as
"sentient beings!" They are only thrown about like stones, or boxed up
like chattels; they are not set, like men, over the lower animals,
required to do the work of men; the precise work which, of all others,
in the grand and diversified economy of _human_ industry, they are the
best qualified to perform! So far, indeed, is this from being "the
cardinal principle of slavery," that it is no principle of slavery at
all. It bears not the most distant likeness or approximation to any
principle of slavery, with which we of the South have any the most
remote acquaintance.

That man may, in certain cases, be held as property, is a truth
recognized by a higher authority than that of senators and divines. It
is, as we have seen, recognized by the word of God himself. In that
word, the slave is called the "possession"[157] of the master, and even
"his money."[158] Now, is not this language as strong, if not stronger,
than that adduced from the code of South Carolina? It certainly calls
the "bondman" his master's "money." Why, then, did not the Senator from
Massachusetts denounce this language, as divesting "a man of his human
character," and declaring him to be _mere_ money? Why did he not proceed
to condemn the legislation of Heaven, as well as of the South, out of
its own mouth? Most assuredly, if his principles be correct, then is he
bound to pronounce the law of God itself manifestly unjust and
iniquitous. For that law as clearly recognizes the right of property in
man as it could possibly be recognized in words. But it nowhere commits
the flagrant solecism of supposing that this right of the master annuls
or excludes all the rights of the slave. On the contrary, the rights of
the slave are recognized, as well as those of the master. For, according
to the law of God, though "a possession," and an "inheritance," and "a
bondman forever," yet is the slave, nevertheless, a man; and, as a man,
is he protected in his rights; in his rights, not as defined by
abolitionists, but as recognized by the word of God.

Sec. XI. _The seventeenth fallacy of the abolitionist; or the argument from
the Declaration of Independence._

This argument is regarded by the abolitionists as one of their great
strongholds; and no doubt it is so in effect, for who can bear a
superior? Lucifer himself, who fell from heaven because he could not
acknowledge a superior, seduced our first parents by the suggestion that
in throwing off the yoke of subje