Dr. Channing has suffered his idea of property to bring him great mental suffering: he evidently associates, under the term _property_, those qualities and relations only, which are properly associated in an inanimate object of possession, or at most in a brute beast. He has, no doubt, suffered great misery from the reflection that a human being has ever been reduced to such a condition. But his misery has all been produced by his adherence to his own peculiar definition of the word _property_. His definition is not its exact meaning, when applied to a slave. Had the doctor attempted an argument to show that the word _property_ could not consistently be applied to a slave, he might, perhaps, have improved our language, by setting up a more definite boundary to the meaning of this term, and saved himself much useless labour. Mankind apply the term _property_ to slaves: they have always done so; and since Dr. Channing has not given us an essay upon the impropriety of this use of the word, perhaps the accustomed usage will be continued. But we imagine that no one but the doctor and his disciples will contend that it expresses the same complex idea when applied to slaves, which is expressed by it when applied to inanimate objects, or to brute beasts. It will be a new idea to the slaveholder to be told that the word _property_, as applied to his slaves, converts them at once into brute beasts, no longer human beings; that it deprives them of all legal protection; and that he, the master, in consequence of the use of this word, stands in the same relation to his slave that he does to his horse; and we apprehend he will find it quite as difficult to comprehend how this metamorphosis is brought about, as it is for the doctor and his disciples, how the slave is property. We may say a man has property in his wife, his children, his hireling, his slave, his horse, and a piece of timber,—by which we mean that he has the right to use them, in conformity to the relations existing between himself and these several objects. Because his horse is his property, who ever dreamed that he had therefore the right to use him as a piece of timber? No man has a right to use any item of property in a different manner than his relations with it indicate; or, in other words, as shall be in conformity with the laws of God. Our property is little else than the right of possession and control, under the guidance of the laws by which we are in possession for the time being. The organization of society is the result of the conception of the general good. By it one man, under a certain chain of circumstances, inherits a throne; another, a farm; one, the protection of a bondman, or whatever may accrue to these conditions from other operating causes; and another, nothing. If Dr. Channing and his disciples can find out some new principles by which to organize society, producing different and better results, they will then do what has not been done.