as children could be more easily managed, and brought up to the liking of the master than could the adults. A desire in the mind of the slave to run away would be much lessened by the process of domestication, and a natural love of those who supplied their wants.
But, says one, if the Canaanites were given to be destroyed by the Hebrews, even to entire extermination, how is it that Moses should say, in the law, any thing about buying their children for slaves, seeing they could go and take as many as they wanted by force, just when they would? We answer this, by saying that the Hebrews did not fully obey the commands of Moses on this subject as they should have done; on which account, there were, always, during the whole reign of the Jews in that country, many of the Canaanite tribes living among them, with whom the Jews were not always at war. Now, in a case like this, if the Hebrews wanted slaves of the perpetual bondman character, they would rather, no doubt, go and buy them of such as had them to sell in a peaceable way.
With a view to such circumstances, Moses directed them to buy the children of the Canaanites, as among the Hebrews there were always found parents in abundance of the negro race, who would sell their children for slaves, as readily as they do now in Africa. There can be no doubt, therefore, but the Hebrews, many of them under the sanction of that clause of the law of Moses, got their lining by thus buying children, and selling them again in Judea and elsewhere; for, let it be observed, that this law is not qualified, as to its extent, in carrying on the
