Another charge against us is, that our laws abrogated the rights of marriage among slaves, authorized their capricious separation by masters, and thus consigned them to promiscuous concubinage, like that of beasts. Now, first, admitting defect in our legislation here, let us ask, how much of the blame of the continuance of this defect is chargeable upon the frantic attacks of abolitionists upon us? Every sensible man can understand, that a people so fiercely assailed in their vital rights should be occupied solely by righteous defence, and should feel the time unsuited for the discussion of innovations, however needful. And next, let it be understood what the South has really done, and has not done, herein, and it will appear that an amazing misrepresentation is made of the whole case. The form of the charge usually is, that our laws deprived the slaves of all marital rights. This is, first, a monstrous perversion of the facts, in that the Africans never had any marital rights or domestic institutions to be deprived of. Have men forgotten, that in their native country there was no marriage, and no marriage law, but the negroes either lived in vagrant concubinage, or held their plurality of wives as slaves, to be either sold or slain at will? They have, at least, lost nothing, then; and the utmost that could be charged upon our legislation is, that it did not undertake to innovate upon their own native usages; that it did not force upon them marital restraints, and penalties for their breach, which the Africans were disqualified either to understand or value, which they would have regarded as a more cruel burden than their bondage. Next, our laws did not, as many seem to represent, prohibit, or delegalize the marriage of slaves; but were simply silent about them. The meaning of this silence was, to leave the whole matter to the controul of the master. It appears almost impossible for anti-slavery men to be made to apprehend the nature of the institution, as described in the words, '_domestic_ slavery.' Their minds, perverted with vain dreams of the powers and perfectibility of the State, cannot be made to apprehend that God has made other parties than the commonwealth and the civil magistrate, depositories of ruling power; and that this arrangement is right and benevolent. Now, it is the genius of slavery, to make the family the slave's commonwealth. The family is his State. The master is his magistrate and legislator, in all save certain of the graver criminal relations, in which the commonwealth deals directly and personally with him. He is a member of municipal society only through his master, who represents him. The commonwealth knows him as only a life-long minor under the master's tutelage. The integers of which the commonwealth aggregate is made up, are not single human beings, but single families, authoritatively represented in the father and master. And this is the fundamental