the right to hold
property which he has given, and, if he please, constitute them the
property of other men. It is, in this respect, as it is with life. God
can take what he gives. If, then, he has given authority to individuals
or to nations to hold others as property, they may do so. Nay, more; if
their commission is imperative, they must do so. But such an act of God
creates an exception to his own fundamental law, and, like all
_exceptions_, conveys its own restrictions, and _proves the rule_. It
imposes no yoke, save upon those appointed to subjugation. It confers no
authority, save upon those specifically invested with it. They are bound
to keep absolutely within the prescribed terms, and no others can
innocently seize their delegated dominion. Outside of the excepted
parties the universal law has sway unimpaired. It is in this instance as
it is in regard to marriage. God permitted the patriarchs to multiply
their wives; but monogamy is now a sacred institution for the world. So
the supreme Disposer can make a slave, or a nation of slaves; and the
world shall be even the more solemnly bound by the original institutes
concerning property. It follows, without a chasm in the argument, or a
doubtful step, that, when persons or States reduce men to the condition
of chattels, _without divine authorization_, they are guilty of
subverting a divine institution; and, since it is the prerogative of God
to determine what shall be property, they are chargeable with a
presumptuous usurpation of divine prerogative, in making property, so
far as human force and law can do it, of those whom Jehovah has created
in his own image, and invested with all the original rights of men.

The soundness of the principle contained in these remarks, both in law
and in biblical interpretation, will not be questioned. In the light of
it, let us examine briefly the justifications of slavery as derived from
the Bible. Happily the principle itself saves the labor of minute and
protracted criticism.

We first consider the curse pronounced upon Canaan by Noah. Admitting
all that is necessary to the support of slavery, namely, that that curse
constituted the descendants of _Canaan_ the property of some other tribe
or people, upon whom it conferred the right of holding them as property,
yet even so this passage does not justify but condemns American slavery;
for that curse does not touch the African race: _they are not
descendants of Canaan_;[B] and i