The crime is stated in a three-fold form--man _stealing_, _selling_, and _holding_. All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty--DEATH. This _somebody_ deprived of the ownership of a man, is the _man himself_, robbed of personal ownership. Joseph said, "Indeed I was _stolen_ away out of the land of the Hebrews." Gen. xl. 15. How _stolen?_ His brethren sold him as an article of merchandize. Contrast this penalty for _man_-stealing with that for _property_-stealing, Ex. xxii. If a man had stolen an _ox_ and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, two oxen. But in the case of stealing a _man_, the _first_ act drew down the utmost power of punishment; however often repeated, or aggravated the crime, human penalty could do no more. The fact that the penalty for _man_-stealing was death, and the penalty for _property_-stealing, the mere restoration of double, shows that the two cases were adjudicated on totally different principles. The man stolen might be past labor, and his support a burden, yet death was the penalty, though not a cent's worth of _property value_ was taken. The penalty for stealing property was a mere property penalty. However large the theft, the payment of double wiped out the score. It might have a greater _money_ value than a thousand men, yet death was not the penalty, nor maiming, nor branding, nor even _stripes_, but double of _the same kind._ Why was not the rule uniform? When a _man_ was stolen why was not the thief required to restore double of the same kind--two men, or if he had sold him, five men? Do you say that the man-thief might not _have_ them? So the ox-thief might not have two oxen, or if he had killed it, five. But if God permitted men to hold _men_ as property, equally with _oxen_, the man-thief could get men with whom to pay the penalty, as well as the ox-thief, oxen. Further, when _property_ was stolen, the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a _man_ was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender money as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with intolerable aggravations. Compute the value of a MAN in _money!_ Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such supreme insult and impiety. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would have been making the repetition of crime its atonement. But the infliction of death for _man-stealing_ exacted the utmost possibility of reparation. It wrung from the guilty wretch as he gave up the ghost, a testimony in blood, and death-groans, to the infinite dignity and worth of man,--a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, "MAN IS INVIOLABLE"--a confession shrieked in phrenzy at the grave's mouth--"I die accursed, and God is just."