Page 33. “That some inward principle which teaches a man what he is bound to do to others, teaches equally, and at the same instant, what others are bound to do to him!” Suppose a few Africans, on an excursion to capture slaves, find that this “inward principle” teaches them that they are bound to make a slave of Dr. Channing, if they can; does he mean that, therefore, he is bound to make slaves of them? _Idem_, p. 33. “The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other words, the same inward principle which teaches the former, bears witness to the latter.” If the African’s sense of duty gives the right to make Dr. Channing a slave, we do not see why he should complain; since, by his own rule, the African’s sense of duty proves him to possess the right which his sense of duty covets. Page 34. “Having shown the foundation of human rights in human nature, it may be asked, what they are. * * * They may all be comprised in the right, which belongs to every rational being, to exercise his powers for the promotion of his own and others’ happiness and virtue. * * * His ability for this work is a sacred trust from God, the greatest of all trusts. He must answer for the waste or abuse of it. He consequently suffers an unspeakable wrong when stripped of it by others, or forbidden to employ it for the ends for which it is given.” We regret to say that we feel an objection to Channing’s argument and mode of reasoning, for its want of definiteness and precision. If what he says on the subject of slavery were merely intended as eloquent declamations, addressed to the sympathies and impulses of his party, we should not have been disposed to have named such an objection. But his works are urged on the world as sound logic, and of sufficient force to open the eyes of every slaveholder to the wickedness of the act, and to force him, through the medium of his “moral sense,” to set the slaves instantly free. A moral action must not only be the voluntary offspring of the actor, but must also be performed, to be judged by laws which shall determine it to be good or bad. These laws, man being the moral agent, we say, are the laws of God; by them man is to measure his conduct. Locke says, “Moral good and evil are the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn upon us from the will or power of the lawmaker.” But the doctrine of Dr. Channing seems to be that this law is each man’s _conscience, moral sense, sense of duty_, or the _inward principle_. If the proposition of Mr. Locke be sound logic, what becomes of these harangues of Dr. Channing?