of that law, or be absolved from the condition of a slave or legal property.
If they were but once bought, they became perpetual slaves, to be inherited by the heirs of those who bought them, and of necessity liable to be sold again, whenever the owner should please to do so. This is the full, complete and unambiguous meaning of the 46th verse of the xxvth of Leviticus, and all the parallel places in the book of the law. Thus reads the passage: "And ye shall take them, as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever!"
The words inherit and possession are here used in the same property-sense in no wise differing from their use, when spoken in the promise of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Hebrews, respecting the possession of the land of Canaan,, which was to be their real inheritance and possession forever, as soon as the time should come when they should enter upon it by conquest. This was all in futurity when promised, as it respected the land of the Canaanites; so also was the promise of the bodies of the inhabitants for slaves — one was equally as much a promise as was the other — of such as should not be slain in the subjugation of the country: there was no difference.
Now, to carry out this notion of the above mentioned pamphlets on the idea of the word buy, or possession, being no more than the word hire or contract, then the promised possession of the country of Canaan would, after all, amount to nothing more than to rent it, while the fee simple would have still re-
