not to be expected that I would set my ability in competition with so grave and learned a Doctor of Divinity, but I mean not to be outdone by him in candor, and an honest desire to vindicate the truth.

I must now be excused from noticing further his line of argument, and be permitted to go straight through with my own. Yet, if my brother is very anxious that I should answer any questions I may possibly turn aside for a few minutes, to do so. I will notice briefly his "golden rule" argument, and then consider the Old Testament bond service. This argument of Dr. Rice may be found in his printed pamphlet, pages 39, and 41. He says of Christ's command re

quiring us to do to others as we would they should do to us ;-"Evidently it requires us to treat others, as we would reasonably expect and desire them to treat us, IF WE WERE IN THEIR SITUATION." (Lect. p. 39.)

That is, the "golden rule" only requires the slave-holder to treat his slave as he might reasonably expect to be treated if he were in that slave's condition. The fact that the slave is a slave, is taken for granted to be right, so far as the owner is concerned. Then he says on page 41. That the golden rule requires a man to become a slave-holder, who buys a slave to keep him from suffering a worse fate. "The truth is in such cases THE GOLDEN RULE MAKES THE CHRISTIAN

THE OWNER OF A SLAVE. (Lect. p. 41.,

I think I shall be able to show you that this exposition, which deserves to be called the "slave-holder's golden rule,” in the first place, proceeds upon a plain denial of God's golden rule. 2nd, That it contains a logical error. 3d, That it contains a gross immorality.

The reason on which the rules rests, which. requires men to do to others as they would have others do to them, is, that men are equal. But this slave-holder's rule contradicts this fundamental truth of God's word, that "God has made of one blood all the nations of men," and if of one blood, they are of equal blood. This exposition of Dr. Rice, assumes that there is one blood of the slave-holder; another blood of the slave; and they are of different conditions instead of being by nature on the same footing. It assumes the inequality of the human race to be right, which is the very question in dispute. It goes upon the supposition that one man is naturally a slave-holder, and another a slave. The question lies back of this. Abolitionists claim that injury is done in making a man a slave, or, in assuming towards a man the relation of his OWNER, and keeping him a slave. Dr. Rice as sumes that men are by God's law divided into two classes, master and slave; and says that the whole duty required of the master class, by the golden rule is, to treat slaves “as we might reasonably expect to be treated, if we were slaves!

Suppose that my father, caught a boy and put him in a dungeon, and gave me the key. I put the key in my pocket and keep the boy in the dungeon. My father in this case is the kidnapper and I am the slave-holder. Dr. Rice, we will say, is defining my duty under his golden rule towards that imprisoned boy. Doctor, I ask, "what, say you, is my duty to the boy imprisoned by my father?" He replies;—“ -"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you if you were in their situation." "Well, but, Doctor, how do you understand that rule? Shall I let him out ?" "By no means" says he;—“ -" All you are required to do, is to keep him there for life, and treat him just as kindly as you might reasonably expect to be treated if you were in his place. That is, as men who are shut up in dungeons may reasonably expect to be treated by those who keep them there."

Is there a man on earth capable of knowing right and wrong who would not instantly feel that such an exposition of the golden rule carries a monstrous fraud in it, if applied to himself. It denies that "God has made of one blood (and equal because one) all nations of men." Dr. Rice's religion is the religion of a privileged class. And it is so with every religion which is based on radical error. Puseyism, and Popery, &c., withhold from the common mass in favor of their priesthood, rights which God has given alike to all men. Dr. Rice allows the slave-holders to hold the slaves, before he begins to apply the golden rule to them; and his exposition, like Puseyism, is based upon a denial of the law of human equality. It takes for granted that God has made it the destiny of one portion of his creatures to be slaves and another portion masters, and that masters fulfil their duty to. the slaves by treating them according to that destiny. And this monstrous perversion of this holy and beautiful law of Christ, is preached in nearly the same words by professed ministers of the gospel, throughout the South, perverting slaveholders' consciences, sinking the rights of the slaves-and dimming and diminishing the light of justice in the word of God.

2. In the second place, I observe, that my friend's exposi

tion contains a logical error. It is a clear petitio principii -a begging of the question in debate.

He assumes there is nothing against the golden rule, in keeping men in a state of slavery. But that is the very thing abolitionists deny, and the very question we are here to debate. And there is no other way for Dr. Rice to get his vindication of slavery over the golden rule, but to take the question, whether slave-holding is according to it, for granted; and apply the rule to master and slave as to men in different situations, equally innocent.

3. But there is a worse than logical error in this slaveholder's golden rule, manufactured by Dr. Rice. It contains a gross immorality.

The original precept, as it stands in the New Testament, is the most precious of all the practical rules which our Saviour taught, and is justly called "golden," from the most precious of metals. Yet, in Dr. Rice's hands, it sanctions an immorality, by giving to the slave-holder the benefit of his own, and his father's wrong. My father wickedly locks a man up in a dungeon, and I keep him there. His exposition allows me to keep him in that "situation," and only requires me to treat him as I might reasonably expect an indifferent man to treat me, who should find me in a dungeon through no fault of his own, without his connivance, and against his consent. He thus gives me the benefit of my father's wrong. Or to drop the figure: Dr. Rice allows the present slave-holders, whose ancestors wickedly enslaved the present slaves, to adopt the sin of their fathers-to stand in it—to take the benefit of it, and yet stand on a moral equality with their slaves; applying the golden rule to them both as equally right in the eye of God's law.

Now it is a principle, not only of common justice, but of the common law, that "no man shall take the benefit of his own wrong." If, for instance, you pull down the fence, and let your neighbor's cattle upon your own crops, in order to get damages; the law gives you no damages, because your crime is a part of the case, and you shall not have the bene

fit of your own wrong. But my brother gives the slaveholder the benefit of his own wrong in keeping the man in slavery, and of the wrong act by which the kidnapper first placed him there: thus sanctioning, by Christianity, and the voice of a minister of Christ, a principle which is cast out of the court-house, as polluting the fountains of justice, and perverting and destroying men's rights. Thus he places Christianity in a position to be despised and trampled beneath the hoofs of the State, as having a lower standard of rectitude, than that by which civil judges, advocates, and juries are bound, in trying the most paltry interests and questions of right.

Contrast now, Dr. Rice's vindication of the present slaveholders, on the ground that they did not make men slaves, but only kept those in slavery who were enslaved by their fathers; with the ground which Christ took, in a like case, against those who condemned their fathers for killing the prophets; yet kept up the spirit of their fathers' crime, by persecuting the prophets of their own day, saying:-" If we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets?" precisely as Dr. Rice, and his friends, the slave-holders, pretend to condemn the enslaving of freemen, while they agree in justifying the continuance of the crime upon the persons and descendants of the enslaved. What did the Saviour do, in adjusting the balance-sheet of sin with those Pharisees? Did he give them the slave-holders' exposition of the golden rule, which blinks the sin of both sire and son? Did he tell them that "they found the prophets a persecuted, hated, despised race; and they fulfilled the law of love by treating them as well as a persecuted race can reasonably expect to be treated? No: never. Instead of justifying the continuers of persecution who condemned its beginners, as Dr. Rice justifies the continuers of slavery who condemn the first enslavers: he took the sins of all the former generations, and laid them over upon the heads of the present. Christ took precisely the opposite ground to Dr.