enough to point out the Canaanites as the enemies of God, to make the Jews regard them and their country as lawful plunder. Both Christian and Mussulman doctors held, if they do not still hold, that the lands, goods, and chattels, and, indeed, the very persons of infidels and heretics, are the rightful spoil of orthodox believers; and robberies the most atrocious and extensive have been committed under this pretext, both in the Old World and the New. That the saints shall inherit the earth, is a favorite doctrine with fanatics of every creed; and whenever they have possessed the slightest ability, they have always shown a corresponding disposition to carry that doctrine into practice.

5. The effect of antipathy, or malevolence, in producing disregard for rights of property, will enable us to understand how it happens, that in those countries in which property is very unequally distributed, where there are a few rich, and a vast many poor, both the poor and the rich are apt to consider each other as fair plunder. Two such classes look upon each other with mutual antipathy, and have very little disposition to respect each other's rights. Hence it happens that property is best respected and most secure in communities in which it is most equally distributed; and that appears, also, to be the arrangement most favorable to the increase of wealth and the happiness of society.*

* If any one should incline to cite England as a country in which, though wealth be very unequally distributed, the rights of property are respected, I would beg him to call to mind the enormous criminal

6. It is very unfortunate that the laws regulating the distribution of property, being founded, for the most part, upon the customs of barbarous times, and being almost always controlled by a few rich men misled by narrow views of self-interest, are almost everywhere in a very imperfect state; and do by no means correspond so exactly as they might and ought to do, with the natural basis of expectation. Hence it happens that law and equity are so often at variance; and that prejudices against the rights of property by no means destitute of plausibility, have spread far and wide through society.

7. There is one kind of property of so anomalous a character, that although it has existed in most parts of the world, and still exists in many parts of it, it has at length been wholly repudiated by the more humane and civilized nations; and that is, property in men, slaves.

8. Slavery originated in war.* Instead of killing the prostrate enemy, he was seized and made a slave of. This hardly took place till men began to keep flocks, or to cultivate the earth; because, prior to that state of things, slaves would have been a mere incumbrance. Hence it has happened, that at a certain stage of advancing civilization, slavery has been

calendar of that country, composed, in a great measure, of offences against property. The laws of property are enforced and upheld in the British Isles; but it can hardly be said that the rights of property are respected.

* See this subject fully treated in a work by the author of this treatise, entitled, "Despotism in America," ch. 2. See also, Theory of Politics.

introduced into almost all communities. From this circumstance some reasoners have concluded, that, at a certain stage of civilization, the introduction of slavery becomes an element necessary to the further advancement of society; a conclusion which the premises do by no means warrant.

It has, also, been pretended that when the prostrate enemy, instead of being killed, is made a slave of, there is a triumph of benevolence over malevolence, at which humanity ought to rejoice, and which proves that slavery originates in benevolence, and tends to the increase of human happiness. The defenders of the African slave trade alleged that it annually saved thousands of wretches from being put to death; as though slavery were not an evil, upon any just estimate, infinitely greater than death. Benevolence, in fact, had nothing whatever to do with the introduction of slavery. It was a feeling of malevolence joined to a desire of superiority, and the expectation of advantage from the services of the slaves, that made men slaves in the first place; it is the continued operation of these same motives, that keeps them so.

9. Slavery has always been acknowledged, and for good reasons, to be the most miserable condition into which a man can fall. It subjects him to constant pains of inferiority, and to a great many pains of other kinds. It is impossible for men of ordinary humanity to inflict so great an evil upon their fellowmen, unless they be, at the same time, objects of malevolence; and it is only by keeping up against the slaves a feeling of malevolence, that is, making

them objects of hatred, upon the ground that they are heathens, savages, destitute of the ordinary degree of humanity, and certain, if they are set free, to murder their masters; an inferior order of beings, made to be slaves, incapable of civilization, not able to take care of themselves, and, therefore, or for some other reasons, proper objects of hatred and contempt; it is only while malevolence is kept up by some such artifices, that slavery can continue to exist. Hence the great anxiety evinced by slaveholders and their friends to foster such prejudices and to diffuse them; and hence the destruction of these prejudices ought to be the chief object of those who aim at the abolition of slavery.

10. It appears, then, that while the respect which is paid to property in general originates in the sentiment of benevolence, slave property owes both its origin and its continuance to the sentiment of malevolence, a very essential distinction between these two kinds of property, a difference which puts them in decided opposition to each other.

11. All who have ceased to be influenced by those sentiments of malevolence towards the enslaved to which slavery owes its origin and its continuance, or to whom the slave-owners are not, for some reason or other, objects of peculiar sympathy, are apt to feel a high degree of commiseration for the enslaved, and a corresponding degree of indignation against the masters; a commiseration and an indignation, which reach, in general, the highest pitch, with those whose knowledge is confined to the simple fact, that the one party are slaves, and the other party masters;

but who, beyond that fact, have no personal or precise knowledge of either party. The degraded condition of the slaves, if it makes them objects of pity, is very apt, at the same time, to make them objects of contempt; while the superior condition of the masters, their wealth, authority, leisure, education, and manners, often present them to us in a very agreeable light. Hence it happens that those who have a personal knowledge of masters and their slaves, not unfrequently expend all their benevolence upon the masters, while they regard the slaves with a malevolent contempt.

12. Slavery, though generally condemned by modern forensic moralists, has found numerous apologists and defenders among the mystics. They tell the slave that since God has seen fit to place him in that condition, it is his duty to be contented with his lot. Rebellion against his master, or any attempt to evade or to shake off the burdens imposed upon him, is neither more nor less than rebellion against God. The greater part of the Christian mystical doctors insist, and, critically speaking, with apparent reason, that the Christian scriptures, and especially the apostle Paul, give countenance to slavery; and it is held, or at least, till very lately, it has been held by the highest authorities among them, that there is no inconsistency between the characters of a saint and a slave-trader.