irit and usages of the
age, in which they existed; entirely unsuited, as they are, to a period
and portion of the world, blessed with the refining and softening
influences of civilization and the gospel. Numerous as were the
statutory regulations for the treatment of the servant, they could not
preclude the large discretion of the master. The apprentice, in our
country, is subjected to an authority, equaling a parent's authority,
but not always tempered in its exercise, with a parent's love. His
condition is, therefore, not unfrequently marked with severity and
suffering. Now, imagine what this condition would be, under the harsh
features of a more barbarous age, and you will have in it, as I
conjecture, no distant resemblance to that of some of the Jewish
servants. But how different is this condition from that of the slave!

I am reminded in this connexion, of the polished, but pernicious,
article on slavery in a late number of the Biblical Repertory. In that
article Professor Hodge says, that the claim of the slaveholder "is
found to be nothing more than a transferable claim of service either for
life, or for a term of years." Will he allow me to ask him, where he
discovered that the pretensions of the slaveholder are all resolvable
into this modest claim? He certainly did not discover it in any slave
code; nor in any practical slavery. Where then? No where, but in that
undisclosed system of servitude, which is the creation of his own fancy.
To this system I raise no objection whatever. On the contrary, I am
willing to admit its beauty and its worthiness of the mint in which it
was coined. But I protest against his right to bestow upon it the name
of another and totally different thing. He must not call it slavery.

Suppose a poor German to be so desirous of emigrating with his family to
America, as to agree to give his services for ten years, as a
compensation for the passage. Suppose further, that the services are to
be rendered to the captain of the ship in which they sail, or to any
other person, to whom he may assign his claim. Such a bargain is not
uncommon. Now, according to Professor Hodge, this German may as rightly
as any of your Southern servants, be called a slave. He may as rightly
be called _property_, as they may be, who, in the language of the South
Carolina laws, "shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in
law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and
possessors, and thei