Another measure of Abolitionists, which has greatly tended to promote wrath and strife, is their indiscreet and incorrect use of terms. To make this apparent, it must be premised, that words have no inherent meaning, but always signify that which they are commonly _understood_ to mean. The question never should be asked, what _ought_ a word to mean? but simply, what is the meaning generally attached to this word by those who use it? Vocabularies and standard writers are the proper umpires to decide this question. Now if men take words and give them a new and peculiar use, and are consequently misunderstood, they are guilty of a species of deception, and are accountable for all the evils that may ensue as a consequence. For example; if physicians should come out and declare, that it was their opinion that they ought to poison all their patients, and they had determined to do it, and then all the community should be thrown into terror and excitement, it would be no justification for them to say, that all they intended by that language was, that they should administer as medicines, articles which are usually called poisons. Now Abolitionists are before the community, and declare that all slavery is sin, which ought to be immediately forsaken; and that it is their object and intention to promote the _immediate emancipation_ of all the slaves in this nation. Now what is it that makes a man cease to be a slave and become free? It is not kind treatment from a master; it is not paying wages to the slave; it is not the intention to bestow freedom at a future time; it is not treating a slave as if he were free; it is not feeling toward a slave as if he were free. No instance can be found of any dictionary, or any standard writer, nor any case in common discourse, where any of these significations are attached to the word as constituting its peculiar and appropriate meaning. It always signifies _that legal_ act, which, by the laws of the land, changes a slave to a freeman. What then is the _proper_ meaning of the language used by Abolitionists, when they say that all slavery is a sin which ought to be immediately abandoned, and that it is their object to secure the immediate emancipation of all slaves? The true and only proper meaning of such language is, that it is the duty of every slave-holder in this nation, to go immediately and make out the legal instruments, that, by the laws of the land, change all his slaves to freemen. If their maxim is true, no exception can be made for those who live in States where the act of emancipation, by a master, makes a slave the property of the State, to be sold for the benefit of the State; and no exception can be made for those, who, by the will of testators, and by the law of the land, have no power to perform the legal act, which alone can emancipate their slaves.