is the legal penalty for a slave's striking any white person, under circumstances of whatever provocation, or in resistance of any treatment, however unlawful, brutal, or malignant. The slave is cut off from the benefit of trial by jury, except in capital cases; and in South Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana, life may be legally taken without the verdict of a jury. In Louisiana, if the court is equally divided as to the guilt of a slave, judgment is rendered against him. In 1832, thirty-five slaves were executed at one time in Charleston, S. C., without the intervention of a jury. The degree of protection which the slave enjoys against over-working, and the security in which he holds any little property of his own, may be judged of from the fact, that the lowest prescribed limit of a slave's daily labor is fifteen hours, that in several of the States a slave is not permitted to raise cotton or to keep domestic animals for his own benefit, and that in several of the States masters are forbidden, under heavy penalties, to let their slaves work for wages for their own benefit. The extent to which the slave's life is protected may be inferred from the law of South Carolina, which provides that, if a slave be murdered by a white person in a sudden passion, or by excessive punishment, the man who kills him shall pay a moderate fine, and be imprisoned six months.

Now these laws are not merely indications of what may in extreme cases be done to, or suffered by the slaves. Laws are the surest index of the state of public sentiment in a community, and these laws show in what light the rights, the comfort, and the life of the slave are regarded at the South. These laws are the true criterion of judgment. Individual cases of hardship and gross cruelty may exist under the most humane. laws, wherever man has power over his fellow-beings. We have ourselves known, in our own neighborhood, cases of the cruel treatment of children bound out at service, which, had they occurred at the South, would have figured largely in antislavery reports; but they would here have been the subjects of the severest legal animadversion, and would have roused the indignation of the whole community, while at the South they would have been far within the liberty granted by law, and would have excited no surprise or censure. We doubt not that there are very many humane and conscientious masters at the South, many, who bear the burden of slavery unwillingly, and who cherish a Christian sense of

duty towards this species of property, from which they know not how to escape. But we want no other proof than the advertisements in Southern newspapers, to convince us that cases of gross inhumanity are appallingly frequent; and even in the cities, where the slaves are supposed to enjoy a condition of greater comfort than on the plantations, the severe whipping of adult slaves, both male and female, either by the master or by the public functionary appointed for that purpose, is a common and habitual thing.

Such is slavery, the institution for which our kind construction, our tolerance, our sympathy, our tacit approval, is often claimed. Such is the slavery, which we Northern men help sustain in the District of Columbia, and in the territories under the national jurisdiction, and which, in the portions of the country where it has the deepest dye, is replenished by a traffic conducted under our sanction and authority. Such is the burden, which, as it exists in the Southern States of the Union, claims not indeed our interference until it is solicited, but our prayers and our sympathy both for the enslaved and for their masters. And can it be Heaven's will, that we should close our hearts against the knowledge of such wrong and misery? Shall constitutions and enactments restrain prayer, and make void the law of God and of Jesus, which says, "All ye are brethren? But what shall we, what can we lawfully do for the benefit of the slaves taken collectively?

In the first place, we can and should pray for the slave and his master, in public and in private, not in mere form, but heartily, fervently. And this we say, not pro formá, because we are writing for a religious periodical, but because we believe in the efficacy of prayer. The evil is one of appalling magnitude. The stone is very great. We cannot roll it away unless God strengthen us and teach us how. But if all Christian people at the North would unite in earnest supplication to God for their unhappy brethren, he would open their eyes to modes of influence and effort now hidden. And on a subject so exciting, the calm and gentle spirit of prayer is especially needed to purge philanthropy from all base admixture of earthly passion, to temper it with justice and candor, and to prevent sympathy with the oppressed from degenerating into hatred and vindictive feelings towards the oppressor. We fear that on this subject there has been too much preaching and too little praying.

But we ought to preach as well as pray, and to write as well as preach. The subject is an open one, and demands discussion; nor by its discussion can wrong be done to any, so long as the laws of truth and of brotherly love are kept inviolate, and all bitterness and wrath are put away. It is often said, that slavery is not a subject for the pulpit. But why not? A just moral perspective will not indeed ensure it the broad and engrossing place in pulpit services, which some assign to it. But we regard it as a fit subject for discussion in the stated services of the sanctuary, because slavery is a moral rather than a physical evil, and presents its most alarming and revolting aspects in a Christian point of view; because the evil is so desperate, that no power short of the omnipotence of Christian truth and love can reach it; because the slaves and the slaveholders are our brethren, children of our Father, bound to us by religious ties, and it is therefore fitting that we should bear them on our minds and hearts in our Father's house; because, if we have any duties towards them, they are religious duties, and therefore within the legitimate scope of the pulpit; and, finally, because the subject is encompassed with so many difficulties, and needs for the solution of them so much of the wisdom that is from above, and for its discussion without offence so much of that calmness and meekness, which should characterize the pulpit more universally than it does, that we may well apply to it the language and imitate the example of the Psalmist, with regard to perplexities of a different class: "If I say, I will speak thus, behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." Let then a firm and strong disapproval of the whole system breathe from the pulpit and the press, throughout the non-slaveholding States. Let no man be ashamed, or afraid to utter or to write what he believes and feels. Let this state of public sentiment be cherished at the North, without any aggressive movement towards the South; and it cannot but make itself felt there. It has there even now many hearts ready, yearning to respond to it. And those at the South, who cling to slavery, depend for their support to a very great degree upon popular feeling at the North, and feel fortified by the strong pro-slavery ground taken by the Northern press and pulpit, more than by any or all things else. While slavery has its friends at the North, its hold upon the South cannot be relaxed. But right feeling

here will work its way there. Our literature tinged with it will be read and felt there. Our great political orators once imbued with it will send the truth home to Southern hearts in breathing thoughts and burning words. Our ecclesiastical bodies are more or less intimately connected with the Southern church, and their unanimous, decided, and strong sentiment will soon find a response from every devout and intelligent Christian at the South, and will awaken to sincere penitence and a better mind those portions of the Southern church, which have entered into willing compact with this iniquity. Let the whole North be set right on this subject, and there would be no call for active interference or expostulation. Slavery would expire without a blow. It could not live a day without sympathy and support from beyond its own borders. Public sentiment is not the lame and slow agent which it once was; but it moves on wings of fire, and is like lightning which glances through the whole firmament with a flash.

In addition to this general expression and full establishment of right feeling upon this subject, it is most manifestly our duty to undo our own work, to abolish slavery and all operations connected with it, so far as the field of our jurisdiction extends. This is the most momentous subject of national legislation; nor can we hope for the smile of Providence upon any of our counsels, while this is overlooked. We deem it of the utmost importance, (and it certainly is important,) that our legislators should be sound in the faith on such subjects as the tariff and the currency, on which men yet may honestly differ, — it is of incomparably greater importance that they should be men, who will not by their continued subserviency to a system, which no Northern man in his heart approves, call down the judgments of long-suffering Heaven upon our land. The domestic slavetrade should be stopped; and that movement would insure speedy emancipation in the slave-breeding states, where slaves are confessedly not worth keeping for their labor, and confine the evil to the extreme South and Southwest. The portion of the country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government should be purged of this contamination. Let it be done by purchase,· it would not cost a third of what the Florida war has cost, and it would be far better to pay men for what is not their property, than to let the most shadowy suspicion of injustice rest upon a philanthropic movement. Let the whole North too, as one man, resist the admission into the

confederation of any new slaveholding member. Let all the non-slaveholding States also follow the noble example of Massachusetts, and forbid the agency of their magistrates and the use of their jails for the detention and restoration of fugitive slaves. Let the entire strength of the non-slaveholding States also be put forth in behalf of such amendments to the Constitution, as shall blot out all recognition of slavery, and base representation on the actual number of free citizens in the several States.

But, on all these subjects, the present is the time for prompt and energetic counsel and action. Let new slaveholding States be admitted into the Union, let Texas become a member of the confederacy, (and this may take place during the very next session of Congress, and scores of Northern votes be cast in favor of it,) and not improbably the majority of representatives at the end of another ten years will belong to the slaveholding States, and the chains of slavery will then be riveted, till the iniquity of the nation is full, and our name and place shall be blotted out from among the nations of the earth. Is it said, that a decided stand against slavery on the part of the nonslaveholding States would destroy the Union? Let it then be destroyed. If the Union cannot be preserved, and the laws of God be at the same time kept, better that human compacts yield, and God be obeyed at all hazards. In saying this, let us not be understood as speaking treasonably of our national Union. We prize and love the Union, and sincerely pray that God may keep it. But we expect safety for it only by its conformity to the divine will and law. We do not believe that it is threatened by any philanthropic principle or movement. On the other hand, were slavery removed from a place so near its foundations, it would be built up at once in the strength and beauty of liberty and virtue, and would be the desire of all nations, the glory of the whole earth. But, if the Union is threatened, it is by the reciprocal encroachments of the South and sycophancy of the North, and by the reckless, unprincipled tone and spirit thus given to the whole legislation and action of the Federal Government. There is no part of the national administration not infected by the spirit of slavery. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint." The South is arrogating to itself a vast preponderance of government patronage and influence, and dictating laws for the whole Union, while Northern men, making shipwreck of principle on the VOL. XXXIV 3D s. VOL. XVI. NO. III.

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