Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/95

Rh many others we have furnished, that free society in the long run is an impracticable form of society. It is everywhere starving, demoralizing, and insurrectionary. Policy and humanity alike forbid the extension of the evils of free society to new people and coming generations.” Free society, according to a kindred authority, is nothing but “a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists.”

It appears that the author of the Hebrew Law was not of this opinion. It appears from his enactments that he did not think free labour, to use the phrase of another Southern writer, “the great cancer” and “the offensive fungus” of civilized society, though he was as well aware as any advocate of Slavery that the lot of the free labourer was precarious, and that the poor would be always in the land.