Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/30

12 his liberty, to prevent his depriving others of their lives. But the authority to do this is not given to any man as an individual, but to the whole community, or to the magistrate, as the representative of the whole. In this case, no man is benefited by the privation of another, any farther than all are seemed against injury. This, therefore, can never account for the origin of slavery, which is one man usurping dominion over another for his own advantage, and to the injury of the person he oppresses. No. The origin of slavery can be found no where but in human depravity: the selfishness, hardness, and cruelty of the human heart, which prompt a man to pursue his own interests, though he sacrifices the welfare and the rights of others; and to oppress, and trample on the weak, merely because he has the power to do so.

Before we pass on to another section, it may not be amiss to remind the young reader, that every instance of childish violence and oppression springs from the very same source as slavery. The stronger child who beats a weaker child, or snatches from him a toy or cake, discovers the dispositions that would lead him, in maturer years, if opportunity offered, to be the cruel tyrannical slave-master.

  may excite some surprise, and has often been advanced as an argument in favour of slavery, by persons interested in its continuance, that it is recognized and tolerated in the law of Moses, and even in the New Testament. 