proving his just right and natural claim to
liberty.
Mr. MILLER. I suppose the gentleman
would not let me answer him now—
Mr. SANDS. Now, in regard to the section
under consideration. Shall Maryland pay
the price of these liberated slaves? First,
shall there be compensation? Now there are
several things involved in that. If Maryland
has taken this property for public uses, there
may be some shadow of right in the argu-
ment I have heard here. But if I can prove,
or if it is the common-sense of mankind all
the world over, outside of the southern con-
federacy and its sympathizers, that slavery
died in the house of its friends, what right
have you to ask us to pay for it? They
killed it, they struck the blow; and they say
now, pay for the dead negro. That is con-
sistent, and right, and moral, and legal, and
all that; of course it is.
Now another consideration. Who is to
pay for these negroes? The people of the
State at large. Now I put this question:
has slavery ever been valuable in Maryland ?
If it has not, then what are we to pay for ?
If it has been valuable, then who has had
the valued You can take either horn of the
dilemma you please. If it has not been val-
uable, please do not ask us to pay; if it has
been valuable, and you have had the value,
then please do not ask us non-slaveholders
to pay you when you have bad all the ben-
efit.
And another thing is this: my friend said
that we were manumitting in Maryland in
obedience to the will of the general govern-
ment. Now that is not the case; it is in
obedience to our own will. If the general
government should intimate to us to-morrow
that they did not wish us to manumit, we
should be very apt to remind them of the
eleventh commandment, which is—" Mind
thy own business." It is the people of Mary-
land who are longing for emancipation, who
are going to have emancipation.
Now this " institution," as they call it; I
do not know bow it ever got that name,
There are some other names that might offend
ears polite, and therefore I will not use them ;
but I think they might be much more appli-
cable than this name "institution." I just
want to remind my friend that we have got,
outside of the case of Somerset, as I once in-
timated to them, a very important precedent
for the emancipation of slaves without com-
pensation. They will find it fully reported
in Exodus. I want to remind them, too,
that emancipation must be right, because
there it was done by the direct act of God
himself. It was done without compensation,
and when slavery existed upon a basis infi-
nitely stronger than it exist» here in this
country. Now mark me: slavery in Egypt,
when disturbed by God himself, had existed
under the only plea that ever afforded a sha- |
dow of justification for slavery; justification,
not natural right. It is argued in the books
that slavery first existed among men by the
taking of captives in war; that the captor
had 'he right to take the lives of his prison-
ers, and that if he spared the lives of those he
took captive, it was his own gift, and be had
the right to the benefit of it. That I say is
the strongest basis upon which was ever built
up an argument in support of human bond-
age. The captor in just war had a right to
take the life of his prisoner, and refusing lo
take that life he was entitled to the services
of the prisoner for life. Did not slavery in
Egypt exist upon exactly that basis? in a
war between the Egyptians and the He-
brews, had not those Hebrew captives been
carried into slavery into Egypt? Therefore,
did not slavery in Egypt rest upon the ex-
press ground of the right of the captor to his
prisoner in war ?
Mr. MILLER. Does the gentleman say that
is the way the Hebrews got into Egypt?
Mr. SANDS. I guess that is about it. There
is no account of any being sold there, except
Joseph; he was an exceptional case. I think
the only account the Bible gives of this mat-
ter, is that for their sins God sent the He-
brews into Egypt into bondage. However
he may have sent them there; whether he
took them up bodily and landed them down
there, or whether it was by war as into Baby-
lon or elsewhere, I say that slavery existed in
Egypt upon the only ground that affords a
rational pretext in favor of slavery; they
were captives to that people.
Mr. TODD. I would remark to the gentle-
man from Howard (Mr. Sands) for the in-
formation of the gentleman from Anne Arun-
del (Mr. Miller,) that the title upon which the
Hebrews were held in bondage in Egypt, was
not so good a one as that which the gentle-
man from Howard has placed it upon; he has
placed it upon the strongest possible ground.
The Hebrews emigrated into Egypt, and were
afterwards made slaves without any justifica-
tion in war.
Mr. SANDS. Take it that way, then; that
they went into voluntary bondage, better
still; they were not even captive bondmen.
Mr. TODD. No, sir; I do not say that.
Mr. SANDS. Well, however they got there,
whether by common law, or by statute law,
they were there for over tour hundred years.
And if that length of time did not give a fair
and valid title by prescription—that is what
I want to come to—if over four hundred
years did not give a valid title by prescrip-
tion I should like to know, where, upon the
same ground, is the title to the slaves ill
Maryland? These gentlemen do not, of course,
contend that slavery has existed in Maryland
so long as it existed in Egypt, over four hun-
dred years. Yet the owner who was required
by the Lord, by His own providential act, to
give up that slave, could turn in the face of |
