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4. That which constitutes the grand fountain of slavery,–the forcible, stealthy seizure of a man, for the purpose of holding or selling him as a slave,–was, under the Mosaic dispensation, punishable with death; and is, in the New Testament, named in connection with the most heinous crimes. “He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.” What could more forcibly exhibit God’s disapprobation of one of the distinctive features of slavery,–compulsion? What more impressively show the value that he puts upon a man’s personal independence,–his right to himself? Now if God doomed that man to die a felon’s death who should steal and sell a fellow man, can it be that he would hold him guiltless who should buy the stolen man, knowing him to have been stolen? God’s people were, indeed, allowed to “buy bondmen and bondmaids” of the strangers that dwelt among them, and of the surrounding heathen. But were they ever allowed to buy persons whom they knew to have been unlawfully obtained, and offered for sale in manifest opposition to their own wishes? If they were not,–and, from the statute just referred to, it seems certain that they were not,–does American slavery derive countenance from that which was tolerated in the Jewish church and nation? True, the slaves now held as such among us were not themselves feloniously seized on a foreign soil, torn away from kindred, homes, and country, and sold into hopeless bondage in a strange land; but their sires and grandsires were. Man-stealing is confessedly the stock out of which has sprung, and grown to its present dimensions, the vast and overshadowing Upas of American slavery; and if the Bible brands that stock as pestiferous, must not the entire tree partake of the noxious influence? Again: if, as competent critics assert, the popular sense of the word rendered “men-stealers,” in 1 Tim. i. 10, be “those who deal in men–literally, slave-traders,” then trafficking in slaves for mercenary ends is, by Paul, ranked among vices the most abominable; and American slavery is, if possible, more pointedly condemned by that passage than by the statute found in Ex. xxi. 16. For who does not know that trading in “the persons of men” has ever been, and yet is, a main pillar in the fabric of slavery? Indeed, man-stealing and slave-trading are to slave-holding precisely what the business of the distiller and of the vendor is to the vice of intemperance. There is, in either case, a trio of associated evils; and it is difficult to say which member of either trio is the most repulsive and harmful.

If, now, it be objected to this argument from the Bible, that the Mosaic institutes expressly recognize such a thing as involuntary servitude, and prescribe rules for its regulation, I answer: true, but the servitude thus recognized and regulated by statute was of a far milder type than that which is legalized in these American States. For, 1. It allowed the bondman a large amount of leisure, or time which he need not devote to his master’s service; 2. It made it possible for him to accumulate a considerable amount of property; 3. It placed him on a perfect level with his master, in regard to religious privileges; 4. It gave him his freedom whenever he should be so chastised as to result in permanent injury to his person: thus operating as a powerful preventive of inhumanity in chastising; 5. It respected the sanctity of the conjugal and parental relations, when existing among bondmen, and did not authorize a compulsory severing of family ties; 6. It made no provision for the sale of a servant by his Jewish master, nor for any such domestic commerce in the persons of men as is practised in the southern States of this Union; 7. It provided for the periodical emancipation of all that were in bondage; thus aiming a fatal blow at the very existence of servitude in the Hebrew commonwealth. I may not, consistently with the necessary brevity of a tract designed for popular perusal, go into any demonstration of the facts above asserted. For proof that they are facts, let my readers studiously examine the Mosaic books, and the Rev. A. Barnes’s “Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery.” I see not how any candid and discriminating investigator can help being convinced that the servitude which was temporarily tolerated in the Jewish church, was, in numerous respects, very unlike to that which exists among us, and far less repulsive.