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to escape that contingency. At any rate, it is not self-evident that all men were created to die; neither it demonstrable at present one way or the other.
Supposing the apology to be, that all men are created equally responsible to their Creator. Very well. Does verisimilitude of condition, in a single particular constitute equality in all? That all men are responsible to God, as a point of faith, we believe. That they are equally responsible, is a point to be proved. What knowledge we can get on the subject, leads to the belief that the responsibility is unequal; and because the man with one talent was held to a different account from the man with ten; we reasonably infer that it was because there was a difference between them. Men ought to do their duty, both to their neighbor and their Creator; but there has ever been an immense dissimilitude in methods of discharging that obligation.
Suppose the apology to lie in the authority of scripture, "God hath made of one blood all the nations for to dwell on the face of the earth,"—if I quote right. What does this amount to; but to say their blood, all of them, is that of man, not of bulls or goats. The prophet Ezekiel, notwithstanding this knowledge, contemplated a very great dissimilitude among men; for in speaking of the Assyrians whom he hated, "all of them desirable young men, clothed in scarlet and riding on horses;" nevertheless said he, "their flesh is as the flesh of horses, and their issue as the issue of asses." Doubtless he would make just the same reflection on the Southern chivalry, could he see a specimen. Be that as it may, if I possessed the ability to sneer with such unadulterated scorn as that, I would set up nights to exercise my faculty.
Doubtless in some vague and unprofitable manner, equality may be predicated of men; but in no sense or shape, as I conceive, can it so be done, as to divest the sentence under review of its treacherous absurdity. Against our knowledge, innate, acquired, or revealed—against the instinct and impulses of every son of Adam, is the assertion, "all men are created equal." The powers of no individual, nor of any combination of them, with all the advantages to boot of genius, and the first order of physical endowment, can produce one solitary example of perfect equality. Even in the instance of twins, one must be born before the other, conse-
