into their hands, and enrolled them as a night-guard, for the
defence of the city. By cheerfully engaging in this service and in labor
by day, when with entire ease they might all have left their masters,
marched over to the enemy, and been received with shoutings, the
servants testified that their condition was one of _their own choice_,
and that they regarded their own interests as inseparably identified
with those of their masters. Neh. iv. 23.

VI. NO INSTANCES OF ISRAELITISH MASTERS SELLING SERVANTS. Neither
Abraham nor Isaac seem ever to have sold one, though they had "great
store of servants." Jacob was himself a servant in the family of Laban
twenty-one years. He had afterward a large number of servants. Joseph
invited him to come into Egypt, and to bring all that he had with
him--"thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks
and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST." Gen. xlv. 10. Jacob took his
flocks and herds but _no servants_. Yet we are told that Jacob "took his
journey with _all that he had_." Gen. xlvi. 1. And after his arrival in
Egypt, Joseph said to Pharaoh "my father, and my brethren, and their
flocks, and their herds and _all that they have_, are come." Gen. xlvii.
1. The servants doubtless, served under their _own contracts_, and when
Jacob went into Egypt, they _chose_ to stay in their own country.

The government might sell _thieves_, if they had no property, until
their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine. Ex.
xxii. 3. But _masters_ seem to have had no power to sell their
_servants_. To give the master a _right_ to sell his servant, would
annihilate the servant's right of choice in his own disposal; but says
the objector, "to give the master a right to _buy_ a servant, equally
annihilates the servant's _right of choice_." Answer. It is one thing to
have a right to buy a man, and a quite another thing to have a right to
buy him of _another_ man.[A]

[Footnote A: There is no evidence that masters had the power to dispose
of even the _services_ of their servants, as men hire out their laborers
whom they employ by the year; but whether they had or not, affects not
the argument.]

Though servants were not bought of their masters, yet young females were
bought of their _fathers_. But their purchase as _servants_ was their
betrothal as WIVES. Ex. xxi. 7, 8. "If a man sell his daughter to be a
maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she