Indeed, among the Jews, the number of slaves must have been small. They were numerous in a narrow territory, and were in general husband-men, and used ploughs and other instruments of agriculture, and wrought in the field with their servants. Ziba, who appears to have been steward to the house of Saul, had only twenty servants to assist him and his sons in cultivating the lands belonging to the family. The Jews on their return from captivity had only one servant to six persons, or one in each family. The remnant of the Gibeonites, who served the temple, was then 392. It is not therefore fair to consider every accidental possession of a servant, either as an instance, or as a vindication of the Leverpool “slave trade;” of which no ancient nation could ever form an idea. We may rather conclude, that though the Jews were permitted to buy slaves from the Heathen, they did not traffick in them; and forcibly to enslave their brethren was death. (See Exod. xxi. 16. Deut. xxiv. 7.) Of Mr. Harris’s data as general propositions, I shall say little more; the application alone is what the present subject is concerned in. I shall only suggest an additional datum, as necessary to complete his principles of reasoning. Dat. 13. If the slave trade, though “intrinsically licit,” cannot now be carried on, without breaking through every human and divine law, without cheating, violence, oppression, murder, then must it be laid aside, till we shall have discovered a way of carrying it on, agreeably to the doctrines of the gospel, by which we are enjoined to consider all men as our brethren, and to deal by them as we wish them to deal by us. Page 16. Speaking of Abraham’s possessing of servants, he calls it, “a positive approbation, a sanction of divine authority in favour of the slave-trade.” What a change is put on the Reader! Abraham possessed servants; therefore the Leverpool slave-trade has a divine sanction. For if this be not meant, nothing is meant. His book is published to vindicate this trade; it is dedicated to the corporation, who must so understand it. Now let a man only read Mr. Newton or Mr. Falconbridge’s, or any other eye-witness’s account of this trade, and what horrid impiety must of necessity be understood! Is there “a divine sanction” for all the iniquity accompanying this very diabolical business, the kidnapping, chaining, murdering, suffocating of millions of unhappy fellow creatures? Are such things not barely permitted, but (p. 42.) approved, encouraged, and seemingly enjoined?