The second argument in support of his first proposition is, “A man
cannot be seized and held as property, because he has rights;” to
enforce which, he says—“Now, I say, a being having _rights_ cannot
justly be made property; for this claim over him virtually annuls all
his rights.” We see no force of argument in this position. It is also
true that all domestic animals, held as property, have rights. “The ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.” They all have “the
right of petition;” and ask, in their way, for food: are they the less
property?
But his third argument in support of his first proposition is, that man
cannot justly be held as property, on the account of the “essential
equality of man.” If to be born, to eat, to drink, and die alike,
constitutes an essential equality among men, then be it so! What! the
African savage, born even a slave amid his native wilds, who entertains
no vestige of an idea of God, of a future state of existence, of moral
accountability; who has no wish beyond the gratification of his own
animal desire; whose parentage, for ages past, has been of the same
order; and whose descendants are found to require generations of
constant training before they display any permanent moral and
intellectual advancement; what, such a one essentially equal to such a
man as Dr. Channing?
The truth is, such a man is more essentially equal with the brute
creation. We shall consider the subject of the equality in another part
of our study, to which we refer. We, therefore, only remark, that the
doctrine is a chimera.
His fourth argument in support of the proposition is, “That man cannot
justly be held as property, because property is an exclusive right.”
“Now,” he says, “if there be property in any thing, it is that of a man
in his own person, mind, and strength.” “Property,” he repeats, “is an
exclusive right.”
If a man has an exclusive right to property, he can alienate it; he may
sell, give, and bequeath it to others. If a man is the property of
himself, suppose he shall choose to sell himself to another, and deliver
himself in full possession to the purchaser, as he had before been in
the full possession of himself—whose property will he be then? See a
case in point in _Deut._ xv. 12–17; see also _Exod._ xxi. 1–7.
His fifth argument is that, “if a human being cannot without infinite
injustice be seized as property, then he cannot, without equal wrong, be
held and used as such.” If a human being shall be found a nuisance to
himself and others in a state of freedom, then there will be no
injustice in his being subjugated, by law, to such control as his
qualities prove him to require in reference to the general good; even if
the subject shall not choose such control as a personal benefit to
himself.
The sixth argument is, that a human being cannot be held as property,
because, if so held, “the latter is under obligation to give himself up
as a chattel to the former.” “Now,” he says, “do we not instantly feel,
can we help feeling, that this is false?” And that “the absence of
obligation proves the want of the right.”
We suppose all acknowledge God as the author of the moral law. The moral
law forcibly inculcates submission to the civil or political law, even
independent of any promise to do so. Now, no one can have a right to act
in contradiction to law. The absence of this right, then, proves the
existence of the obligation.
For his seventh argument, he says—“I come now to what is, to my mind,
the great argument against seizing and using a man as property. He
cannot be property in the sight of God and justice, because he is a
rational, moral, immortal being; because created in God’s image, and
therefore in the highest sense his child; because created to unfold
godlike faculties, and to govern himself by a Divine law, written on his
heart, and republished in God’s word.”
Dr. Channing adds a page or two in the same impulsive strain, of the
same enthusiastic character. We may admire his style, his language, the
amiable formation of his mind, but we see nothing like precision or
logical deduction in support of his proposition. We see nothing in it
but the declamation of a learned, yet an over-ardent, enthusiastic mind.
His whole book is but a display of his mental formation. He could love
his friends; yea, his enemies. He could have rewarded virtue, but he
never could have punished sin. He could have forgiven the greatest
outrage, but he never could have yielded a delinquent to the rigid
demands of justice. He was a good man, but he never could have been an
unbending judge.
The laws of God have been made for the government and benefit of his
creatures. God, nor his law, is, like man, changeable. His law, as
expressed or manifested towards one class of objects, is also expressed
and manifested towards all objects similarly situated. The law, brought
into action by an act of Cain, would also have been brought into action
by a similar act of Abel. The law condemnatory of the shedding of blood
is still in fearful existence against all who shall have brought
themselves within the category of Cain’s acts, the most of which have
probably not been recorded.
We anticipate from another portion of our studies, that “sin is any want
of conformity unto the law of God.” Sin is as necessarily followed by
ill consequences to the sinner as cause is by effect. A man commits a
private murder; think ye, he feels no horrors of mind—no regrets? Is the
watchfulness he finds necessary to keep over himself for fear of
exposure, through the whole of life, not the effect of the act? Is not
his whole conduct, his friendships and associations with men, his very
mental peculiarities, his estimate of others, often all influenced and
directed in the path of his personal safety, the avoidance of suspicion?
And is all this no punishment? Probably, to have been put to death would
have been a much less suffering; and who can tell how far this long,
fearful, and systematic working of his mind is to affect the mental
peculiarities of his offspring? Shall he, who, by wanton
thoughtlessness, regardless of propriety, the moral law, and the
consequences of its breach, contracts some foul, loathsome, consuming
disease, that burns into the bones, and becomes a part of his physical
constitution, leave no trace of his sin on his descendants?
Deteriorated, feeble, and diseased, they shall not live out half their
days!
A long-continued course of sin, confined to an individual, or extended
to a family or race of people, deteriorates, degenerates, and destroys.
Such deterioration, continued perhaps from untold time, has brought some
of the races of men to what we now find them; and the same causes, in
similar operation, would leave the same effect on any other race; and
Dr. Channing’s “child of God” ceases to be so. “Ye are of your father,
the devil.” _John_ viii. 44. “And Dr. Channing’s man, created to unfold
godlike faculties, and to govern himself by a Divine law written on his
heart,” ceases to act as he supposes: “And the lusts of your father ye
will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the
truth; because there is no truth in him.” _John_ viii. 44. And what
saith the Spirit of prophecy to these degenerate sons of earth? “When
thou criest, let thy companions deliver thee; but the wind shall carry
them away; vanity shall take them; but he that putteth his trust in me
shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain.” _Isa._
lvii. 13.
“And if thou shalt say in thy heart, wherefore came these things upon
me? For the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and
thy heels made bare. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard
his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.
Therefore will I scatter them as stubble that passeth away by the wind
of the wilderness. This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me,
saith the Lord: because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in
falsehood. Therefore, will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy
shame may appear.” _Jer._ xiii. 22–26.
“And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the
children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people
far off: for the Lord hath spoken it.” _Joel_ iii. 8.
And what saith the same Spirit to those of opposite character?
“The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee;
and they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of
thy feet.” _Isa._ lx. 14.
“And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the
alien shall be your ploughmen and your vine-dressers.” _Ibid._ lxi. 5.
“They (my people) shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth trouble;
they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with
them. And it shall come to pass, before they shall call, I will answer;
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” _Ibid._ lxv. 234.
What are the threatenings announced in prospect of their deterioration
and wickedness?
“And thou (Judah) even thyself, shalt discontinue from thy heritage that
I gave thee; and I will cause thee _to serve_ (עֲבַדְתִּיךָ _be a slave
to_) thine enemies in a land which thou knowest not.” _Jer._ xvii. 4.
“Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of
Israel? saith the Lord. * * * Behold the eyes of the Lord God are upon
this sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the
earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith
the Lord.” _Amos_ ix. 7, 8.
The consequences of sin are degradation, slavery, and death:
“A righteous man hateth lying; but a wicked man is loathsome and cometh
to shame.”
“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind; and the fool
shall be _servant_ (עֶֽבֶד _ebed_, _slave_) to the wise of heart.”
“As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it
to his own death.” _Prov._
* * * * *
Dr. Channing has suffered his idea of property to bring him great mental
suffering: he evidently associates, under the term _property_, those
qualities and relations only, which are properly associated in an
inanimate object of possession, or at most in a brute beast. He has, no
doubt, suffered great misery from the reflection that a human being has
ever been reduced to such a condition. But his misery has all been
produced by his adherence to his own peculiar definition of the word
_property_. His definition is not its exact meaning, when applied to a
slave. Had the doctor attempted an argument to show that the word
_property_ could not consistently be applied to a slave, he might,
perhaps, have improved our language, by setting up a more definite
boundary to the meaning of this term, and saved himself much useless
labour.
Mankind apply the term _property_ to slaves: they have always done so;
and since Dr. Channing has not given us an essay upon the impropriety of
this use of the word, perhaps the accustomed usage will be continued.
But we imagine that no one but the doctor and his disciples will contend
that it expresses the same complex idea when applied to slaves, which is
expressed by it when applied to inanimate objects, or to brute beasts.
It will be a new idea to the slaveholder to be told that the word
_property_, as applied to his slaves, converts them at once into brute
beasts, no longer human beings; that it deprives them of all legal
protection; and that he, the master, in consequence of the use of this
word, stands in the same relation to his slave that he does to his
horse; and we apprehend he will find it quite as difficult to comprehend
how this metamorphosis is brought about, as it is for the doctor and his
disciples, how the slave is property.
We may say a man has property in his wife, his children, his hireling,
his slave, his horse, and a piece of timber,—by which we mean that he
has the right to use them, in conformity to the relations existing
between himself and these several objects. Because his horse is his
property, who ever dreamed that he had therefore the right to use him as
a piece of timber?
No man has a right to use any item of property in a different manner
than his relations with it indicate; or, in other words, as shall be in
conformity with the laws of God. Our property is little else than the
right of possession and control, under the guidance of the laws by which
we are in possession for the time being.
The organization of society is the result of the conception of the
general good. By it one man, under a certain chain of circumstances,
inherits a throne; another, a farm; one, the protection of a bondman, or
whatever may accrue to these conditions from other operating causes; and
another, nothing. If Dr. Channing and his disciples can find out some
new principles by which to organize society, producing different and
better results, they will then do what has not been done.
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