those who construct and uphold the system of abominations--to testify
against the murderer. But why particularize causes of this impunity? The
whole policy of the Southern slave system goes to provide it. How
unreasonable is it to suppose, that they, who have conspired against a
portion of their fellow-beings, and mutually pledged themselves to treat
them as _mere things_--how unreasonable, I say, is it to suppose, that
they would consent to put a _man_ to death, on account of his treatment,
in whatever way, of a _mere thing_? Not long ago, I was informed by a
highly respectable lawyer of the State of Georgia, that he had known a
number of attempts (attempts most probably but in form and name) to
effect the conviction of whites for their undoubted murder of slaves.
But in every instance, the jurors perjured themselves, rather than
consent that a _man_ should be put to death, for the liberty he had
taken in disposing of a _thing_. They had rather perjure themselves,
than by avenging the blood of a _slave_ with that of a _man_, make a
breach upon the policy of keeping the slave ignorant, that he has the
_nature_, and consequently the _rights_, of a man.]

Professor Hodge tells his readers, in substance, that the selling of
men, as they are sold under the system of slavery, is to be classed with
the cessions of territory, occasionally made by one sovereign to
another; and he would have the slave, who is sold from hand to hand, and
from State to State, at the expense to his bleeding heart, of the
disruption of its dearest ties, think his lot no harder than that of the
inhabitant of Louisiana, who was passed without his will, from the
jurisdiction of the French government to that of the United States.

When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at
least for a time, feel himself to be anywhere but at home, amongst his
new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning. This is very evident in
the case before us--especially, when now and then, old habits of thought
and feeling break out, in spite of every effort to repress them, and the
Professor is himself again, and discourses as manfully, as fearlessly,
and as eloquently, as he ever had done before the slaveholders got their
hands upon him. It is not a little amusing to notice, that, although the
burden of his article is to show that slavery is one of God's
institutions, (what an undertaking for a Professor of Theology in the
year 1836!) he so far forge