We now meet the question--What are the rights of the slave? The duties of the master are reciprocal of these. Those who believe, with Channing, that the relation they sustain as masters assumes that their slaves have no rights, we may consider are beyond the reach of reason. If the master owes any duties to his slave, it is because the rights of the slave entitle him to the benefit of the faithful performance of these duties on the part of his master. No point is more fully settled in Scripture than this: masters are held to a strict accountability to God for the faithful performance of certain duties to their slaves. The Bible puts it beyond all dispute that “the master stands to his bond-servant, one bought with his money or born in his house, in a relation widely different from that which he sustains to the hired servant, or the stranger within his gates, or the neighbor without them.” And as he may be a good neighbor, and yet at fault as a husband and father, so he may be a good husband, a good father, and yet a bad master. The duties which the master owes the slave are as binding on the conscience as those which the slave owes the master. To neglect either involves the party so neglecting in sin. Indeed, the duties of the master are as binding as those of any relation in life. On many accounts, they are peculiarly solemn. They are duties owed to inferiors, and inferiors in a helpless condition. They appeal to the magnanimity of the master. He who disregards this appeal, not only violates duty, but betrays a want of magnanimity, bordering upon that meanness of spirit which delights to oppress an inferior, whilst it cowers before an equal. A brave man is always magnanimous, and a magnanimous man will rarely fail to respect the rights of the helpless. _Guardianship_, as well as authority, enters as an element into the idea of master. Masters are not only rulers, but protectors. If the servant is defrauded of his own, if his wants are not regarded and his grievances redressed, or he is otherwise oppressed, to whom can he complain? True, his miseries are not voiceless. His cries “enter into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” But his only earthly appeal lies to his master. He has permitted or done this thing, and it is laid upon the conscience of the slave to submit, “not answering again.” His master is his only earthly protector. His guaranty that his master will protect him, is that he too has a “Master in heaven,” who is no respecter of persons, and that to him belongeth vengeance.