operty in
man[B]--but it dies as surely, when you prune it of its manifold
incidents of pollution and irreligion.

[Footnote B: I mean by this phrase, "right to property in man," a right
to hold man as property; and I do not see with what propriety certain
writers construe it to mean, a property in the mere services of a man.]

But it would be treating you indecorously to stop you at this stage of
the discussion, before we are a third of the way through your book, and
thus deny a hearing to the remainder of it. We will proceed to what you
say of the slavery which existed in the time of the New Testament
writers. Before we do so, however, let me call your attention to a few
of the specimens of very careless reasoning in that part of your book,
which we have now gone over. They may serve to inspire you with a modest
distrust of the soundness of other parts of your argument.

After concluding that Abraham was a slaveholder, you quote the following
language from the Bible; "Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my
commandments, my statutes, and my laws." You then inquire, "How could
this be true of Abraham, holding as he did, until he was an old man,
more slaves than any man in Mississippi or Louisiana?" To be consistent
with your design in quoting this passage, you must argue from it, that
Abraham was perfect. But this he was not; and, therefore, your quotation
is vain. Again, if the slaveholder would quiet his conscience with the
supposition, that "Abraham held more slaves than any man in Mississippi
or Louisiana," let him remember, that he had also more concubines (Gen.
25: 6), "than any man in Mississippi or Louisiana;" and, if Abraham's
authority be in the one case conclusive for slaveholding, equally so
must it be in the other, for concubinage.

Perhaps, in saying that "Abraham had more concubines than any man in
Mississippi or Louisiana," I have done injustice to the spirit of
propagation prevailing amongst the gentlemen of those States. It may be,
that some of your planters quite distance the old patriarch in obedience
to the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." I am correctly
informed, that a planter in Virginia, who counted, I know not how many
slaves upon his plantation, confessed on his death-bed, that his
licentiousness had extended to every adult female amongst them. This
planter was a near relative of the celebrated Patrick Henry. It may be,
that you have planters in Mississippi and Louisia