dom of range and action, loving, hating and believing as it will, after all.
The charge, therefore, that the principle of slavery, is a principle which aims at a usurpation of the rights of God over the human soul, is as false as it is monstrous and impossible. God, who created the African race, and, in their formation, both of body and mind, appointed them to slavery and servitude, would not have implanted in the desire of the other races who are allowed to enslave them, such an enemy to his sovereignty, as a desire to enslave the soul, and to take it out of the hands of the Creator, as abolitionists say slavery does; this, God has never done; neither was it ever desired by any man who has owned a slave; as an acquirement of such a description, could be of no earthly service to any one.
Was the spirit or desire which prompted Abraham, Lot, Job, Moses and Washington, with millions of other good men, in those ages as well as in America, to have slaves or bondmen, as a possession, which they bought with their money, a spirit which aimed at the usurpation of God's government over the souls of such bondmen — we are compelled to say no, or such a permit would never have been found in the law of Moses, nor the practice passed by without reproof in the New Testament.
There is no such law in the codes of the slave holding states, that has a word to say about the souls, minds or spirits of the slaves, as relates to the coersion of that free principle. The charge, therefore, as advanced by abolitionists against the slavery system, is but a flare up — a flourish extra, a mere scin-
