n the part of the master, the servant was first taken
before the magistrate, where he openly declared his intention of
continuing in his master's service, (probably a public register was kept
of such) he was then conducted to the door of the house, (in warm
climates doors are thrown open,) and _there_ his ear was _publicly_
bored, and by submitting to this operation he testified his willingness
to serve him _forever_, i.e. during his life, for Jewish Rabbins who
must have understood Jewish _slavery_, (as it is called,) "affirm that
servants were set free at the death of their masters and did _not_
descend to their heirs:" or that he was to serve him until the year of
Jubilee, when _all_ servants were set at liberty. To protect servants
from violence, it was ordained that if a master struck out the tooth or
destroyed the eye of a servant, that servant immediately became _free_,
for such an act of violence evidently showed he was unfit to possess the
power of a master, and therefore that power was taken from him. All
servants enjoyed the rest of the Sabbath and partook of the privileges
and festivities of the three great Jewish Feasts; and if a servant died
under the infliction of chastisement, his master was surely to be
punished. As a tooth for a tooth and life for life was the Jewish law,
of course he was punished with death. I know that great stress has been
laid upon the following verse: "Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or
two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money."

Slaveholders, and the apologists of slavery, have eagerly seized upon
this little passage of scripture, and held it up as the masters' Magna
Charta, by which they were licensed by God himself to commit the
greatest outrages upon the defenceless victims of their oppression. But,
my friends, was it designed to be so? If our Heavenly Father would
protect by law the eye and the tooth of a Hebrew servant, can we for a
moment believe that he would abandon that same servant to the brutal
rape of a master who would destroy even life itself. Do we not rather
see in this, the _only_ law which protected masters, and was it not
right that in case of the death of a servant, one or two days after
chastisement was inflicted, to which other circumstances might have
contributed, that the master should be protected when, in all
probability, he never intended to produce so fatal a result? But the
phrase "he is his money" has been adduced to show that Hebrew s