Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/74

 68 perty in that being, just as the very idea of a thing necessarily

human

excludes the idea of a

being.

It is clear that a thing

can not be a human being, and it is equally clear that a human And the law itself, when it adopts being can not be a thing. the phrase, "relation of master and slave," confesses its reluctance to sanction the claim of property.

It shrinks

from the

pretension of Senators, and satisfies itself with a formula, which

human

does not openly degrade

nature.

If this property does exist, out of what

derived

title is it

God

Under what ordinance of Nature or of Nature's

?

one hu-

is

man being stamped an owner and another stamped a thing ? God is no respecter of persons. Where is the sanction for this respect of certain persons to a degree

other persons

we

?

God

is

"Where then

are all his children.

which becomes outrage to Human Family, and

the Father of the is

the sanction of this pre-

a brother lays violent hands

tension

by which

To ask

these questions

is

humiliating



but

upon a brother

it is

?

clear there can

be but one response. There is no sanction for such pretension no ordinance for it, or title.. On all grounds of reason, and

waiving all questions of "positive " statute, the Vermont Judge was nobly right, when, rejecting the claim of a Slave-master, he " No said not until you show a Bill of Sale from the Al:



Nothing short of this impossible link in the chain of title would do. I know something of the great judgments by which the jurisprudence of our country has been illustrated but I doubt if there is any thing in the wisdom of Marshall, the learning of Story, or the completeness of Kent, which will mighty."

brighten with time like this honest decree. The intrinsic feebleness of this pretension intrinsic feebleness of the arguments

is

by which

apparent in the it is

maintained.

and both have been put forth in recent defrom Mississippi, [Mr. Davis.] Senator the bate by The first is the alleged inferiority of the African race an argument which, while surrendering to Slavery a whole race, leaves it uncertain whether the same principle may not be apThese are two-fold,



plied to other races, as to the polished Japanese,

who

are

now

the guests of the nation, and even to persons of obvious infe-

Indeed, the latter pretension

riority in the white race.

ly

made

journal of Slave-masters,

is

open-

The Richmond Enquirer, a leading declares " The principle of Slavery is

in other quarters.