Among those who have advocated views adverse to those of our present
study, we are compelled to notice Dr. Paley, as one of the most
influential, the most dignified, and the most learned. He defines
slavery to be “an obligation to labour for the benefit of the master,
without the contract or consent of the servant.” He says “that this
obligation may arise, consistently with the laws of nature, from three
causes: 1st, from crimes; 2d, from captivity; and 3d, from debt.” He
says that, “in the first case, the continuance of the slavery, as of any
other punishment, ought to be proportionate to the crime. In the second
and third cases, it ought to cease as soon as the demand of the injured
nation or private creditor is satisfied.” He was among the first to
oppose the African slave-trade. He says, “Because, when the slaves were
brought to the African slave-market, no questions were asked as to the
origin of the vendors’ titles: Because the natives were incited to war
for the sake of supplying the market with slaves: Because the slaves
were torn away from their parents, wives, children, and friends, homes,
companions, country, fields, and flocks, and their accommodation on
shipboard not better than that provided for brutes: Because the system
of laws by which they are governed is merciless and cruel, and is
exercised, especially by their English masters, with rigour and
brutality.”
But he thinks the American Revolution, which had just then happened,
will have a tendency to accelerate the fall of this most abominable
tyranny, and indulges in the reflection whether, in the providence of
God, the British legislature, which had so long assisted and supported
it, was fit to have rule over so extensive an empire as the North
American colonies.
Dr. Paley says that slavery was a part of the civil constitution of most
countries when Christianity appeared; and that no passage is found in
the Christian Scriptures by which it is condemned or prohibited. But he
thinks the reason to be, because “Christianity, soliciting admission
into all nations of the world, abstained, as behooved it, from
intermeddling with the civil institutions of any; but,” says he, “does
it follow from the silence of Scripture concerning them, that all the
civil institutions that then prevailed were right? or, that the bad
should not be exchanged for better? Besides,” he says, “the discharging
the slaves from all obligations to their masters would have had no
better effect than to let loose one half of mankind upon the other.
Besides,” he thinks “it would have produced a servile war, which would
have ended in the reproach and extinction of the Christian name.”
Dr. Paley thinks that the emancipation of slaves should be carried on
very gradually, by provision of law, under the protection of government;
and that Christianity should operate as an alterative, in which way, he
thinks, it has extinguished the Greek and Roman slavery, and also the
feudal tyranny; and he trusts, “as Christianity advances in the world,
it will banish what remains of this odious institution.”
In some of his other writings, Dr. Paley suggests that Great Britain, by
way of atoning for the wrongs she has done Africa, ought to transport
from America free negroes, the descendants of slaves, and give them
location in various parts of Africa, to serve as models for the
civilization of that country.
Dr. Paley’s Treatise on Moral and Political Philosophy, from which the
foregoing synopsis is taken, was published to the world in 1785; but it
had been delivered in lectures, almost _verbatim_, before the University
of Cambridge, several years previous; and it is now a class-book in
almost every high literary institution where the English language is
spoken. It is, therefore, a work of high authority and great influence.
But we think his definition of the term slavery is not correct. Let us
repeat it: “An obligation to labour for the benefit of the master,
without the contract or consent of the servant.”
Many, who purchase slaves to be retained in their own families, first
examine and consult with the slave, and tell him—“My business is thus; I
feed and clothe thus; are you willing that I should buy you? For I will
buy no slave who is not willing.”
To this, it is usual for the slave to say, “Yes, master! and I hope you
will buy me. I will be a good slave. You shall have no fault to find
with me, or my work.”
By all the claims of morality, here is a contract and consent, and the
statute might make it legal. But who will say that the condition of
slavery is altered thereby? But, says one, this supposition does not
reach the case, because all the obligations and conditions of slavery
previously existed; and, therefore, the “contract” and “consent” here
only amounted to a contract and consent to change masters.
Suppose then, from poverty or misfortune, or some peculiar affection of
the mind, a freeman should solicit to place himself in the condition of
slavery to one in whom he had sufficient confidence, (and we have known
such a case,)—a freeman anxiously applying to his more fortunate friend
to enter into such an engagement for life; suppose the law had
sanctioned such voluntary slavery, and, when entered into, made it
obligatory, binding, and final for ever. There would be nothing in such
law contrary to the general powers of legislation, however impolitic it
might be; and such a law did once exist among the Jews.
“And if a sojourner or a stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that
dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or
sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger’s family; after that
he is sold, he may be redeemed again; and one of his brethren may redeem
him. Either his uncle or his uncle’s son may redeem him, or any that is
nigh of kin unto his family may redeem him; or, if he be able, he may
redeem himself: * * * and if he be not redeemed in one of these
years,—then he shall go out in the year of Jubilee, both he and his
children with him.” _Lev._ xxv. 47–54. “Now these are the judgments
which ye shall set before them. If ye buy an Hebrew servant, six years
shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If
he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married,
then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a
wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her
children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself; and if
the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my
children; I will not go out free,’—then his master shall bring him unto
the judges; he shall bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post, and
his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve
him for ever.” _Ex._ xxi. 1–6.
It is clear, then, that “to contract and consent,” or the reverse, is no
part of the qualities of slavery. Erase, then, that portion of Dr.
Paley’s definition as surplusage; it will then read, “an obligation to
labour for the benefit of the master.”
Now, there can be no obligation to do a thing where there is no possible
power to do it; and more especially, if there is no contract. But it
does not unfrequently occur, that a slave, from its infancy, old age,
idiocy, delirium, disease, or other infirmity, has no power to labour
for the benefit of the master; and the want of such ability may be
obviously as permanent as life, so as to exclude the idea of any
prospective benefit. Yet the law compels the master to supply food,
clothes, medicine, pay taxes on, and every way suitably protect such
slave, greatly to the disadvantage of the master. Or, a case might be,
for it is presumable, that the master, from some obliqueness of
understanding, might not wish some slave, even in good health, to labour
at all, but would prefer, at great expense, to maintain such slave in
luxury and idleness, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring
sumptuously every day: surely, such slave, would be under no obligation
to labour for the benefit of the master, when, to do so, would be acting
contrary to his will and command. Yet none of these circumstances make
the slave a freeman, or alter at all the essentials of slavery.
The slave, then, may or may not be under obligation to labour for the
benefit of the master. Therefore, the “obligation to labour for the
benefit of the master” is surplusage also, and may be erased. So the
entire definition is erased—not a word left!
The fact is, Dr. Paley took some of the most common incidents
accompanying the thing for the thing itself; and he would have been just
as logically correct had he said, that “slavery was to be a hearty
feeder on fat pork,” because slaves feed heartily on that article. In
his definition Dr. Paley has embraced none of the essentials of slavery.
We propose to notice the passage—“This obligation may arise,
consistently with the laws of nature, from three causes: 1st, from
crime; 2d, from captivity; 3d, from debt.”
The first consideration is, what he means by “obligation.” In its usual
acceptation, the term means something that has grown out of a previous
condition, as the obligations of marriage did not, nor could they exist
until the marriage was had. If he only means that the “obligations” of
slavery arise, &c., then he has told us nothing of the arising of
slavery itself. But as he has used the word in the singular number, and
given it three progenitors, we may suppose, that, by some figure of
rhetoric, not usual in works of this kind, he has used the consequent
for the cause. In that case, the sentence should read, “Slavery may
arise, consistently with the laws of nature, from three causes,” &c.;
which is what we suppose the doctor really meant.
The next inquiry is, what did Dr. Paley mean by “the laws of nature?”
Permit us to suffer him to answer this inquiry himself.
In the twenty-fourth chapter of his “Natural Theology,” a work of great
merit, he says—
“The wisdom of the Deity, as testified in the works of creation,
surpasses all idea we have of wisdom drawn from the highest intellectual
operations of the highest class of intelligent beings with whom we are
acquainted. * * * The degree of knowledge and power requisite for the
formation of created nature cannot, with respect to us, be distinguished
from infinite. The Divine omnipresence stands in natural theology upon
this foundation. In every part and place of the universe, with which we
are acquainted, we perceive the exertion of a power which we believe
mediately or immediately to proceed from the Deity. For instance, in
what part or point of space, that has ever been explored, do we not
discover attraction? In what regions do we not discover light? In what
accessible portion of our globe do we not meet with gravitation,
magnetism, electricity? together with the properties, also, and powers
of organized substances, of vegetable or animated, nature? Nay, further
we may ask, what kingdom is there of nature, what corner of space, in
which there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not
fall upon contrivance and design? The only reflection, perhaps, which
arises in our minds from this view of the world around us, is that the
laws of nature everywhere prevail; that they are uniform and universal.
But what do we mean by the laws of nature? or by any law? Effects are
produced by power, not by law; a law cannot execute itself; a law refers
to an agent.”
By the “laws of nature,” then, Dr. Paley clearly means the laws of God.
Now be pleased to look at the close of Dr. Paley’s remarks on slavery,
where he trusts that, “as Christianity advances in the world, it will
banish what remains of that odious institution.” How happens it that an
institution which arises consistently with the laws of God should be
odious to him, unless the laws of God and Dr. Paley are at variance on
this subject?
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