"39. And if thy brother that dwelleth by
thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee;
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-
servant :
"40. But as an hired servant, and as a so-
journer he shall be with thee, and shall serve
thee unto the year of jubilee :
" 41. And then shalt he depart from thee,
with he and his children with him, and shall
return unto his own family, and unto the
possession of his fathers shall he return.
"42. For they are my servants which I
brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they
shall not be sold as bondmen.
" 43. Thou shalt not rule over him with
rigor, but shalt fear thy God.
" 44. But thy bondmen and thy bondmaids,
which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen
that are round about you; of them shall ye
buy bondmen and bondmaids.
"45 Moreover of the children of the
strangers that do sojourn among yon, of them
shall ye buy, and of their families that are
with you, which they begat in your land;
and they shall be your possession.
"46. And ye shall take them as an in-
heritance for your children after you, to in-
herit them for a possession they shall be your
bondmen forever: but even your brethren, the
children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over
another with rigor."
There were two classes of servants under
the Jewish dispensation, those who were to
serve for a term of years, and to go out " in
the year of Jubilee"—the other class, the
bondmen and bondmaids, who were the chil-
dren of strangers, "to be an inheritance,
a possession and bondmen forever." Thus it
will be seen, sir, that the gentleman is as faulty
in his Biblical reading as in some of his no-
tions.
Now, sir, as regards the moral aspect of
this question, I will not detain the Conven-
tion. Those who have no slaves need give
themselves no trouble as to the morality of it.
If there be sin in it, that sin does not rest on
them. Any person who will take the Bible
and read it, and read the commentators, must,
it seems to me, have no difficulty as to the
morality and right to hold slaves. If it be
not clearly laid down in the Bible as an ex-
isting institution, before the coming of the
Saviour, and during his stay on earth, and
the duty of both slave and master alike de-
fined and regulated, then I do not understand
the import of language. It has existed in all
times and among all people, in some form or
other, even in the days of the occupancy of the
garden of Eden, in a modified form, ever since
the morning stars first sang together, for do-
minion was given to the husband and the
wife was made subject to his rule. Of course
sir, that was not the slavery of the present
day—but I use it merely to show the subjec-
tion of the one class to the other. And, sir
it exists to-day, in Boston, in Massachusetts |
in New York, in New England and in Old
England, substantially, just as much as it ex-
ists in the Southern States. Call it by what
name yon may, but in the over-crowded
workshops and manufactories of the North
and of England, the wretched, miserable
operatives are bound, body and soul, as they
toil and struggle for the bare sustenance of
life, just as strongly to a master as the slaves
of the South. The only substantial differ-
ence is, that the one class can change their
employers, and the other cannot. We all
know what is the condition of Southern
slavery, and I assert, without a fear of suc-
cessful .contradiction, that the whole earth
does not show a community of laborers bet-
ter fed, better clothed, better cared for, or
better contented with their condition, more
free from care, more joyous and more happy,
than the negroes of the South. At least such
was the case before the influx of abolitionists.
Now, let us see what a distinguished writer
has said of the factory operatives and labor-
ing poor of England, and their condition is
at least quite as tolerable as that of the like
classes in Puritanical New England. Joseph
Kay, in his work on the social condition of
the people of England, says: "I speak it
with sorrow and with shame, but with not
the less confidence, that our peasantry are
more ignorant, more demoralized, less capable
of helping themselves and more pauperized,
than those of any country in Europe, if we
except Russia. Turkey, South Italy, and some
parts of the Austrian Empire. The laborer
has no longer any connection with the land
he cultivates, he has no stake in the country,
he has nothing to lose, nothing to defend,
and nothing to hope for. His position is one
of hopeless and irremediable dependence.
The workhouse stands near him, pointing out
his dismal fate, if he falls one step lower.
In the civilized world there are fewer sadder
spectacles than the present contrast in Great
Britain, of unbounded wealth and luxury,
with the starvation of thousands and tens of
thousands, crowded into cellars and dens,
without ventilation or light, compared with
which the wigwam of the Indian is a palace.
Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the
neighborhood of stately mansions which ring
with gayety and dazzle with pomp and un-
bounded profusion, shock us as no other
wretchedness does."
Of the pauperism, he says: "Large and
ever-increasing hordes of vagrants or wander-
ing beggars infest all the highways of England
and Wales. These poor wretches are miser-
ably clothed, filthily dirty, covered with ver-
min, and generally very much diseased,
In some of the towns the degradation is
such, that parents often cause the dearth of
their children in order to obtain the premiums
from the societies " He says their lodging
apartments are generally cellars, ten or twelve
feet square, with frequently no window, the |
