The first is the alleged inferiority of the African race,--an argument instructive to the Slave-Master. The law of life is labor. Slavery is a perpetual effort to evade this law by compelling the labor of others; and such an attempt at evasion is naturally supported by the pretension, that, because the African is inferior, therefore he may be enslaved. But this pretension, while surrendering to Slavery a whole race, leaves it uncertain whether the same principle may not be applied to other races, as to the polished Japanese who are now the guests of the nation,[125] and even to persons of obvious inferiority among the white race. Indeed, the latter pretension is openly set up in other quarters. The “Richmond Enquirer,” a leading journal of Slave-Masters, declares, “The principle of Slavery is in itself right, and _does not depend on difference of complexion_.” And a leading writer among Slave-Masters, George Fitzhugh, of Virginia, in his “Sociology for the South,” declares, “Slavery, _black or white_, is right and necessary. Nature has made the weak in mind or body for slaves.” In the same vein, a Democratic paper of South Carolina has said, “Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, _black or white_.” These more extravagant pretensions reveal still further the feebleness of the pretension put forth by the Senator, while instances, accumulating constantly, attest the difficulty of discriminating between the two races. Mr. Paxton, of Virginia, tells us that “the best blood in Virginia flows in the veins of the slaves”; and more than one fugitive has been advertised latterly as possessing “a round face,” “blue eyes,” “flaxen hair,” and as “escaping under the pretence of being a white man.” This is not the time to enter upon the great question of race, in the various lights of religion, history, and science. Sure I am that they who understand it best will be least disposed to the pretension which, on an assumed ground of inferiority, would condemn one race to be the property of another. If the African race be inferior, as is alleged, then unquestionably a Christian Civilization must lift it from degradation, not by the lash and the chain, not by this barbarous pretension of ownership, but by a generous charity, which shall be measured precisely by the extent of inferiority. * * * * *