correctly or not is no concern to us in this argument) to be incidental to his property in the servant's labour; and no more. Third, they protect the person, being, and moral responsibility of the slave against his own master. If the master kills him, it is murder, by the law. The slave's Sabbath is secured to him by the law. If the master force him to commit a crime, the former is held by the law guilty therefor, as accessory before the fact: and the latter is also held to his personal responsibility for it. And last, the law treats the slave so fully as a rational and responsible human, that it even bestows on him the right of litigation against his own master, in one case. Any African setting up a plea of unlawful detention in bondage, against his master, is allowed to sue _in forma pauperis_, in the courts of law. How could the fact be more clearly defined, that the institution of slavery treats the slave as a rational human being, and gives the master property in nothing but his labour? Yet Senator Sumner points triumphantly to the words of the South Carolina statute as proving that slavery makes the servant a mere thing; and all smaller Abolitionists have caught up his special pleading. The cane of Mr. Brooks having given him, as it seems, a special taste for things South Carolinian, he hunted up a clause where the law of that State declares, that slaves and their children shall be held in every respect as "chattels personal." This proves beyond a peradventure, he says, that the law reduces the slave to a mere thing, as though he were an _ox_ or _bureau_. Yet, a hundred other laws of South Carolina treat him as a responsible man! Any honest mind will perceive the explanation, at once; which is, that the lawyers of South Carolina were not aiming, in this law, to settle the question of the moral nature of slavery; but to decide whether property in a slave should be regarded as pertaining to the _real_, or to the _personal_ estate of a citizen; and in deciding it, they very properly had more regard to legal perspicuity than to ethical accuracy of definition. Let us suppose that among the statutes of the British Parliament, there should be one (as there very probably is) declaring that when a master mechanic dies, having an indentured apprentice, the unfinished term of service of this apprentice should be held as belonging to his personal effects, and should be so used for the benefit of his heirs or creditors. And let us suppose, farther, that in defining this fact, some such words as these should be used: that said apprentice should be held in every respect, as pertaining unto the personal estate of the deceased. Then, the same logic would prove that the British laws reduce an apprentice to a mere chattel! But we have a better illustration of its folly. God says, Genesis xxvi. 14: "Isaac had _possessions_ of flocks, and herds, and servants." Leviticus, xxv. 45: "Of the children of strangers that do sojourn among you, of them