Fourth. It is said that Moses himself commanded that a runaway slave should not be surrendered to his master; thereby plainly teaching that slaves had a right to their liberty, if they could escape. This, it is urged, proves that there must be some mistake in our conclusions. Of course, this passage is quoted triumphantly as settling the question against the fugitive slave-law, required by the late Constitution of the United States. It is found in Deuteronomy xxiii. 15, 16: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him." We need no better answer to this citation, than that given by a Northern divine already named, who is no friend to slavery, Rev. Moses Stuart. He says: "The first inquiry of course is: Where does his master live? Among the Hebrews or among foreigners? The language of the passage fully developes this, and answers the question. He has 'escaped from his master unto the Hebrews.' (The text says, unto _thee_, i. e., Israel.) 'He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in one of thy gates.' Of course then, he is an immigrant, and did not dwell among them before his flight. If he had been a Hebrew servant, belonging to a Hebrew, the whole face of the thing would be changed. Restoration or restitution, if we may judge by the tenour of other property laws among the Hebrews, would have surely been enjoined. But, be that as it may, the language of the text puts it beyond a doubt, that the servant is a foreigner and has fled from a heathen master." Mr. Stuart then proceeds to assign obvious reasons why a foreign servant escaping from a heathen master was not to be restored: that the bondage from which he escaped was inordinately cruel, including the power of murder for any caprice; and that to force him back was to remand him to the darkness of heathenism, and to rob him of the light of true religion, which shone in the land of the Hebrews alone. He adds: "But if we put now the other case, viz.: that of escape from a Hebrew master, who claimed and enjoyed Hebrew rights, is not the case greatly changed? Who could take from him the property which the Mosaic law gave him a right to hold? Neither the bondsman himself, nor the neighbours of the master to whom the fugitive might come. Reclamation of him could be lawfully made, and therefore must be enforced." This explanation forces itself upon our common sense. To suppose that Moses could so formally authorize and define slavery among the Hebrews, and then enact that every slave might gain his liberty by merely stepping over the brook or imaginary line which separated the little cantons of the tribes from each other, or even by going to the next house of his master's neighbours, and claiming protection, whenever petulance, or caprice, or laziness should move him thereto; this is absurd; it is