Papists and Jews were not admitted. This resulted from a prejudice not more unreasonable than that which now excludes the testimony of the slave. At all events, in the absence of other competent testimony, that of slaves ought to be heard, even if it were left with the judge and jury to decide what weight should be given to it.

It is difficult to account for the conduct of our fathers in establishing such a system of slavery. English villanage, then at an end, may in its general nature have been known to the colonists. They may have learned it from their histories and law books; and we might naturally have supposed that in establishing a system of servitude, they, with their knowledge of personal rights, would at most have only revived in its mildest forms that system which their fathers had let go down. Had they so done, the very worst features of the present system would not have existed. To mention a few points:

Their villains or servants were with few exceptions attached to the soil; and if transferred at all, were transferred with the soil on which they lived. Their habitations were fixed, and their children enjoyed the comforts provided by the care and industry of their parents.

The families lived together; and the civil condition of the child followed that of the father, and not that of the mother, as in slavery among us. The master must be able to give legal evidence, which was the lawful marriage of the parties, that the child was the child of his manservant. If he could not do this, the child was free. This encouraged lawful marriage, and secured the most important rights growing out of it. It prevented separations. For children born out of lawful wedlock were free. And if the master violated the bed of his servant, said servant went out free.

The testimony of the servant was good except against his own master; and in various cases he had a plea or defence against him.

The burden of proof that he was of right a servant, lay on the master. If the master could not prove his right in the servant, that he was the son of his man-servant born in lawful wedlock, (for that was the proper proof,) or procured from those who could prove a right thus good, the

servant went out free. The presumption was always on the side of the servant, on the side of natural right and equity, on the side of freedom; and nothing but positive proof set that aside.

These points, to which many others might be added, show the evil and hardship of our slave system, compared with English villanage. The advantage of villanage in protecting marriage, family relations, purity of morals, and domestic happiness, was incalculable. Our slaves have no legal marriage, no protection of family relations; and yet all who are born of mothers who are slaves, are claimed as property and held as slaves by her owner: and that although the father may be a freeman, yea, a white man; and what is still worse, the master himself, or his father, or brother, or son, and notwithstanding violence may have been used to accomplish his foul purpose.

Yours, &c.

533

LETTER V.

CHRISTIAN BRethren,

SLAVERY is involuntary servitude, or it may be defined, a claiming persons as property, holding them forcibly in bondage, and compelling them to serve without wages and that without any personal crime.

That it is contrary to many of the fundamental principles of our civil institutions, all must admit. It is, for instance, directly at variance with the principles laid down as self-evidently true in our declaration of independence. In it we declare that "we hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are by nature equal, and that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these, civil government was instituted among men, deriving its just power from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government. When a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing the same object, evinces a design to reduce under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and provide new guards for their security." These principles respecting personal freedom, we are peculiarly bound to regard. No document has received more fully our assent, as respects our own rights. We ought equally to regard the same principles, when they relate to the rights of others. Few documents have been or are more read among us. It was sanctioned by our national and state legislatures;* acted

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity: namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”—Article 1, Bill of Rights of Virginia.

Most of the states, either in their constitutions or bills of rights, lay down the same principles.

upon in our contest with England; and has been read and gloried in for half a century.

Slavery is directly opposed to these self-evident truths; is a forcible withholding from others those rights which we declared unalienable, which we contended for in our own case; is doing systematically one of those things, to prevent which civil government was especially instituted.

It is considered as a fundamental principle, that men should not be judges in their own case, when the rights of others are concerned. In slavery, however, the master is the sole judge, except in the case of life and death, in everything respecting the slave. The food and clothing: the nature, time, and degree of labour; the relations and connections, and all that concerns the comfort and happiness of the slave, are in the power of the master.

It is a first principle that children are not to be punished for the crimes, much less for the misfortunes of the parent. But in slavery, the children of those who, so far from injuring their masters, have been labouring for them all their life long, are held in the same hard condition.See the last letter, as to the relation of the slave to his master, and to civil society generally.

It will perhaps be said, that those principles, although politically true, are not of moral obligation; and that slavery, although contrary to them, is not contrary to natural or revealed religion, and therefore not morally wrong.

It is my purpose to examine to some extent the teaching of scripture respecting slavery. On the argument from natural religion, or the law of nature, or the law of nations, as it is variously called, I shall say but little, and for the sufficient reason, that the shortest, and plainest, and only sure way of knowing what natural religion does teach, is to go to the Bible. However plainly moral and religious truth may be written on the works of nature, the history of the world proves that man is too blind to read it, until the light of revelation shines upon him. To leave the scriptures, and hunt after truth and duty from natural light, is, if not putting the light wholly out, and hunting for objects in the dark, to turn from the light of the sun, and use a taper so dim as to make it exceedingly difficult in many cases to distinguish truth from error, or genuine from counterfeit. A few remarks, however, I will make.

The law of nature, or the principles of moral conduct discovered by the light of nature, and approved by reason, it is alleged, does not condemn slavery. Now it appears to me most manifest that it does. I can fix on few things which appear to me more opposed to natural equity, and justice, and reason, than forcibly holding our fellow-men in bondage, and compelling them to minister to our happiness at the expense of their own. To me it does appear, that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are, as declared by the fathers of our independence, endowments of nature, that are self-evidently unalienable. I would like to see a summary of truths admitted to be manifest by the light of nature, that are more plain than is the right which every man has to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, until forfeited by crime. We know that life itself may be so forfeited by crime, that natural law or reason will approve of its being taken away. The same may happen to any other right. I suspect that those who appeal to the law of nature as justifying slavery, have never gone carefully over its principles, and compared them with the unreasonableness and injustice of one rational creature being held as property by another, and compelled to minister during life to his pleasure at the expense of his own.

Man's right of property is founded on his right to himself, to the use of his faculties and limbs, and the products of their labour. That men have a natural right to the fruit of their labour is so plain a proposition, that perhaps few will deny it. But slavery sets aside this right. To attempt to justify this by saying, the slave himself has been acquired as property, and then taking the fruit of his labour is no longer unjust, is little better than a sophism, is changing the ground, but not answering the charge of injustice. For how has the slave been acquired as property? Did he sell himself? In all just sales there must be a quid pro quo-a reasonable equivalent. But in the nature of the case, the slave could receive none. He can hold no property he cannot seek his own happiness, and plainly no man of sound sense would sell himself into absolute slavery. If sold by another, the question returns, what right could that other have in him, what equivalent has he given, or could he give to the slave, for an absolute right