Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/94

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DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION

remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.”[1]

The ordinance requiring the appointment of regular judges throughout the nation, and enjoining them to “judge righteously between every man and his brother,” “not to respect persons in judgment,” “not to be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s,” would also, besides its more obvious benefit, tend to preserve the independence of the poor; since it assured them the protection of the law in place of the protection of great men, which in unsettled and dangerous times they are tempted to purchase, and in the early feudal period did habitually purchase, at the price of their personal liberty.

“Let our Legislature,” says The Southern Democrat, “pass a law that whoever will take these parents, (parents unable to educate their children out of their own pockets,) and take care of them and their offspring, in sickness and in health, clothe them, feed them, and house them, shall be legally entitled to their services.” “We have got,” says the same journal, “to hating everything with the prefix free, from free negroes up and down through the whole catalogue, free farms, free labour, free society, free will, free thinking, and free schools. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools.” “We have asked the North,” says The Richmond Inquirer, “has not the experiment of universal liberty failed, are not the evils of free society insufierable? Still no answer. Their universal silence is a conclusive proof, added to