re A to be a slave, natural law may be
practically overborne by this arbitrary authority; but she will not
herself perpetuate it beyond the person of A--for that would be acting
in contradiction to herself.--She will therefore suffer this arbitrary
authority to expend itself on the person of A, according to the _letter_
of the arbitrary law; but she will assert her own authority in favor of
the child of A, to whom the letter of the law enslaving A, does not
apply.

Slavery is a wrong to each individual enslaved; and not merely to the
first of a series. Natural law, therefore, as much forbids the enslaving
of the child, as if the wrong of enslaving the parent had never been
perpetrated.

Slavery, then, is an arbitrary institution throughout. It depends, from
first to last, upon the letter of the arbitrary law. Natural law gives
it no aid, no extension, no new application, under any circumstances
whatever. Unless, therefore, the letter of the arbitrary law explicitly
authorize the enslavement of the child, the child is born free, though
the parent were a slave.

If the views that have already been taken of our written constitutions,
be correct, no parent has ever yet been legally enslaved in this
country; and of course no child. If, however, any one thinks he can
place his finger upon any _constitutional_ law, that has enslaved a
parent, let him follow that law, and see whether it also expressly
authorized the enslavement of the child. If it did not, then the child
would be free.

It is no new principle that the child of a slave would be born free, but
for an express law to the contrary. Some of the slave codes admit the
principle--for they have special provisions that the child shall follow
the condition of the mother; thus virtually admitting that, but for such
a provision, the child would be free, though the mother were a slave.

Under the constitutions of the states and the United States, it requires
as explicit and plenary _constitutional_ authority, to make slaves of
the children of slaves, as it would to make slaves of any body else. Is
there, in any of the constitutions of this country, any general
authority given to the governments, to make slaves of whom they please?
No one will pretend it. Is there, then, any particular authority for
making slaves of the children of those, who have previously been held in
slavery? If there be, let the advocates of slavery point it out. If
there be no such authority, all t