Washington sentinel., 1854-02-09

repulsive. Your reverence has chosen, if not
the better, at least the balmier part. Yours is
the privilege, dear to the enlightened modern
heart, of uttering kind-looking sentences 1t
comes easy to you (for all the prevailing cants
are with you) to assume for yourself and your
followers the credit of benevolence, and philan-
thropy, and enlightenment and progress
and all the rest of it. While /, to escape the
charge of barbarous cruelty and blood-thirsty
atrocity am forced to shield myself under the
authority of mere eancients-persons behind the
century; persons who had not the advantage Of
hearing your lectures at the Tabernacle !; per-
sons like the Legislator of the Jews, and the
wise men of the Greeks, and the trainers of the
Declaration OF independence. 1t would be
easy for me also, and 1t would be true, to as
sert that / am not cruel or tyrannical by ma
ture; that hate all oppression; that if had
slaves, would influence and govern them uni
formly by kindness, instead of coercion--in
short, that would use them as humanely as
Jefferson himself whose enthusiastic reception
by his attached negroes on his return to Mon
ticello, forms SO agreeable a picture in fuckers
life OF that illustrious man. 1t would be easy !;
but do not condescend to treat the question
In this personal and restricted manner Ny
position was, and is, the naked assertion,
that slave-holdmg is not crime !" and that
nobody ever thought it crime until some
time towards the close of the last century
For the sake Of undeceiving your disciples
ut the Tabernacle, think it right now to in
form them land do it with regret) that you
are in the habit of giving so erroneous an ac-
count of slavery among the Hebrews, that
Moses himself would not know his own laws if
he heard them described in one of your reve-
rence's lectures You say that the Mosaic law
did not indeed prohibit slavery, but surrounded
the system with such restrictions as to make it
very inconvenient and finally to abolish it.
The very ingenious authoress of" Uncle Toms
Cabin" in her Key" to the same, has asserted
quoting Mr.. Barnes for it, that although He
brews might buy slaves they could not sell
them; and again, that there was an enactment
requiring Hebrew shareholders to liberate their
slaves every fiftieth year. These are state
ments which you and your school seem to take
on trust from Mrs. Stowe and Mr.. Barnes; but,
you will find that it is unsafe to rely for facts
of this kind upon pamphleteers or lady-novel-
lists. Undoubtedly ssome of your hearers and
some of the readers of "Uncle Tom" will be
surprised to hear that there were no such enact
ments at all, except in reference to that class
of slaves who were children of Israel.
The Mosaic law commanded the Israelites to
about" These slaves it commanded them to
take as an inheritance forever Ye shall
take them as an inheritance for your children
after you, to inherit them for a possession; they
shall be your bondmen forerer But over your
brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not
rule over one another with rigor." Levitt.
XIV. 46.)
In the year of jubilee, liberty was to be pro-
claimed throughout the land, "to all the in
habitarts thereof" but is it possible for a
learned theologian, like your reverence, not to
be aware that foreign slaves were never spoken
of as inhabitants of the land, but as strangers
and sojourners? 1t is nthis very same chapter
that foreign slaves are declared to be their in
heritance and their possession, and their child
ren's possession forever. Moses" says the
learned commentator Michaelis, "specifed
two periods at which the HebreW servant was
to regain his freedom-the 7th year and the
50th"-that is to say as he explains it, at the
end of seven years from the date of the slaves
falling into slavery 1.-THE sabbatical year had
nothing to do with it j and at any rate, in the
jubilee year, whether he had been them seven
years iu slavery or not. But nothing of this
applied to the slaues purchased from foreigners
on taken in scar, on to the children Of such
sldres
1t is precisely as if there were law in
America whereby all American citizens, who
might have fallen into the state of slavery, were
to be set free at two stated periods in each
century.
If you know of any commentator worth at
tention who takes differently view of the matter,
produce him.
And it is not true; nor is there the smallest
foundation for the statement that Hebrew
10 bpl 1arx rs e.,
eign slave. On the contrary, there is one very
peculiar and exceptional case, (Deut. xxi. l4,)
IN which master is forbidden to sell a female
captive whom he had taken to wife; he shall
not make merchandise of her. And this ex-
ceptional prohibition leads to the belief that of
all other slaves he might make merchandise.
Again it is said: "If man be found stealing
any of his brethren of the children of Israel,
and maketh merchandise of him or seleth him,
then that thief shall die. Deut XIV ~
Which seems to me to prove that there were
regular slave-markets in Israel; otherwise the
kidnapper could not "make merchandise" of
his stolen brethren, and could have no tempta-
tion to steal him for sale. And lastly in pro-
viding for the moderate punishment of slaves
with rods, the law declares that, even if the
slave die of his beating after day or two, vet
his master shall not be punished; for, saith the
text, che is his money" The learned COM
mentator cited before remarks on this pas
sage: "In any nation where slavery is estab-
lished a master must have right to chastise
his slave. IF they are obstinate, and provoke
him into passion, his blows may prove fatal,
to his inclination; but predeter-
mination to kill slave will not be imputed to
hin" for he is money.
Now, if mans slave was his inheritance,
and his children's inheritance, and his money,
and if in the whole Mosaic law there is to be
found but one enactment against seling-that
is, forbidding man to sell his wife if she was
also his slave-forbdding it not because she
was his slave, but because she was his wife
then clearly we are entitled to assume that
slaves were marketable commodity among
the Jews, as they we're among all other nations
of antiquity.
hope, therefore, you will tell your hearers
at your next lecture that you have been misre-
presenting Moses all this time and that, in
fact, the Mosaic law imposed no restrictions
upon slavery at all, except in the case of Israel
itish slaves-a class of restrictions which are
here happily unnecessary, as no American citi-
zen can sell himself into clavery, or become
slave even for debt, as Hebrew citizen might.