4. Let us compare slavery with theft and robbery. Let me give a case for illustration. You are a husband and a father. You commenced the world a poor man, but by hard labor and economy, you have collected together a sum of money, which, you believe, if well invested, will place you and your family in circumstances of respectability and comfort. From statements made to you, or from your own observation, by going upon the ground, you come to the conclusion that your money can be more profitably appropriated, by removing to the West. Accordingly you convert every thing you possess into cash, and make all the necessary arrangements for a removal with your family. On the night previous to your intended departure, a thief enters your house, takes possession of all you have, and makes off, and you never hear of it more. Or suppose you are already on your journey, and after many days of fatiguing travel, find yourself near the place of your destination; when you are met by the highwayman, who, with a pistol at your breast, robs you of your last farthing.--Now I suppose this would be a case, where theft and robbery would stand out in their worst features. It would be a trying case indeed. After years of toil, to gain something for yourself and household, you are in a moment pennyless, with your destitute, needy family upon your hands. All you can do, is again to betake yourself to hard labor, to provide for those you love. But suppose after all this, you were doomed to see your children torn from you, one after another, and sold under the hammer, to go you know not where; to be subjected to the cruelty, and abuse, and outrage, of any monster into whose hands they might chance to fall; where you could never see or hear from them more; and you left with no means of redress, to sit down beside your broken hearted wife, and mingle your tears and sighs and sobs with hers, with no prospect of relief until death. But in the midst of it all, even the wife of your bosom, dear as your own heart's blood, is sundered from you, and sold forever from your embrace, and you at last go off under the hammer, to the highest bidder, and are driven by the lash, to groan, and sweat, under long, long days of unrequited toil, with no relief till you die. This is slavery. It robs a man of all his earnings during his whole life. Labor as he may, sweat as he may, he can never have a farthing to call his own. Just hear the laws on this subject. 'In South Carolina a slave is not permitted to keep a boat, or raise and breed for his own benefit, any horses, cattle, sheep or hogs, under pain of forfeiture, and _any person may take them from him_.' I ask, what is that but robbery--except it is unspeakably worse, because it is legalized--and the poor man has no means of redress? It is made lawful for _any person_ to rob him, by the letter of the statute.