Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/73

Rh freeman is punished with stripes for secondary offences as well as the slave.

At Rome, the slave being a mere “chattel personal,” could have none of the rights of a husband or a father: he could not contract a legal marriage, nor did the woman who bore him children, or the children she bore, stand in any relation whatever to him in the eye of the law. The same was the case, we may venture to say, in all other heathen nations where slavery prevailed. It is the case also, as is too well known, in the Slave States of America, where in law a slave’s marriage is a nullity, and where, in practice, husbands are sold away from their wives, children from their parents: where the human cattle are bred like sheep or swine for the market: where, in shorty the whole system is a standing defiance of nature and humanity, such as it is strange to see defended or excused, under whatever stress of political passion, by English men, and still more strange to see defended or excused by English women. But the law of Moses treats the bondman in this respect also as a person, not a thing, though his labour is the property of his master, and vindicates for him the rights of a husband and a father. “If he (the servant who is let go free in the seventh year) came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.” The